Imagine awakening to find yourself violently attacking your partner, either physically or sexually. Imagine how your partner feels, being awakened by such an episode.
And yet this does happen, and more often than we are aware of. After all, this isn't something people like to talk about. It's embarrassing and, well, downright scary!
This is violent sleep disorder, and it's a REM-sleep behavior disorder (RBD.) REM (rapid eye movement) occurs when the sleeper is dreaming and anyone watching can see the eyeballs moving beneath closed eyelids as the sleeper follows the action of his or her dream.
During natural REM sleep, the muscles of the body are paralyzed. This is to prevent the sleeper injuring himself or others as he/she follows acts out action of the dream. However, unfortunately, sometimes the body's defense mechanism fails, the muscles are not paralyzed and the sleeper is free to act out the dream physically. Thus we get disorders such as sleepwalking and violent sleep disorder. The opposite of this is sleep paralysis where the body awakens with the paralysis still in tact, and the person is unable to move. The action of the dream follows into the waking state giving him/her vivid and frightening hallucinations.
Researchers at the Mayo clinic have been studying the effects of the hormone melatonin on REM-sleep behavior disorders such as violent sleep disorder. They discovered that the violence is reduced and the nightmare quality of their dreams decreased. There was far less tendency to violence.
Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland situated in the brain. It helps to regulate sleep cycles. The researchers admit that they don't know why melatonin reduces the episodes of violence in sleep. They say there's no theoretical reason why it works. The main thing, though, is that it does. Perhaps it has a calming effect, or it may just make people sleep more soundly.
People thinking of using melatonin for violent sleep disorder should talk it over with their doctor or sleep specialist first to make sure the disorder and treatment is handled correctly. More testing and studies are needed to ascertain correct usage, possible problems and side effects.
