UK (Commonwealth Union) – Sleep disorders are often linked to a series of health disorders as a lack of sleep particularly for those who need to drive to work or operate heavy machinery can be a matter of life or death.
Dr Alice Vernon, author of the book ‘Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It’ from Aberystwyth University, chronicled sleep disorders from a variety of prior literature. The book has already received a series of positive reviews where The Sunday Times referred to it as “curious, lively, humble, utterly genuine” and “a remarkable debut”.
The non-fiction publication reflects on her own extraordinary and often horrifying nightly memories, personal descriptions from others, and accounts of sleep disorders in published material and culture. Her research surrounds sleep problems that include night terrors, sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, lucid dreams and sleep linked hallucinations, that are examples of parasomnias, which are astonishingly frequent and will take place in as many as 70% of people at some point in life.
Dr Vernon stated that over the centuries, parasomnias have had an intense effect on the human mind, shaping both art and literature. “One of the most astonishing theories I discovered during my research was one doctor’s peculiar assertion that night terrors were caused by a person thinking about arithmetic when drifting off to sleep. Historical accounts also reveal some particularly odd cures, such as magical ‘mare-stanes’ which were circular eroded rocks occasionally embedded with human teeth, said to prevent sleep paralysis,” she said.
In fact, the German chemist August Kekulé is said to have seen the ring structure of benzene in a dream of a snake eating its own tail, a vision that had a huge impact on organic chemistry described by some as a divine insight.
Parasomnias have also lengthy scientific studies with plenty of medical theories and treatments recommended in the past centuries.
