What is exploding head syndrome?

that's not what I meant. Or that she was bombing women and children. No, not that either. I didn't even say that, I said, Jerry Jerome. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay, you're feeling all right today? Yes? You? How is your sleep? You know, dude, I have all but stopped drinking lately. Oh yeah, lately. Okay, And so I'm sleeping like a champ. Yeah, and waking up like a champ too, I imagine, right, makes a big difference, especially at our age. Yeah, I've only had the alcohol once in the past two weeks,

and um, I'm sleeping so good. I'm kind of like, I mean, I'm not quitting drinking. Let's be honest. I mean it doesn't sound like you need to know, but I it's uh, it just one day became two became three, and I was sleeping like a champ. And this is after a couple of nights of bad sleep due to too much booze. So I'm like, man, that's kind of nice. Yeah, you're like, oh, yeah, life is enjoyable. I forgot. Yeah. So anyway, I think it's super healthy too. And you know,

I have talked about this before. I think it's super healthy to do at least a month out of the year straight through where you're just like I'm not having a drop. Oh yeah, yeah, this is good for you. Yeah. I had a couple of years ago. I went exactly one month without a single drink and I still ate like crap, didn't not exercise, and I dropped like thirteen pounds. Oh yeah, just from not consuming alcohol from beer. No, I don't drink much beer, that's right. But I mean,

you know gin and tonic, that's a ton of calories. Yeah, that's I drink diet tonic when I haven't. You get used to it, and there's good diet tonic out there, Like you just have to treat yourself. I guess so, I've never diet tonic really tastes gross, like the swill that they have in like the little Leader bottles. That's diet. That's what's good. Like the handmade brand fever Fever Tree. Yeah, like the crafted stuff, like like artisan tonic. Yeah, tonic

for rich people. Yeah, the tonic made by a guy who's mustaches waxed. We'll have to try that then, I think you should. And yeah, it is expensive, but I just don't. Don't drink eight gin and tonics, you know, or Jins and Tonic. What would Williams Sapphire say, Jen's and Tonics? Probably. I told Emily the other day, I was like, I wish you could drink into your mouth and taste it and have a nice little effect afterwards, and have it just leak out a tube in the

side of your body. I think that's called like a stoma, so you don't get the calories or the you know, the lingering effects. And she said, yeah, it's probably good that you're not drinking. You're like, no, really, let's flush this out, Like there's gotta be a way to do it. So um, anyway, a long way of saying I'm sleeping great I'm glad. I'm glad. Have you ever been falling asleep? And uh, right as you were about to enter the land of slumber, get your saw out, putting it to

a log. You haven't started sawing yet, but you're about to, and then all of a sudden, boom and you ship bowled up right. You're like, what what was that? I don't think so I can tell you for a fact that's never happened to me. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure it's never happened to me. But um, unless I'm misremembering, I just don't see how you could forget some thing like this. It seems pretty significant, you know what. I agree. So we're talking about exploding head syndrome, which before we

started recording, you were angry. You weren't angry. I'm always angry. It's so not true. You were. No it is. I need help. You were picking at the the name of the syndrome because it's very overblown, to say the least, exploding head syndrome. Uh what'd you say? It should have been called? Uh? What crazy sound, sleepyhead, loud noise? What what? What syndrome? Or I'm trying to sleep without work in the morning syndrome, stupid brain. I could do this for

an hour. Maybe we should releast it as a blooper reel. So exploding head syndrome is a a nighttime hallucination. Also, you can classify it as a parasomnia. Did we do one specifically on sleep paralysis or just talk about it? Aloe and Buddy? It deserves its own I can't believe we haven't done it yet. I know we talked a lot about it in sleepwalking, sleepwalking and cranial magnetics simulation. Yeah. I think we did one on sleep period too, didn't

we Or did we? I think so? It's hard to recall we Yeah, but for the most part we have skirted around it, and I think we should continue to because I think it definitely deserves its own, its own episode. So we should continue to skirt around it. Yeah, by not doing it? No, no, no no, I mean in this episode. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think it deserves its own, freestanding, standalone, vertically integrated episode called, uh, what's

the deal with sleep paralysis? You got it? So this is a nighttime hallucination or a parasomnia, like I said, of which sleep paralysis is as well. That's all I'm gonna say. Don't give it away. Uh And here's the deal. Like you described, you're either already asleep or I think a little more typically falling asleep. Yeah. And you hear a loud, loud booming sound like a gun or an explosion, symbols crashing. That's a good one, something that catches your attention.

What else? Um falling down the steps, A big person carrying a drum set falling down the steps, right, one of those one man bands falling down some status totally, which everybody wants to see. Even if you don't have like a meme bone in your body, you still kind of want to see something like that, just for just to see how it sounds and crazy. Yeah, it might play a little tune you never know on the way down. Yeah right. Uh so it's just a genuine disorder. And

I did a little Facebook survey. Yeah, hats off to you, man, you're basically a citizen scientist. Now we're did did were with the Were the respondents all weird? Know? Were they weird? Stuff? You should know? Followers? So they're I know what you mean, the acronym weird both ways? Okay, they were neither no, we have like a very wide demographic. It's great. Yeah, it is good. Uh. And basically I just said, has

anyone ever been afflicted with exploding head syndrome? Then I explained it because a lot of people, as will find like, responded with, oh my god, that's a thing. Yes, I have it. That's really cool. That showed up in one of the articles that we researched. Yeah. Um, and I got about a hundred and fifty by the time I

cut it off respondents that said yes and wait him out. Huh, you've got a hundred and fifty yes responses to whether or not, a hundred and fifty total responses including like comments on responses, and I would guess probably a hundred of those were affirmatives. That's amazing, and about seventy of those are women. Did you notice how much reached that postcott? Can you figure out, like roughly what percentage of people who saw that responded? Well, we could, but I didn't

not take the time. Okay, this is still it's an amazing response. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot a lot of continent. That really wasn't that hard. But I think it's neat shows a lot of initiative. It is neat Um. I got a lot of responses. Um. Meredith said, it used to happen a lot, but now not so much. It's even worse when the baby is sleeping. Interesting because she's worried that the baby's fallen out of the bed. Caitlin, it happened only once. Um, yes, I have it frequently.

From Melissa. Man, this is so bizarre, Lawrence said. I tried to explain it to my family and they thought I was crazy. Uh. It's more of a distant exploding noise for me, though, doesn't startle, so that may not be it. And a few of these made that might be the mining operation off the A County. Uh, Sue. Yes, it sounds like a gunshot, no paint or anything like that, but it is startling. Most people in here. Crack of a baseball bat hitting a ball from Christie Anne. Yeah,

you're right. They are mostly women. Huh. Yeah, I mean there's dudes in here too. I'm just not reading those. Um. Here's a guy, Adam. Not well, not exactly, Jonathan, Yes, I live near a train all right, guys. Let's Jeffrey. Yes, I have it. I thought there was something seriously wrong. With me. But then I heard the term on a radio story and I realized what was happening. It's a huge relief. So what what all these people are saying? And this is this is astounding, right like it is.

What you're reading directly reflects what we found in our research for this article. Right. They has been published here. They're very scatter shot in um in medical journals and look for Chuck study. By the way, in the lance at this fall um that that this is the or and this is the description or the experience of exploding head syndrome. Yeah, no pain, no, nothing more than an inconvenience really other than I guess I could like trigger a heart attack. Yeah, and and that's one of the

associated symptoms. So you're falling asleep, you're almost about to sleep, suddenly there's a very loud, sharp noise in your head, but it's just in your head, but it wakes you, arouses you very suddenly and usually scares the but Jesus out of you for techycardia or very faster I regular heartbeat is is one of the reported symptoms um of exploding head syndrome. Yeah, they can. It can go on a bunch of knights in a row. It can be very sporadic, can happen once once, it never happened again,

yea one of those. Yeah. Yeah, and it's unusual that, um, a few people said it happened when I was a kid, because it seems like it does not happen that often with children. No, there's but it can one reported at least one report in case of a ten year old. But apparently it mostly seems to on set in the fifties person's fifties, and that women tend to be at a higher risk for it, as your findings suggest. Yeah, and I did not, Um, I didn't like be a

creep and trying to determine how old these people were. Okay, I wasn't like cool this. This dude looks like he's his lady's got to be sixty. Just left that one alone. You know, I thought you were gonna say like you weren't going to be a creep by being like you smell nice to like every response. This guy can't tell because he just has an avatar of Immortal Kombat character, which means he's like forty oh ouch, should we take a break? Yeah, all right, let's do it, all right?

Where does all this come from? Sir, comes from your head? Where was his first described? Sir? Oh, back in the I think eighteen seventies. There's a guy for standby for the most eighteen seventies name you'll here today, Silas Weir Mitchell. And he was a physician who apparently was a magnet for exploding head syndrome. Well, he described several cases of his among his patients. Um and he was, as far as anyone knows, the first in the medical literature to

describe exploding head syndrome. He didn't call it that though, he called them sensory discharges. But way he described is clearly what we now understand is exploding head syndrome. Yeah, he had one patient called Mr V. That's who he called it. It him right. The guy's real name was Mr V spelled v E, but he abbreviated his Mr VU. He said he experienced a quote sense of a pistol shot or a blow on the head end quote and uh.

He complained of a noise in my head, which is sometimes like the sound of a bell which has been struck once or else I hear a loud noise which is most like that of a guitar string rudely struck which breaks with a twang. And I presume he did not live above a folk singing cafe. Man, you know what you do when you live above one of those? You move? Yeah? Uh so like you said, um Silas went on to say, it's a snapping of the brain. Then a little bit later and well a little bit,

that's a lot of it. Neurologists from uh the UK named John MS Pierce of Whole Royal Infirmary. Man, that is a super British and in the Lancet. Yeah, one of the great medical journals. Uh, he is the one I believe that gave it its name. Correct. Yeah, we can really lay the misunderstanding at this guy's feet forgiving it this awesome name. He was like, that's I'm gonna celebrate finishing this paper and naming it Exploding head Syndrome by watching Miami Vice. That was still one. I don't know,

did you watch that sometimes? It was a little a little old for me, Yeah, probably, Like I was like, man, that boat is so fast. Man, that guy's blazers so pastel. That was about the extent of Miami Vice for me. Yeah, that was kind of the extent of the show. It wasn't it was good? I watched it. It was Michael Mann. Wasn't it like a Michael Mayn movie every every week? That's pretty awesome. Yeah, I mean he I think he got it going and then oh state executive producer. It

might be wrong. I don't know, who knows. I think he did the movie version to like the remake years surely he did, which I did not. I mean, it's got him written all over it, so I think that was his best point. Oh yeah, good movie. Although did he do to Live in Diane l A? I don't know. I love that movie though. If he didn't, he should have. But that's a great movie. I think that might have been him. You're correct or no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Chuck. I know that this is a tangent. I'm trying to

avoid it, but I just can't let it stand. I think that Michael Man accused whoever did to Live and Die in l A of ripping him off somehow. Yeah, is that correct, I'm pretty sure, which means not necessarily. Well, I had a great theme song, I know that. Yeah. Wang Chung Baby. They were one of those bands from the eighties where you're like, oh, these guys were actually way more talented than their decade. Give him credit for It's not Michael Man. Okay, so Michael Man accused whoever

did that of ripping him off for some reason. William Friedkin, he didn't. He direct The Exorcist all over the place. He's got some cajones after Billy Freakin. Um, how do we get on that Miami advice? So let's go over some stats. It was a study in of BO we talked about bad studies, two hundred and eleven college students. Okay, so your study already trumps this one sort of. Actually yeah, not even sort of. I would say legitimately the study you conducted is better than the one you're about to

talk about. Eighteen percent of people experienced it um according to this survey, But most experts say that's probably high because um, these are college students. They don't get a lot of sleep, and that can affect you know, whether or not you have this disorder or think you have it. Yeah, people who are sleep deprivate are more likely to have it. I think. Yeah, psychiatric patients UM tend to have a

little more and more. If you're talking about ten percent which is I think what generally people have settled on, you know, yeah, but just a little more like three percent more four percent more than the average healthy population. You know, something I thought was very weird that I saw, um, people with other sleep disorders have it less frequently. Yeah, it's about ten percent of people with sleep disorders have exploding head syndrome, but like tenot eight percent of the

general healthy population has it. So if you suffer from the one that we dare not speak its name, then you are less likely to have this I guess so. But apparently it does happen in conjunction frequently, just not as frequently as people in the general population who have just exploding head syndrome. Uh what else? There's some people describe a physical sensation as well, like an electrical shot

of sorts. Yeah, we should say, I don't know if we said it really explicitly enough, Like when you have this sound that wakes you up as you're about to fall asleep, and it is very clearly the sound of an explosion or symbols crashing or a gun shot like again, and you're you're not there's no associated pain, right like very most frequently the only physical symptom is your heart

pounding because you're scared to death. It would just be like if someone came in with symbols in your bedroom and smash them together, but you would wake up and say you're a jerk, but you wouldn't be in pain. Go back to bed, Stanley. But I think like there's not even the attendant like pain in your ears. I think it's strictly in your head. So there's like almost no physical sensation except for the electrical thing you're about. The electrical shock just that, and that's only in some people.

And it's literally just a feeling of a current that starts at your torso or so and torso or so I didn't even mean that, uh and it travels up to the head, but again not everyone. Uh So. I think it's the interesting part of this. I mean, that's interesting, but is where this possibly comes from? And like the process of going to sleep? All right? Friend? Oh, we definitely I think did a show on sleep, but as

a recap, we we did. You're right, Um, it must not have been very memorable when you're when you go to sleep, it's not an instantaneous thing. As you likely know. You fall asleep and they call it that for a reason. It's a it's a process. Yeah, if your body kind of shutting down. This has never really thought about that before, but that's that's a pretty accurate description. Otherwise they would call it, Yeah, what were you going to finding yourself asleep?

I don't know. That's probably not right either, or just becoming sleep, Yeah, there's inst to sleep. Are we doing good on this one? And not so much? All right? No, we are. We're fine. We're getting the facts out, we're just in in cloaking them with a lot of bs. That's fine, all right. So when you fall asleep, your your your body slowly shuts down. Um, and the brain is is kind of closing down each little store. Yeah, if it's a let's say your brain is a small town. Okay,

it's closing each store. Your brain is Sam the night Watchman from Today's Special walking around shutting lights out? Right? Yes? Do you remember that show? Now? It was probably way too young for you. It's called Today's Special, Kitch And what was the idea that every day Special? Uh? There was like a mannequin that came alive and just it was weird. Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare. It took. It was set at at night in like a department store. I think, Oh okay, so I guess today's special might

have been like what was on sale? I was kind of young. That reminds me of my favorite book as a child that I read, The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. Well I don't I never read that one. It was wonderful. It was about three, I think three mice in New York City that broke into Macy's department store and lived there and had great adventures in the department store overnight, and Santa was kidnapped, and it's up to these mice to solve the crime. Oh wow. And it was my

first like book, you know. It wasn't a ten page picture book. It was a book book, of course, one I really read and was like, wow, this is amazing. Were the mice up to the challenge? What do you think? I don't know. No, Santa died. I totally forgot about that book. What a great memory. That's why I'm glowing right now. Um, And you can enjoy it because you've been off the sauce for a little while, you've been getting good sleep. I'm lucid. Uh So when you are

making that transition into sleep from being awake. Your your brain is closing down the little shop stores one at a time. And when you have exploding e h s. That is, there's there's something that happens. There's a glitch in the matrix essentially where somewhere along that path of your brain walking around shutting it down, it just sort

of trips up. Yeah. Um. So the part of your brain that is responsible for shutting things down bit by bit, region by region, it's called the brainstem reticular formation, very ancient part of your brain, right, um. And they think that something goes wrong, like you're saying, when it's going

through its duties and there's a glitch. And but the glitch that happens is the alpha waves that are associated with the beginning of relaxing for sleep are are suppressed, and suddenly there's a huge burst of neural activity in the region associated with hearing. So your your brain has a glitch. Your brain stem has a glitch while it's shutting your brain down for sleep, and you hallucinate a very loud sound that startles you awake. That's exploding head syndrome.

Right as far as total hallucination, it doesn't exist, that you're the neurons in your in the region associated with hearing going haywire. Yeah, it's crazy. It is. What's crazy to me, though, Chuck, is that it's a glitch in in your system. But that's it. It can happen in different people. It's not like one person is like a malfunctioning like part of their brain stem. Like that process can malfunction and exact actually the same way across people.

It says something about the architecture of the brain. What it says I don't know, but it surely says something that that that glitch can happen in different people in the same way. I just think that's fascinating. It totally is, And that theory that we talked about is well, first of all, they don't know for sure because it's so rare and it's such a non uh. I mean it's invasive, but it's not threatening. Uh. Yeah, that they You don't spend a lot of time studying stuff like this if

it's not super threatening. No, but they used to think it's rare. They don't necessarily know if it's rare any longer. It's just it hasn't been studied for like there's been basically four five papers on it, so no one cares apparently not because it's not life threatening at all. It's not even harmful. It's a benign condition. It's just very surprising and apparently people learn to live with it at least once. On Facebook. Oh no, they all said there and live hell. Um, So that was that theory is

the one that is most agreed upon right now. But some of the others over the years, um include a shift of the middle ear components or an ear dysfunction maybe at the root. No. Um, they've done e g. Testing to rule out which did rule out temporal lobe seizures epilepsy, but not in case. No. Uh, what's another one? There was one more of what could be a side effect of drugs, right, yeah, drug withdrawal, Yeah, specifically benzo diazepines.

Or it could have to do with um calcium ion channels and calcium ion transportation, which I think we've talked about before, Like calcium does a lot of stuff in our brains, um and throughout our bodies. I think that that's not necessarily discarded. That could be the mechanism that it happens on the table. Yeah, for me, I'm a fan of that one. I don't think that they're mutually exclusive. The reticular formation and calcium ions could go hand in hand. Yeah.

You know what's funny to me. I was thinking about when I was prepping for this out whenever there's a usually medical podcast where there's different theories you and I was like, well, this is the one. I'll come my money on this one, right, And it's just armchair you know, doctoring of course, But um, but I feel like I could heal somebody if I really try, just through my opinion.

So what do you do if, um, you have this? Well? Um, one of the funny things in the Atlantic article which I sent in in our own article, they said, quite often simply being diagnosed and told by your doctor, yes you have exploding head syndrome and no, it will not hurt you at all at all, can cease the exploding head syndrome. Yeah, people will go into remission, which indicates to me that stress has something to do with it. Yeah.

I could definitely see how if you if you worry about it, it could affect your sleep, and then once your sleep has affected, you're more prone to keep having it. A lot of people who this happens to um mistake it for a stroke or that they've developed epilepsy or something like that, and so they will go get um they will seek out medical help for that, and hopefully the doctor has heard of exploding head syndrome and can recognize the symptoms. Yeah, the very least you can self

diagnose and take that to your doctor because I love that. Yeah, oh yeah, tell him you google it, like when he starts to talk to be like, doctors love that. Uh. It is also not to be confused with PTSD. Uh something we did. I thought it was a really good show. Actually, I want to say, when he or she starts to talk, say yeah, um remember the PTSC. Yeah, yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one. And um,

it's not to be confused with that. Even though similar things can happen with PTSD, it's usually um, some kind of a flashback, and with exploding head it's not associated with any anything like that, And it's just a straight up hallucination. There's no memory associated with it. Yeah, exactly. But what they will say is sleep hygiene, work on it. Yeah, brush your teeth while you sleep. I think hygiene's one

of the most disgusting words in the English language. Interestingly, it is gross, even though that means it's like paradoxical to its meaning. Yeah, the word itself, it's sound, the feel of it, it's the look of it. I totally agree gross word hygiene sounds, I think because when I hear hygiene, I think you're usually hearing it because there's poor hygiene. Maybe people you don't just say like, oh, you've got some good hygiene going on, Yeah, you smell wonderful.

I always think of it in relation to like eugenics, you know, like that kind of thought pattern hygiene. You know. So sleep hygiene is a weird, gross way of saying best practices to fall asleep, and that means um regular schedule, you know stuff. Yeah, like like draw the blinds, make it quiet, and this one not reading in bed. That one to me, it's like, no, if I read in bed, it's like I might as well have just taking a handful of valume. Well, reading a book book, sure, but

a screen has been shown to keep you awake. Well. Some recommendations are that you don't even read books in bed, that you train yourself to associate bed with just sleep. When you get into book and I'm done. You're like, well I'm sleeping. Yeah. Not for all people, though, Like if you have bad insomnia, they'll recommend you don't do anything but sleep in bed. Yeah, I mean I get that, Like they'd say, take the TV out of your room all that stuff. Yeah, but no, I'd be like, you're

a fool. I can just read the book instead. I will never have insomnia because as long as there are books bound books are around, I'm good. Um, what always kills me is when I see friends on Facebook like three am, total insomnia, Like put your phone down. Yeah, you're you're being counterproductive because it's not just keeping your brain engaged in thinking. Apparently that blue spectrum light really does something to your brain and it's not good. What else,

No booze or coffee after five? Only booze before five. I was like, that's happy hour. I think they were saying, yeah, they no booze after five. I mean, if you've got to sleep a parasomnia, you're you're didn't go to great links, You're gonna skip happy hour maybe to get some sleep. Um, do we have anything else in here? We do? Not? All right? I think that's so great that you conducted a study. Hats off to you. I think it's funny that you thought that was so great. I'm just impressed.

All right. Uh, if you want to know more about paris Omnia's like exploding heads into him, you can type those words in the search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, so instead of listener mail, conducted another study. Just kidding, all right, this is this was I thought, this is really neat. This is Chernobyl. Hey, guys, thanks for the fantastic podcast on radiation sickness and for talking a bit

about the Chernobyl disaster. It really captured my imagination as a little girl. I remember one of my primary school teachers talking the class the disaster would mean the end of life as we know it, and it terrified me. Anyway, as the years went by, my interest grew and back in I finally took the plunge and booked myself a trip to Kiev to go and visit the disaster site. Wow, and she said something about I had to edit this

because it was long. It was good, but something about how you know, I know that probably sounds weird, um as a vacation, but she I'm really like in awesome vacation. Uh The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is about ten miles in each direction, is largely deserted, although I'm surprised to find that there are still people living and working there. The nearby town of uh Prip Yacht is completely abandoned

and very eerie, to say the least. We spent the day carefully walking on concrete and trying not to touch any of the moss growing between the concrete because it's highly radioactive. Uh yeah, I'd be a little concerned as a visit. Oh yeah, as a visitor, it's an extremely dangerous visit. We were able to get surprisingly close to the destroyed side as well. It was a very somber experience. There are a couple of very unnerving things that I

learned that day that have stuck with me. The government of the then USSR tried to cover up the accident, didn't tell the people of Prip Yacht that they needed to evacuate for two whole days, inevitably causing many more deaths from radiation sickness than the inevitable. Um. There were several reactors at Chernobyl. Reactor four blew up Reactor four was right next to reactor three, which they thought was

going to blow up. Had reactor three blown up, it really would have been the end of life as we know at Europe would have become completely uninhabitable. We all owe our lives to the unsung heroes. We sacrifice himself to save reactor three and save Europe. Much love. That is Kate, Nottingham, England And Kate, it's coming to see some Manchester. Awesome, Kate, thanks a lot for that email. It's a really cool um vacation. Yeah. She she took her mom her mom and sent photos and had a

lot more to the emails. Super interesting, very cool. Thanks a lot, Kate. Um. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Kate did, let us know about your super cool vacation, Uh, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Instagram too at the same handle. You can hang out with us on Facebook dot com, participate in our studies that Chuck conducts at Facebook dot com. Slash

Stuff you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always join us at her home on the web. Stuff you should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it How Stuff Works dot com