Do You Have Sleep Drunkenness?
We all know when we've had a little too much to drink. Maybe you feel slightly high, or very happy. Some people cry. But there's a new way to be drunk, and, believe it or not, it happens when you're asleep and you suddenly wake up. It's called sleep drunkenness and is characterized by confusion, or inappropriate behavior during or after arousal from sleep. Most people experience no symptoms. It affects 15% of the general American population -- that's one in seven people -- with half the people studied saying it happened more than once. Almost 90% had a sleep disorder or a mental health disorder or were taking psychotropic drugs, according to biosciencetechnology.com. “The high prevalence is surprising,” said Dr. Stuart Quan, a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School and physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who wasn’t involved in a different study, newsweek.com reports. This state of “confusional arousal...