What does it mean when you're drifting off to sleep and your whole body jerks???

[Eventhesparrows]

So I know everyone experiences this from time to time, but for the past week or so, it's happened at least once (sometimes more than once) every night while trying to go to sleep.

....I don't want to google it, as my biggest fear is brain tumors and I'm sure somehow this might be able to relate to that (or it will at least in my irrational mind).

[Taucher]

I have googled for you. I can find absolutely no link between being jerked awake as you are falling asleep (called hypnic jerks) and brain tumours.

These are extremely common. I get them a few times a week and have never worried about them at all. They occur in pretty much everyone and can be made worse by anxiety, caffiene, stress, over-tiredness or lots of exercise just before sleep.

T

[Kuatir]

Yeah, what Taucher said. completely normal, especially in anxiety sufferers as the nervous system is really sensitive and that's what is causing the jerk.

[countrygirl]

As said they are called hypnic jerks and are totally totally normal in everyone and everyone will have them at sometime but only anxious people remember them or even give them another thought!

[Eventhesparrows]

The "over-tired" thing is ringing a bell. I literally haven't slept well in over a year - my daughter is 1 year old today, and she has yet to sleep through the night.

[PASchoolSyndrome]

Gotta be honest I thought everyone twitched as they started to fall asleep.. I didn't know people didnt lol. I know my fiance and I sure do. Sometimes his twitches are so erratic that he'll wake himself up!

Once his arm flailed and hit me in the face...

[Panicer]

Hi Eventhesparrows

As said above they're completely normal. Some scientists have suggested they might even be a link to our ancient primate ancestors and the jerking feeling is to prevent us or rather our ancestors falling out of the tree we were sleeping in. Both my wife and I get them so no need to worry.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Gotta be honest I thought everyone twitched as they started to fall asleep.. I didn't know people didnt lol. I know my fiance and I sure do. Sometimes his twitches are so erratic that he'll wake himself up!

Once his arm flailed and hit me in the face...

They can and many do, they just don't care so we don't hear about it.

These jerks are a recorded sleep phenomena found in the sleep stages of Hypnagogia (falling asleep and within the first two hours of sleep) and Hypnopompia (waking) and there is a long list of others we can experience. They are all quite normal and whilst anxiety is not a cause it is known to increase such things.

Myself and a few other sufferers I've spoken to on here have found they are worse when anxiety is, more so when your anxiety is at worse stages. It tends to go as you start recovery.

The mind works very differently in those sleep stages and we naturally experience things that we don't in the day in our fully waken state. An example is hallucinations. People on here post their worries about schizophrenia because they have experienced them in those sleep stages but they don't realise it's actually completely natural to because of how the mind changes during them.

[xfilme]

As someone else said, they are called Hypnic Jerks / Hypnogogic Jerks. It usually happens when your body and brain are at different levels of fatigue, eg youve spent all day doing paperwork, so your head is tired but your body is awake, or maybe you have been doing a lot of physical exercise so your body is tired, buy your mind is still really awake. It is an automatic response, that happens when approaching sleep. Most of the time your body and mind are at the same level of tiredness so you dont notice it. The jerk is a result of your brain sending a signal to make sure your limbs are still working. To stop this happening, establish a better sleep routine where you wind down slowly, and relax before bed.

[Eventhesparrows]

What about flashes of light when your eyes are closed and you're falling asleep? Sometimes it'll be a bright flash, other times it'll be varying soft glows of light - I've even thought someone was shining a light in my face or turned a light on in the distance hallway or bathroom.. just started that too. This stuff is making me nervous when it comes to my main fear of having a brain tumor.

[Fishmanpa]

These are just normal bodily functions that occur to many of us. Hypnic jerks are normal as well as the flashes and other visual anomalies you see. We all get them from time to time and some more than others. The eyes are nerves after all. There are all sorts of normal visual anomalies that happen with our eyes (floaters, flashes, dark spots etc.). Most people just adapt and it doesn't bother them. The difference here is that you're hyper-focused on them and your anxious mind is attributing a negative false belief.

So what it means is that you're normal physically. Your reaction to these normal bodily functions isn't.

Positive thoughts