You must hear about this disorders a few times. When you on a cross-country trip, you have to rest and spend a few time to drive at night. Without adequate rest, this may raise the risk of experiencing sudden, brief lapses into sleep. This may cause an accident because you will lose control to your car. So is time for you to know more about microsleep.
Definition of Microsleep
Microsleep is a fleeting, uncontrollable, brief episode of sleep which can last anywhere from a single fraction of a second up to 10 full seconds. These usually occurs when someone try to fight against sleep and remain awake.
There are two main stages of sleep that we all have to follow are rapid eye movement sleep (REM) sleep and non rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). But microsleep not belong to any of them, it is just a fleeting and uncontrollable episode that does not last long enough for the characteristics of either state of sleep to emerge.
For more specific, REM sleep is known as characterized by vivid dreams, rapid eye movements, paralysis of most muscles of the body, and changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and overall breathing rate. Aslo during REM sleep, blood flow become higher to the brain and that cause to situations that penis and vagina stuck with engorgement.
NREM is typically charaterized by amount of blood to brain and muscle decreased. Others sign is decreased heart rate, blood pressure, and total volume of air cycling in and out of the lungs. But just like REM sleep, microsleep won’t last long enough to occurs in these charaterized.
Symptoms
Here is a list of microsleep symptoms that confirm by scientist and doctors.
- Inattentiveness
- Brief memory lapses
- Missing an exit while driving
- Hitting the highway’s rumble strip
- Car accidents or near misses
- Head bobbing
- Brief loss of muscle control
- Falling down or slumping over
- Dropping something held
Reasons
Main reason is lack of sleep. Night time is when most of accident about driving happens. Drivers at night often exhausted. However, they often have places to get to or deadlines to meet, so that force themselves to push on and keep going while carrying a sleepy feeling.
But these also are some factors which contribute to microsleep occur:
- Sleep apnea
- Periodic limb movement disorder
- Narcolepsy
- Circadian disorders
Dangerous Outcome
Its harmless when you are laying on your couch and try to watch television or stay awake for an event. But its very dangerous if it happen at the time you don’t want such as driving in highway or control a heavy truck will lead you to an accident. Falling asleep behind the wheel, even briefly, is a gravely dangerous situation that can lead the potential injury or even death of you and others on the road.
How to Prevent It
First thing is sleep enough to fit your sleep needs. Examples, adults have to sleep almost 8-9 hours. Anothers way to do it is improve your sleep.
Lucky for you, there are many ways to improve sleep efficiency.
- All lights should be off, especially flashing, blinking, or especially bright lights.
- Cell phones should not be looked at in bed, as the lights of the screen can work the stimulate the brain and keep it awake.
Important is removed all distractions when sleepings.
