What if I feel like I'm falling from a height while sleeping?

If you feel like you are falling from a height while sleeping, you will often wake up from your dream and sometimes feel particularly scared. This situation is called muscle spasm in medicine. Many people have experienced this situation and there are many causes. For example, from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, it may be due to insufficient qi and blood, or deficiency of the liver and kidneys. For men, if they indulge in sexual activity excessively, such symptoms may occur.

What if I feel like I'm falling from a height while sleeping?

From a medical point of view, this is called "muscle twitch". Muscle twitches are not uncommon and can occur when you have hiccups, fatigue, tension, or sleep. When a muscle spasm occurs, the body's muscles will twitch rapidly at the speed of an electric shock, making it impossible for the person to control it.

The muscle twitches that occur while sleeping are called "sleep startles". If your breathing becomes slower and slower when you fall asleep, and the number of breaths per unit time drops drastically, your brain will think that you are dead, so it sends a pulse signal to test whether you are dead. If the body responds, it means you are not dead. But in some cases, it is also a sign of disease.

According to statistics, 70% of people have had this experience. Under normal circumstances, muscle twitches occur about 4 to 5 times per night. If this happens too often, it becomes an alarm signal from the body. For example, excessive fatigue, high mental tension during the day, muscle hyperactivity due to long-term calcium deficiency, and insufficient qi and blood due to liver and kidney deficiency can all cause muscle twitching.

However, if muscle twitches occur frequently, you should also consider whether you have diseases such as encephalitis, sequelae of brain trauma, degenerative brain diseases, etc. If the symptoms occur too many times, you should pay attention.

Why do we feel like falling?

Suddenly feeling like you are falling from a height while sleeping is actually a manifestation of sleep convulsions. It means that when a person is about to fall asleep, the muscles all over the body suddenly and involuntarily twitch rapidly. It is a conditioned reflex and has nothing to do with growth. Other symptoms include a sudden twitch or kick of the legs, and even vague dreams, which often lead to awakening.

The cause of hypnic jerks and even a feeling of falling is not yet clear. W. Christopher Winter, a sleep physician in Virginia, says you can think of it as the brain and body operating out of sync — the brain has entered rest and sleep mode, but the body has not, so the involuntary twitches occur, which are more likely to occur when you are tired or stressed.