This weekend I went on a canning trip with 60 people in Rochester New York. When people are sleeping on couches, beds, floors, maybe even bathtubs because there isn’t enough room for everyone, you are bound to come across some sleep talkers. In the middle of the night I noticed I kept walking up because I was so uncomfortable but also because of the conversation that was going on. This one guy was having a conversation with himself about how much fun he had the night before. I was truly shocked that this was happening his words were so clear and easy to understand. I never had heard someone sleep talk so clearly before. The next morning I asked him about it and he had no recollection of anything he said. This was shocking to me, so I was curious on why we sleep talk.
Sleep talking can involve complex dialogues or conversation that sometimes come off as mumbling. Mostly anyone can experience sleep talking but it is more common in males and children. While people are sleep talking they usually are not aware of what is going on. You can start talking to someone who is asleep, some will wake up and some will strike up a sleep talking conversation. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “sleep talking may be brought on by stress, depression, fever, sleep deprivation, day-time drowsiness, alcohol, and fever” Sleep talking can make no sense at all or can be related to events that have occurred in your life. Sleep talking can occur during any of the four stages of sleep. “The lighter the sleep, the more intelligible the speech: in stages 1 and 2, people may have entire conversations while in stages 3 and 4, speech may be restricted to moans and gibberish”.
There is no treatment to sleep talking unless it is the result of another sleep disorder. Sleep talking is only natural and happens to mostly all of us at a certain time. Just be careful who you are sleeping next to and what you say because you could be in for some embarrassment in the morning!
My roommate talks in her sleep all the time and after reading this blog post, it has come to my attention that it really only happens when she is stressed out! My roommate is from Serbia, so her family communicates in Serbian. Numerous times I have had to listen to my roommate screaming over the phone to her parents in words that I don’t understand because she may have gotten a bad test grade, or maybe she is in an argument with them. After that, it is very likely that she will scream in Serbian during her sleep. I know that this is related to her recent stress, because English is her primary language, so she would be sleep talking in English if it had to do with anything else. Because she sleep talks in Serbian, it’s obvious that it is related to the conversation she had with her parents. I just thought that I would share this to reinforce that what you blogged about is accurate because I have witnessed it myself!
According to my roommate, I sleep talk almost once a week, so this article was pretty interesting. The scientific name for sleep talking is somniloquy and normally happens when your body is transitioning from one stage of sleep to another. Sleep talking is also considered a parasomnia which is technically classified as a sleep disorder. After nearly three months of living with my roommate I haven’t heard her talk in her sleep once, when she’s heard me sleep talk more times than she can count. As you said, there really isn’t a reason as to why this happens to some and not others, though 60% of people will sleep talk at least once in their lives!
http://www.letusfindout.com/why-do-people-talk-in-their-sleep/
http://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/why-do-we-talk-in-our-sleep.aspx
And here’s just a funny little thing for you to look at 🙂
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/30/sleep-talking-funny-things-people-said-asleep_n_1665530.html
It’s funny that you write about this, because last night my roommate was having full conversations with herself and I couldn’t help but laugh. She actually does it a lot and I wonder what makes her do this. After doing some research, I concluded my roommate may have been sleeptalking last night because of sleep deprivation. After a weekend of canning, she didn’t get much sleep. I am going to be on the lookout now and try to notice when exactly she sleep talks and try to conclude why.
Wanna see if you sleep talk? Check out this app!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-talk-recorder/id391767653?mt=8