Lethargy is a dream like death. Lethargy (lethargic sleep) Answer 6a question what is lethargic sleep

Lethargy comes from the Greek lethe "oblivion" and argia "inaction." This is not just one type of sleep, but a real illness. In a person in lethargic sleep, all vital processes of the body slow down - the heartbeat becomes rare, breathing is superficial and imperceptible, there is almost no reaction to external stimuli.

How long can a lethargic sleep last

Lethargic sleep can be light or heavy. In the case of the first, the person has noticeable breathing, he retains a partial perception of the world - the patient looks like a deeply sleeping person. In severe form, it becomes like a dead man - the body becomes cold and pale, the pupils stop responding to light, breathing becomes so imperceptible that even with the help of a mirror it is difficult to determine its presence. Such a patient begins to lose weight, biological secretions stop. In general, even at the modern level of medicine, the presence of life in such a patient is determined only with the help of an ECG and a chemical blood test. What can we say about the early eras, when humanity did not know the concept of "lethargy", and any person who was cold and did not react to stimuli would be considered dead.

The length of the lethargic sleep is unpredictable, as is the length of the coma. An attack can last from several hours to tens of years. There is a known case observed by Academician Pavlov. He came across a patient who "slept through" the revolution. Kachalkin was in lethargy from 1898 to 1918. After waking up, he told me that he understood everything that was happening around him, but "felt a terrible, irresistible weight in the muscles, so that it was even difficult for him to breathe."

The reasons

Despite the case described above, lethargy is most common in women. Especially for those who are prone to hysteria. A person can fall asleep after severe emotional stress, as happened with Nadezhda Lebedina in 1954. After a quarrel with her husband, she fell asleep and woke up only 20 years later. Moreover, according to the recollections of relatives, she reacted to what was happening emotionally. True, the patient herself does not remember this.

In addition to stress, schizophrenia can also cause lethargy. For example, the Kachalkin mentioned by us suffered from it. In such cases, according to doctors, sleep can be a natural reaction to illness.

In some cases, lethargy has resulted from severe head injuries, severe poisoning, significant blood loss and physical exhaustion. A resident of Norway, Augustine Leggard, fell asleep after giving birth at 22 years.

Side effects and overdose of strong medications, such as interferon, an antiviral and anticancer drug, can lead to lethargic sleep. In this case, in order to get the patient out of the lethargy, it is enough to stop taking the medicine.

Recently, more and more opinions have been voiced about the viral causes of lethargy. So, doctors of medical sciences Russell Dale and Andrew Church, having studied the history of twenty patients with lethargy, revealed a pattern that many of the patients, before "falling asleep" had had a sore throat. Further searches for bacterial infection revealed a rare form of streptococci in all these patients. Based on this, scientists decided that the bacteria that caused sore throat changed their properties, overcame the immune defenses and caused inflammation of the midbrain. Such damage to the nervous system could provoke an attack of lethargic sleep.

Taphophobia

With the realization of lethargy as a disease, phobias came. Today taphophobia, or fear of being buried alive, is one of the most common in the world. Such famous personalities as Schopenhauer, Nobel, Gogol, Tsvetaeva and Edgar Poe suffered from it at different times. The latter devoted many works to his fear. His story "Buried Alive" describes many cases of lethargic sleep, which ended in failure: “I looked; and by the will of the invisible, who was still clutching my wrist, all the graves on the face of the earth opened before me. But alas! Not all of them fell asleep without waking sleep; there were many millions more than others who had not died forever; I saw that many seemingly resting in the world somehow changed those frozen, uncomfortable postures in which they were buried. "

Taphophobia is reflected not only in literature, but also in law and scientific thought. Back in 1772, the Duke of Mecklenburg introduced a mandatory postponement of burial until the third day after death to prevent the possibility of burial alive. This measure was soon adopted in a number of European countries. Since the 19th century, the production of safe coffins, equipped with a means of escape for the "accidentally buried", began. Emmanuel Nobel made for himself one of the first crypts with ventilation and an alarm (a bell, which was set in motion by a rope installed in a coffin). Subsequently, inventors Franz Western and Johan Taberneg invented the protection of the bell from accidental ringing, equipped the coffin with an anti-mosquito net, and drained the coffin to avoid being flooded by rainwater.

Safe coffins exist to this day. The modern model was invented and patented in 1995 by the Italian Fabrizio Caseli. His project included an alarm, an intercom-like communication system, a flashlight, a breathing apparatus, a heart monitor and a pacemaker.

Why sleepers don't age

Paradoxically, in the case of prolonged lethargy, a person practically does not change. He doesn't even age. In the cases described above, both women - Nadezhda Lebedina and Augustine Leggard, during sleep corresponded to their previous age. But as soon as their life took on a normal rhythm, the years took their toll. So, during the first year after awakening, Augustine sharply aged, and Nadezhda's body caught up with its "fifty dollars" in less than six months. Doctors recall: “What we were able to observe is unforgettable! She was getting old before our eyes. Every day I added new wrinkles, gray hair. "

What is the secret of youthful sleepers, and how the body so quickly returns the lost years, scientists have yet to find out.

Lethargy is the body's defensive response to danger, genetically programmed and going back to ancient forms of dormancy.

Many cases of lethargic sleep have resulted from, or have been associated with, life-threatening circumstances.

Suddenly falling into a dream, a person is saved from the cruel reality in the literal sense, but he himself does not realize it.

Lethargy in brief

Causes of an attack various factors can act:

• severe nervous stress,
• fainting,
• hysterical shock
• waste, etc.

Sleep duration can be different: several hours or tens of years.

The lethargic dream of our compatriot Nadezhda Lebedina is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. Nadezhda fell asleep in 1954 after a serious quarrel with her husband, and woke up 20 years later, and was absolutely healthy.

Hysterical lethargy or hibernation is what modern medicine calls this phenomenon.

And hysterical lethargy have nothing in common.

An electroencephalogram showed that during an attack, the patient sleeps for some time in real sleep, this form of sleep was called "sleep within sleep."

The electroencephalograph records the work of the brain, corresponding to the waking state, the brain reacts to external stimuli, but the sleeper does not wake up.

It is impossible to forcibly withdraw from an attack of lethargy, it ends as suddenly as it begins.

Sometimes the attack can be repeated several times.

In this case, the patient feels his approach by characteristic signs. Since an attack is always caused by strong emotional stress or nervous shock, the autonomic nervous system reacts to it in the first place:

• headaches
• loss of strength
• increased blood pressure and body temperature,
• increased heart rate,
• increased sweating.

The person feels like during hard physical work.

The mental trauma that causes an attack of lethargy can be very severe or very minor: people prone to hysteria, even little troubleseem to be the end of the world.

Patients unconsciously fall asleepdisconnecting from the outside world with its problems.

There was a real threat of being buried alive before the invention of the electroencephalograph, which records the biocurrents of the brain,

This is not surprising, because in a severe form of the disease, the sleeper does not show any signs of life, it is not for nothing that the meaning of the word lethargy is translated from Greek as "Imaginary death"or "Small life".

Nowadays in England a law is still observed that obliges morgues to have a bell, so that a suddenly revived “dead man” can announce his resurrection.

Lethargic sleep has occupied human imagination for a long time.

• The dead princess at Pushkin's, who lay under the wing of sleep, fresh and quiet, "just what."

• Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale of the French poet Charles Perrault, A.K. Tolstoy - world literature is replete with poetic characters who have slept through the lethargic sleep of a decade, year or century. According to legend, Epimenides of Crete, an ancient Greek poet, slept for 57 years in the cave of Zeus.

The characters of fairy tales and poems differ little from the lethargic sleep of patients in neurological clinics.

The difference from the Dead Princess is that they breathe, but very weakly, and their heart beats so quietly and rarely that we canbut think about the death of the patient.

Signs of lethargic sleep

Decrease:

• physical manifestations of life,
• metabolism,
• heart rate, respiration, pulse,
• lack of reaction to pain and sound,

Lethargic sleep is one of the forms of cataplexy, a severe, incurable disease. It is manifested by complete or partial immobility of the body for up to 10 minutes with the preservation of consciousness. The risk of injury is high.

For a long time, a person does not eat, does not drink, loses weight, dehydration sets in, and there are no physiological functions.

There is also a case of perennial lethargy with preserved food intake function.

Mental development in a long lethargic sleep is inhibited. In Buenos Aires, a six-year-old girl fell asleep and plunged into lethargy for 25 years. Waking up as a mature woman, she asked where her dolls were.

Lethargy often stops the physical aging process.

Beatrice Hubert, a resident of Brussels, slept for twenty years. Awakening from sleep, she was as young as before her lethargy. True, this miracle did not last long, she made up for her physical age in a year - she had aged 20 years.

Cases of lethargic sleep

During the First World War, the soldiers and some residents of the front-line cities, it was not possible to wake them up.

Mario Tello, nineteen-year-old Argentine, fell asleep for seven years after hearing about the assassination of her idol President Kennedy.

A similar story happened to an official in India. Bopalhand Lodha, Minister of Public Works of Yodpur State, was removed from office due to circumstances unknown to him.

He demanded that the state government conduct an investigation, but the resolution of his issue was delayed for a month and a half.

All this time, Bopalhand lived in constant and suddenly fell into a lethargic sleep that lasted seven years. During his sleep, Lodha never opened his eyes, did not speak, he lay as if dead.

He was properly cared for: food and vitamins came through rubber tubes inserted into his nostrils, his body was turned over every half hour to avoid stagnation of blood, muscles were massaged.

Perhaps he would have slept longer if not for the malaria. The temperature rose to forty degrees on the first day of illness, and the next day it dropped to 35.

The former minister moved his fingers that day, soon opened his eyes, after a month he was able to turn his head and sit on his own.

Only six months later, his sight returned, and finally recovered from lethargy a year later. Six years later, he celebrated his 75th birthday.

In the 14th century, Francesco Petrarca, an Italian poet, fell seriously ill and fell into a lethargic sleep for several days. He was considered dead because he showed no signs of life. During the burial ceremony, the poet comes to life literally at the edge of the grave. He was then forty years old, for another thirty he lived and worked happily.

Milkmaid Kalinicheva Praskovya from the Ulyanovsk region began to suffer from periodic bouts of lethargy since 1947, when her husband was arrested after the wedding. The fear that she would not be able to provide for the child alone pushed her to have an abortion from a healer.

Neighbors reported on her, and Praskovya was arrested and exiled to Siberia - at that time abortion was prohibited.

There she had her first attack while working. The guards thought she was dead. But the doctor, having examined Kalinichev, said that the woman had plunged into a lethargic sleep, that this was a protective reaction of her body to the stress and hard work she had experienced.

After returning to her native village, Praskovya gets a job on a farm, attacks overtake her in a club, in a store, at work. The villagers were so accustomed to her strange behavior that they immediately brought the sleeping woman to the hospital.

Content

Several centuries ago, a lethargic coma was a nightmare for humanity. Almost everyone was afraid of being buried alive. To fall into such a state means to be so much like the deceased that the relatives had no choice but to prepare for the last journey.

What is lethargic sleep

Translated, the word "lethargy" means hibernation, lethargy or inaction. A person falls into a deep sleep, then stops responding to stimuli from the outside, he is as if in a coma. Vital functions are preserved in full, but the patient is almost impossible to wake up. In severe cases, imaginary death is observed, in which the body temperature decreases, the heart rate slows down and respiratory movements disappear. Sometimes catatonic stupor is taken for lethargy, in which a person hears and understands everything, but he does not have the strength to move and open his eyes.

There are several types of long sleep:

• medication (under the influence of drugs);
• secondary (a consequence of past infections of the nervous system);
• true (in the absence of a clear reason).

Lethargic sleep - causes

No specialist can give an exact answer to the question of what is lethargy and what are its causes. According to existing hypotheses, people who:

• have suffered severe stress;
• are on the verge of severe physical and nervous exhaustion;
• often get sore throats.

The disease often appears after blood loss, head trauma, or severe poisoning. With chronic fatigue syndrome, some people fall asleep periodically. According to psychologists, the world of oblivion awaits people with heightened emotionality, for them it becomes a place without fears and unresolved life problems. The causes of lethargic sleep may be hidden in some unknown modern medicine virus that affects the brain.

How long does a lethargic sleep last

The disease continues in different ways: someone may fall into unconsciousness for several hours, while in others, the disease lasts for days, weeks or even months. Therefore, it is impossible to say for sure how long a lethargic sleep lasts. Sometimes the pathology has precursors: constant lethargy and headache worries. When trying to enter a state of hypnosis, a semblance of deep sleep is observed, which lasts a time set by the hypnotist.

The longest lethargic sleep

Medicine knows cases when awakening occurred after several decades of observation. The peasant Kachalkin was in the power of Morpheus for 22 years, and the inhabitant of Dnepropetrovsk Nadezhda Lebedina for 20 years. It is difficult to predict how long the patient's oblivion will last. The disease is still one of the most interesting mysteries for mankind.

Lethargic sleep - symptoms

The external symptoms of lethargic sleep are the same for all forms of the disease: the patient is asleep and does not respond to questions or touches addressed to him. Otherwise, everything remains the same, even the ability to chew and swallow is preserved. The severe form of the disease is characterized by pallor of the skin. In addition, the human body stops taking food, excreting urine and feces.

Prolonged immobility does not pass without leaving a trace for the patient. Vascular atrophy, diseases of internal organs, bedsores, metabolic disorders - this is not a complete list of complications of the disease. As such, there is no treatment, hypnosis and the use of drugs with a stimulating effect are used with varying success.

A distinctive feature of people after a long rest is rapid aging. Literally before our eyes, a person's appearance is changing, and soon he looks older than his peers. It is not uncommon for a patient to die soon after awakening for real. Some people acquire a rare ability to foresee the future, speak previously unfamiliar foreign languages, and heal the sick.

What is lethargic sleep, interesting facts about cases of "imaginary death" occurring in medical practice, the causes of lethargy and its manifestations - you will read about this in this publication.

Definition of lethargy

Lethargic sleep is the cessation of activity by a person, in which he is immobilized, does not respond to stimuli from the outside world, but at the same time does not lose signs of life. Breathing is slowed down, the pulse is difficult to hear, etc. The word "lethargy" comes from the Latin language. Leta means oblivion. In the mythological stories of antiquity, the Leta River was mentioned, flowing in the kingdom of the dead. According to legend, those deceased who have tasted the waters from the source forget everything that happened to them in earthly life. "Argya" means "torpor".

Lethargic sleep: causes and types

For a person who experiences overexertion, weakness, apathy or lack of sleep, the risk of falling into lethargy is several times higher than for people who follow the daily routine, eat well and properly.

The types of lethargy are known: light form and heavy.

At the first, swallowing and chewing reflexes are preserved, heartbeat and breathing are easily listened to.

In a severe form, a person can easily be mistaken for a dead person. The body temperature drops, the heartbeat is strongly drowned out, there is no reaction.

Many European countries have long come up with ways to avoid burying a person alive by mistake. For example, in Slovakia, they consider it necessary to put a work phone in the coffin of the deceased so that if he wakes up, he can call and inform that he is alive. And in Great Britain, a bell is placed in the cells of the dead in the morgue.

Lethargic sleep, as it became known to scientists, has its own "side effect". A person who has fallen into a state of "imaginary death" for many years practically does not change outwardly. He looks the age at which he fell asleep. This is because biological processes in the body slow down. But after waking up, a person begins to age sharply before the required age. That is, if he fell asleep when he was 20 years old, and woke up at 30, some time after waking up he will look like his real age. Despite external changes, a person thinks and behaves as if he just fell asleep. He will arrive at the same intellectual level as he was when he went into hibernation.

Lethargic sleep: stories from practice

Gogol's lethargic dream

In recent months, Gogol has been exhausted mentally and physically. Depression overtook him. Nikolai Vasilievich was a holy believer and realized that "Dead Souls" contain a lot of sinful things. In addition, his works were criticized by Archpriest Matthew, with whom he had a close relationship.

Feeling ashamed for what he had done, and trying to regain the purity of his soul, Gogol began to fast and thereby undermined his health. The doctors diagnosed meningitis, but it turned out to be wrong. As a result, the treatment only aggravated the situation, on February 21, 1852, he "died" of heart failure.

During the transfer of the remains of the writer to the Novodevichye cemetery, an exhumation was carried out - the removal of the corpse from the burial site. There were about 20 people present. They said that Gogol's head was turned to one side, and the inside of the coffin was torn apart. Because of what they made the assumption that Nikolai Vasilyevich fell asleep in a lethargic sleep. During his lifetime, he spoke many times about the fear of being buried alive, probably, he incarnated in reality. Later, the lethargic sleep of the writer Gogol became one of the most striking cases, probably due to the significance of the personality of the deceased. The exact cause of his death was never established.

These are one of the few cases where lethargic sleep has been recorded. Perhaps there were other interesting facts, but they were not widely publicized. Law enforcement agencies were often involved in their investigation.

Geneticists claim that lethargy is a special type of disease that is transmitted through genes from ancestors. If such cases have been noted in relation to relatives of other generations, they are advised to undergo a complete medical examination to determine the likelihood of such a dream. They recommend that family and competent authorities be alerted to a full examination for lethargic sleep prior to burial.

Lethargic sleep is a serious medical condition. With lethargic sleep, the body freezes, stops working, metabolic processes stop. There is breathing, but it is weak and not noticed. A person does not react to the environment, nothing can wake him up.

Causes of lethargic sleep

Until now, medical scientists are figuring out the reason why lethargy appears. They only noticed that this condition is associated with a severe mental state - it occurs after a strong hysterical seizure, when a person was very worried, experienced a stressful situation, if the patient's body was exhausted.

Recently, scientists have seen a connection between lethargy and a bacterial infection that is caused by streptococcus, diplococcus. Those who suffer from lethargic sleep, have an unusual and rare form of streptococcal bacteria, because of them appears, then they mutate and lead to this terrible disease.

Symptoms of lethargic sleep

The signs depend on the form of the disease, it can be mild or severe, the latter is dangerous because many confuse it with and can bury a person alive. His skin is white, cold, pulse and breathing are not heard, he does not respond, there is no reaction to pain, there is no light or sound. Over time, the patient's health condition may worsen, he suddenly begins to lose weight.

With mild lethargic sleep, the patient does not move, is in a relaxed state, breathes evenly and can partially perceive the world. The disease is dangerous because no one knows when lethargy will begin and end. Some may sleep for years. There were cases that patients were in such a dream for about 25 years, while the heartbeat was slow.

Modern medicine can distinguish lethargic sleep from death, but until that time, no medicinal or other method for this disease has been developed.

Examples of lethargic sleep

1. During the war, many soldiers fell asleep, it was not possible to wake them up.

2. A nineteen-year-old girl, having survived a strong one, fell asleep in a lethargic sleep for 8 years.

3. A resident of India experienced constant nervous tension, stress, then fell ill with lethargy and fell asleep for 7 years. At the same time, he did not open his eyes, did not speak, he looked like a dead person. He was carefully looked after, vitamins, nutrients were introduced into his body through tubes, they were inserted into the nose. To avoid bedsores, the patient's body was constantly changed, in order to eliminate blood congestion, muscle massage was performed. In a dream, he fell ill, his temperature rose sharply to 40 degrees, then dropped to 34 degrees. The patient at first was able to move his hand, then he began to open his eyes only after one month he sat down. Eyesight appeared after 6 months, completely left from lethargic sleep after a year.

4. The famous poet Francesco Petrarca fell into a lethargic sleep for three days, everyone thought that he had died, and when he was stored, he woke up near the grave, after that this did not happen to him, he lived normally for another 40 years.

What happens to the patient during lethargic sleep?

A person who has fallen asleep is conscious, can perceive everything, remember, but react to the environment and cannot wake up. It is important to distinguish this type of disease in time from a disease such as encephalitis.

Due to the fact that a person does not eat or drink for a long time, he does not urinate, does not empty himself, noticeably loses weight, dehydrates the body. If lethargic sleep proceeds in a mild form, the person is motionless, breathes evenly, his muscles are relaxed, eyelids may tremble, eyeballs are rolled up. At the same time, a person can swallow and chew, perceives the environment a little. In this situation, a person is treated with a probe.

Some doctors attribute lethargic sleep to mental illness, others to metabolism. Lethargic sleep is most often associated with superficial sleep, due to the fact that it is motionless for a long time, it has a large number of diseases - sepsis in the renal and pulmonary system, bedsores, vascular atrophy.

Coma and lethargy, what's the difference?

Although the two diseases are very similar, they are different. provoked by physical disorders - trauma, severe damage. At the same time, the nervous system is defective, the physical condition of a person is maintained with the help of special devices. In a coma, a person also cannot respond to various stimuli around him.

If you can get out of lethargy on your own, after a while, you can get out of a coma only after a long course of therapy.

Diagnosis of lethargic sleep

Many are afraid of being buried alive, but modern medicine knows how to prove whether a person is alive or dead, especially if he had cases of lethargic sleep in his family. To do this, the doctor conducts an ECG and EKF, so you can learn about the work of the heart and brain activity. When a person is in lethargic sleep, the indicators use the weak work of the organs, if a person dies, everything freezes.

Medical experts must carefully examine the patient, looking for signs that are characteristic of death - the body stiffens, begins to rot, and cadaveric spots appear. All these signs are visible in the morgue.

In the event that the above signs are not present, they can make a small incision, examine the blood, check its circulation. It is also necessary to investigate what could lead to lethargic sleep - a seizure, low blood pressure, frequent headaches, severe weakness, a seizure.

So, lethargic sleep is a dangerous disease, because many people confuse it with death and can bury a person alive. In modern medicine, there are a large number of innovative methods with which you can find out whether a person is alive or dead. Most often, lethargy occurs after experiencing stress, a serious illness.