What Are Hypnic Jerks + Why Do They Happen? | Dr. Ian Smith

About 70 percent of people experience hypnic jerks — Dr. Ian Smith explains why and what you can do about it.

[highonlife]

brain: "im going into sleep mode, later muscles!"
muscles: "did he say something?"
10 min later..
brain: "WE'RE FALLING WE'RE FALLING! CONTRACT ALL MUSCLES AND BRACEEEE!"
muscles: "AHHHH"

[asimpformachi]

It literally just happened to me, and I was like I need to figure this out what this is, so I searched it up.

[kxc]

i’ve found it really only happens to me when i’m falling asleep on my back. if it happens i just lay on my side and then usually i’m good

[HTRemasters]

"It's not dangerous?"
"Nope"
Crowd: *THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE*

[xmhmd]

I got rid of this disease, I will pass on my experience to you. First you must get rid of psychological anxiety, secondly compensate the vitamin B magnesium, thirdly exercise and healthy eating, noticing the disease is not dangerous

[MahkRonAKash]

My father told me it was likely that your brain thinks you're dying. If perhaps you're falling asleep too slowly, it might feel something is wrong and it gives you a wake up shock or something.

[TashaWashington]

For me it was a severe iron deficiency. I started taking iron, magnesium and some other supplements and it went away. Hope this helps someone! 😊

[bananamilkenjoyer]

One time I was thinking about slipping and right when I was about to fall on the floor, I woke up and flinched

[kas]

It happens when your muscles relaxes and your brain is still awake..
The brain thinks your falling cause it no longer feels the body.
It happens when you try to Astral project.
If you can control your brain not to freak out and send the falling signal through your body then you can master the Astral projection.

[doxlan]

This happens to me once in a while, its kinda fun tbh

[Sonic-xgox]

I thought this was the starting of some epilepsy problem. Thank god!!!

[radicalflower]

I will share my experience, I suffered for days from Hypnic Jerk. Sometimes it happened 6 times in few hours while I try sleeping. I started searching in the internet. I stumbled over one comment in YouTube, saying that he/she tried iron supplements and this stopped the symptoms. Guess what I started to take iron+ vitamins complex Supplements and it worked as charm.

[xmhmd]

I suffer from it so much that I can't sleep
I want a solution to this disease, please :)

[weynaaaafs]

This hypnic jerks is always distracting my sleep so in the night i cant sleep properly because i worry about having a hypnic jerks so to resolve this problem, i started not to worrying about it, when i will go to bed, my position is left side and extra pillow to the knees for support and then when i will try to fall asleep, i will distract myself to not worry about the hypnic jerks, because if u worry about it from time to time, u will develope insomnia which is you will get hard time to sleep, so the only way to rid this is dont worry and dont overthink about it, just think everything is normal and if hypnic jerk attacks you, dont panic, take a deep breath, slowly breath out to your mouth and then repeat it 5x, after that go back to your sleep

[starlingswallow]

I have CPTSD from a 13 year abusive marriage by a covert narcissist. I believe I was terrorized so much that it crept into my sleep (my last place of safety) and these hipnic jerks launched me into a full on terrifying panic attack. They used to happen 4-6 times a night. Now it's once, but still horrible 😞

[AnthonyGonzalez-usdq]

I had sleep jerks and twitches for a couple months about 3 years ago. They went away. And sometimes it comes back once in awhile. But idk why it happens. It scares the crap out of me and can barely sleep. Idk why this isn’t talked about more often

[averyjohnson]

Muscles: “Alright, brain. How’s it going up there?”
Brain: “Pretty good. I’ma fall asleep shortly, oh frick! She’s dying!”
Muscles: “Oh no! We gotta get her attention!”
Brain: “Oh just a false alarm.”
Muscles: “Aight. We did it! We got her back up! Did you say something brain?”
Me: *flinches*

[queenempress]

They don't call it FALLING to sleep for nothing. When our body jerks we actually FELL to sleep too QUICKLY. Our relaxed mode did not get a chance to SWITCH ON. BUT Grandma always said sudden jerks are our guardian angels being JERKS. Touching us while were sleeping. They think its funny to see us JOLT WIDE AWAKE.

[JL-fxcm]

I had a brain tumor removed from my right temporal lobe. After the surgery, I unfortunately experienced these over 100 times per night. It's called myoclonic seizures. Myo=muscle. Clonic=turmoil. A Stanford study showed that when the brain mistakenly believes the heart has stopped, it sends an uneeded jolt. They are very difficult to control. Lamical, Depakote and Benzo's are the pills of choice. Mine have been reduced greatly. My best advice is to work out. Myoclonus doesn't like endorphins or dopamine. Be well everyone!!!

[NellzM]

I used to get the falling down feeling when I was a kid. Now it’s the high ringing in ears, the surrounding sounds becomes watery like a malfunctioned speaker and then the head jerks side to side. It’s scary, feels like a short seizure episode. And I never had a seizure while awake, ever.