Lethargic sleep causes. Imaginary death: what is a lethargic dream. How to distinguish lethargy from death

Lethargic sleep is one of the sleep disorders that is extremely rare. The duration of such a state can last from several hours to several days, less often - up to several months. Only a few dozen cases have been recorded in the world when a lethargic dream lasted several years.

The longest "sleep hour" was recorded in 1954 by Nadezhda Lebedina, who woke up only twenty years later.

Causes

The severe form has distinctive features:

Muscular hypotension;
Paleness of the skin;
There is no reaction to external stimuli;
Arterial pressure is lowered;
Some reflexes are missing;
The pulse is practically undetectable.

In any case, after waking up, a person should be registered with a doctor for further monitoring of his body.

Diagnosis of the disease

Lethargic sleep should be distinguished from narcolepsy, epidemic and coma. This is very important, since the methods of treatment for all these diseases differ significantly from each other.

It is not possible to conduct any research or laboratory tests. In this case, it only remains to wait until the patient wakes up and tells about his feelings on his own. Vkontakte

In England, there is still a law according to which all mortuary refrigerators must have a bell with a rope so that the revived "dead" can call for help with a bell ringing. In the late 1960s, the first apparatus was created there, which made it possible to capture the most insignificant electrical activity of the heart. When testing the device in the morgue, a living girl was found among the corpses. In Slovakia, they went even further: they put a mobile phone in the grave with the dead...

Sleep is the best medicine, scientists say. Indeed, the kingdom of Morpheus saves people from many stresses, diseases, and simply relieves fatigue. It is believed that the duration of a normal person's sleep is 5-7 hours. But sometimes the line between normal sleep and sleep caused by stress is too thin. We are talking about lethargy (Greek lethargia, from lethe - oblivion and argia - inaction), a painful state similar to sleep and characterized by immobility, lack of reactions to external irritation and the absence of all external signs of life.

People have always been afraid to fall into a lethargic sleep, because there was a danger of being buried alive. For example, the famous Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, who lived in the 14th century, fell seriously ill at the age of 40. Once he lost consciousness, he was considered dead and was about to be buried. Fortunately, the law of that time forbade burying the dead earlier than a day after death. Waking up almost at his grave, Petrarch said that he felt great. After that, he lived another 30 years.

In 1838, an incredible event occurred in one of the English villages. During the funeral, when the coffin with the deceased was lowered into the grave and they began to bury it, some indistinct sound came from there. By the time the frightened cemetery workers came to their senses, dug the coffin and opened it, it was already too late: under the lid they saw a face frozen in horror and despair. And the torn shroud and bruised hands showed that help came too late ...

In Germany in 1773, after screams coming from the grave, a pregnant woman was exhumed, buried the day before. Witnesses found traces of a fierce struggle for life: the nervous shock of the buried alive provoked premature birth, and the child suffocated in the coffin along with her mother ...

The writer Nikolai Gogol's fear of being buried alive is well known. The writer's final mental breakdown occurred after the death of the woman he loved endlessly - Ekaterina Khomyakova, the wife of his friend. Her death shocked Gogol. Soon he burned the manuscript of the second part of "Dead Souls" and went to bed. The doctors advised him to lie down, but the body protected the writer too well: he fell asleep in a sound saving sleep, which at that time was mistaken for death. In 1931, the Bolsheviks decided, according to the plan for the improvement of Moscow, to destroy the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, where Gogol was buried. However, during the exhumation, those present were horrified to find that the skull of the great writer was turned on its side, and the material in the coffin was torn...
The causes of lethargy are not yet known to medicine. It is also impossible to predict when the awakening will come. The state of lethargy can last from a few hours to decades. Medicine describes cases of people falling into such a dream due to intoxication, large blood loss, hysterical seizure, fainting. It is interesting that in case of a threat to life (bombing during the war), those who slept in a lethargic sleep woke up, could walk, and after the shelling they fell asleep again. The mechanism of aging in those who have fallen asleep is greatly slowed down. For 20 years of sleep, they do not change outwardly, but then, in a state of wakefulness, they make up for their biological age in 2-3 years, turning into old people before our eyes. Waking up, many assured that they heard everything that was happening around, but they did not even have the strength to lift a finger.
Nazira Rustemova from Kazakhstan, as a 4-year-old child, first “fell into a state similar to delirium, and then fell into a lethargic sleep.” The doctors of the regional hospital considered her dead, and soon the parents buried the girl alive. She was saved only by the fact that, according to Muslim custom, the body of the deceased is not buried in the ground, but wrapped in a shroud and buried in a burial house. Nazira slept for 16 years and woke up when she was about to turn 20. According to Rustemova herself, “on the night after the funeral, her father and grandfather heard a voice in a dream that told them that she was alive,” which made them pay more attention to “ corpse,” they found faint signs of life.
The case of the longest, officially registered lethargic sleep, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, occurred in 1954 with Nadezhda Artemovna Lebedina (born in 1920 in the village of Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk region) due to a strong quarrel with her husband. As a result of the resulting stress, Lebedina fell asleep for 20 years and woke up again only in 1974. Doctors recognized her as absolutely healthy.
There is another record, for some reason not included in the Guinness Book of Records. Augustine Leggard, after the stress of childbirth, fell asleep and ... no longer reacted to injections and blows. But she opened her mouth very slowly when she was fed. 22 years have passed, but the sleeping Augustine remained just as young. But then the woman started up and spoke: “Frederic, it’s probably already late, the child is hungry, I want to feed him!” But instead of a newborn baby, she saw a 22-year-old young woman, like two drops similar to herself ... Soon, however, time took its toll: the awakened woman began to age rapidly, a year later she already turned into an old woman and died after 5 years.
There are cases when a lethargic dream arose periodically. One English priest slept six days a week, and on Sunday he got up to eat and serve a prayer service. Usually, in mild cases of lethargy, there is immobility, muscle relaxation, even breathing, but in severe cases, which are rare, there is a picture of really imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils do not react, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, strong pain irritations do not cause a reaction, reflexes are absent.
When lethargic sleep is suspected, doctors recommend holding a mirror to the mouth of the deceased. With any symptoms of life, the mirror should fog up. The best guarantee against lethargy is a quiet life and the absence of stress.

edited news LAKRIMOzzzA - 3-03-2011, 22:56

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

Definition of lethargy

Lethargic sleep is the cessation of a person's activity, 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 slow, the pulse is hardly audible and. The word "lethargy" comes from the Latin language. "Leta" means "forgetfulness". In the mythological stories of antiquity, the river Lethe was mentioned, flowing in the realm of the dead. According to legend, those deceased who have tasted the water from the source forget everything that happened to them in earthly life. "Argy" means "stupor".

Lethargic sleep: causes and types

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

Known types of lethargy: light form and heavy.

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

With a severe form of a person, it is easy to mistake for a dead person. The body temperature drops, the heartbeat is greatly muffled, 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 report that he is alive. And in the UK, a bell is placed in the cells of the dead in the mortuary.

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 at the age at which he fell into a slumber. This is because the biological processes in the body slow down. But after waking up, a person begins to age dramatically to the proper 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 at his real age. Despite external changes, a person thinks and behaves as if he had just fallen asleep. He will arrive at the intellectual level at which he was when immersed in "hibernation".

Lethargic sleep: case stories

Gogol's lethargic dream

In recent months, Gogol was exhausted mentally and physically. Depression overtook him. Nikolai Vasilyevich was a piously believing person and realized that "Dead Souls" contained a lot of sinful things. In addition, his works were criticized by Archpriest Matthew, with whom he was on close terms.

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. Doctors determined the diagnosis - meningitis, but it turned out to be erroneous. As a result, the treatment only aggravated the situation, on February 21, 1852, he "died" from heart failure.

During the transfer of the remains of the writer to the Novodevichy cemetery, an exhumation was carried out - the removal of the corpse from the burial place. There were about 20 people present. They said that Gogol's head was turned to one side, and the inside of the coffin was tattered. Because of what they made the assumption that Nikolai Vasilievich fell asleep in a lethargic sleep. During his lifetime, he spoke many times about the fear of being buried alive, probably he was embodied in reality. Later, the lethargic dream 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 has never been established.

This is one of the few cases where lethargic sleep has been recorded. Perhaps there were other interesting facts, but they were not subject to wide publicity. Law enforcement agencies were often involved in their investigation.

Geneticists say that lethargy is a special type of disease that is passed down through the 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 alerting the family and competent authorities for a full check-up for lethargy prior to burial.

A lethargic dream remains an unresolved puzzle to this day. It is also called "lazy death" or "slow life". Scientific studies of this phenomenon have not brought final results. Regarding the cause, prevention, treatment of the disease, there are more questions than answers. Modern medicine is able to detect and identify an abnormal condition in time. But "waking up" the patient is still impossible.

Awe of the unknown and incomprehensible once helped the cave people to exist in harsh prehistoric conditions. With the development of mankind, the subject of social, individual phobias has changed. How not to fall into long oblivion is a fear that lurks in the subconscious of almost every modern person. In the past, lethargic sleep was a real problem that was widespread. Frequent mass epidemics gave rise to many prejudices. There is a hypothesis that clinical sleep gave rise to all sorts of myths about the living dead.

It is important to know! Taphophobia is the fear of being buried alive. Many famous personalities experienced it: George Washington, Marina Tsvetaeva, Alfred Nobel, Nikolai Gogol.

“The sleep of reason gives birth to monsters,” a well-known phraseological unit finds repeated historical confirmation.

Here are just some interesting facts about lethargic sleep:

Common methods of healing were: exorcism sessions, dipping in ice water, applying a hot iron to the feet, electric shock. All of these manipulations had no therapeutic effect, sometimes ended in the death of the sufferer.
An honorary position was the caretaker of the cemetery. His duties included periodic monitoring of the territory for the presence of "revival". Screams, blows from under the ground were a kind of "message" and served as a reason for extracting the "dead".
Human resourcefulness knows no bounds. In the past, due to the lethargic "boom", the production of "safe coffins" has expanded. Everything ingenious is simple - a box with a tube brought up to the top allowed the "revived" person to seek timely help. Adolf Gutsmon in his time made a “break of patterns” by inventing a coffin with an internal supply of food. I tested it myself, having lunch inside with sausages and beer.

Not surprisingly, most of the "saved" people lost their minds. Statistics has preserved a lot of examples when people began to live in a cemetery and "attribute" supernatural abilities to themselves.

Deciphering the term "lethargic dream"

What is a lethargic dream? Translated from the ancient Greek language, lethargy means oblivion and inaction. This is a pathological condition, which is characterized by a strong slowdown in the functioning of the body. There are two forms: light and heavy.

The first option cannot be called a dream, although the external manifestation resembles it:

breathing is even;
the heart works without changes;
waking up the patient is worth a lot of effort.

The second option can easily be mistaken for death. Since there are practically no external differences:

the pulse rhythm is minimal - about 3 beats per minute;
breathing is not audible;
the skin is devoid of natural pigment, cold to the touch.

The duration of the disease is variable. There are cases when the hours of "oblivion" were extended for decades.

Features of the phenomenon

Lethargy can be a symptom of CFS. Chronic fatigue syndrome is a pathological fatigue that does not disappear even after a long rest. Increased emotional stress and low physical activity provoke the onset of the disease. Potential patients are all residents of big cities, businessmen, medical workers, air traffic controllers, logisticians. It is characterized by depression, lethargy, partial memory loss, fits of anger, aggressive behavior.

More about signs

Lethargic sleep is not a coma, not narcolepsy, and not epidemic encephalitis. Over time, doctors learned to tell the difference. Despite the similarity of symptoms, the listed diagnoses differ and require special treatment.

A coma is a serious disease that progresses and is characterized by loss of consciousness, a violation of the central nervous system, and poor breathing. A person has no reactions to external stimuli, reflexes. They always enter a coma due to severe complications of the disease, or as a result of severe brain damage. In contrast to lethargy, where vital processes are slowed down, but continue, in coma, permanent medical maintenance of body functions is necessary.

It is important to know! People who fall into a lethargic hibernation do not age, and, upon awakening, can boast of excellent health. True, starting an active life, a person quickly feels age-related changes. Because time is making up for lost time.

The consequences of a coma are often sad: the patient either dies or remains disabled. Rare facts testify to a successful outcome when the patient talks about the details of the “afterlife”.

Causes of the condition

The exact causes of lethargic sleep will not be named by any scientist. But researchers agree that such a state appears under the influence of severe stress, which the body cannot cope with, and therefore falls into the maximum "energy conservation" mode. There is an assumption that an unknown virus is to blame, as a result of which the European population “suffered” at the dawn of the 20th century.

The most attentive doctors suspected a connection between frequent sore throats and severe oblivion. As a result, a mutated staphylococcus aureus was named as the suspected cause.

There are many versions, but all studies agree on one thing: the development of a deep inhibitory process in the brain causes lethargy.

Duration

The illness can last from a few hours to months. At one time, the record was set by Ivan Kachalkin, which made him famous in scientific circles. He had a lethargic dream for 22 years. The patient was under the supervision of I.P. Pavlova. A well-known academician described the details: "The state of a living corpse without movement and minimal external manifestations." The recumbent was fed with a tube, by the age of sixty the patient was able to visit the restroom and sometimes eat on his own.

Awakening and aftermath

Modern medicine has not yet invented a way to wake up from the "slow life". When the patient wakes up, no one can predict. True, Indian yogis know how to fall into a lethargic sleep and voluntarily come out of it. Unfortunately, most people do not have this degree of enlightenment.

Usually the awakened person is healthy, but remembers the day the illness began. A real case occurred in Latin America: the girl slept from six years to twenty-three. After waking up, she immediately began to play with dolls, since her mental memory remained in childhood. The famous poet Petrarch died only 30 years after a lethargic sleep. During these years, the life of the legendary personality was fruitful, he even managed to receive a laurel wreath as a reward.

Death and lethargic sleep: how to distinguish

Today, the fear of being buried alive has no serious basis. The occurrence of lethargic sleep is ultimately investigated by doctors. With the help of special devices, the brain and heart activity of the body is analyzed. The totality of the results may indicate the presence of "life". Then doctors carefully examine the human torso, recognize damage to important organs, and exclude signs of smoldering tissues. The third stage is a blood test (flow strength, chemical analysis). If a medical examination determines the presence of lethargy, the patient is sent for treatment.

Home care or hospital

Close relatives decide to stay at home, or to be under the direct supervision of medical staff, based on real strengths and capabilities. There is no need for clinical intervention.

Treatment is symptomatic, so an important component of care is the organization of feeding (“with a spoon” or through an umbrella) and careful hygiene of the patient.

Advice! Often, awakened people note that during sleep they perfectly hear the surrounding sounds. Therefore, the immediate environment is advised to talk with the patient more often. A positive aspect in the syndrome of "lazy death" can be considered the absence of danger to life.

Realistic descriptions of cases of lethargy

Various cases of lethargic sleep and further awakening are striking in their drama. Some are worthy of becoming an interesting plot of a thriller, "horror" or comedy:

France, 19th century, in a rich house, the head of the family faints. The doctor confirmed - death. The closest relatives wanted to share the inheritance without putting the matter on the back burner. The process turned into a grandiose scandal, during which the "deceased" was not spared. What a surprise it was when the deceased sat down in the coffin just in the midst of the funeral service and said that he had heard everything. The end of the story remains a mystery.
An example from the recent past: 2011, the city of Sevastopol. One of the local mortuaries was rented by a metal band to prepare for concerts. The place is ideal both in style and soundproofing. One fine day, the guys tried especially hard and woke up a man who was considered a corpse. Rockers ran to the screams coming from the refrigerator, the unfortunate man was saved. But I had to rehearse in another place.
A resident of Norway fell asleep due to the stress caused by childbirth. The illness went on for a long time. A woman woke up after 20 years as young as at the time of the “blackout”. Near the home bed sat an elderly man and an adult girl. As it turned out - husband and daughter. In less than a year, the awakened woman began to look in accordance with her age.

The surrounding world is still fraught with many mysteries. Let's hope that the human mind will eventually find the missing pieces of the "puzzle" and cope with the next task.

From the Greek language "lethargy" is translated as "imaginary death" or "little life". Scientists still cannot say how to treat this condition, or name the exact causes that provoke an attack of the disease. As possible sources of lethargy, doctors point to severe stress, hysteria, great loss of blood and general exhaustion. So, in Astana, a girl fell into a lethargic sleep after a teacher reprimanded her. From resentment, the child began to cry, but not ordinary, but bloody tears. In the hospital where she was taken, the girl's body began to go numb, after which she fell asleep. Doctors diagnosed lethargy.

Those who have fallen into lethargic sleep repeatedly claim that before the next attack they start to have a headache and they feel lethargic in the muscles.

According to those who have woken up, throughout their lethargic sleep they can hear what is happening around, they are simply too weak to react. This is confirmed by doctors. During the study of the electrical activity of the brain of patients with lethargy, it was found that their brain works in the same way as when they are awake.

If the disease is mild, the person looks as if he is sleeping. However, with a severe form, it is easy to mistake him for a dead man. The heartbeat slows down to 2-3 beats per minute, biological secretions practically stop, the skin becomes pale and cold, and breathing is so light that even a mirror brought to the mouth is unlikely to fog up. It is important to distinguish hibernation from encephalitis or narcolepsy from lethargic sleep.

It is impossible to predict how long a lethargic sleep will last: a person can fall asleep for a few hours or oversleep for many years. A case is known when an English priest slept six days a week and woke up only on Sunday to eat and serve a prayer service.

AiF.ru talks about the most interesting cases of “imaginary death”.

Didn't wait

Medieval poet Francesco Petrarch awoke from a lethargic sleep in the midst of preparations for his funeral. The forerunner of the Renaissance woke up after a 20-hour sleep and, much to the surprise of everyone present, declared that he felt great. After this curious incident, Petrarch lived for another 30 years and was even crowned with a laurel wreath for his works in 1341.

After a fight

If a medieval poet slept only 20 hours, then there were cases when a lethargic dream lasted several years. Officially, the longest attack of lethargic sleep is the case Nadezhda Lebedina from Dnepropetrovsk, who slept for 20 years after a quarrel with her husband in 1954. The woman suddenly regained consciousness upon hearing of her mother's death. After waking up, Lebedina, who eventually got into the Guinness Book of Records, lived for another 20 years.

22 years as one moment

Since the functions of the body slow down during lethargic sleep, patients practically do not age. Norwegian native Augustine Linggard fell asleep in 1919 due to the stress of childbirth and slept for 22 years. Throughout all these years, she remained as young as on the day of the attack. Opening her eyes in 1941, she saw her old husband and already adult daughter near her bed. However, the effect of youth in such cases does not last long. A year later, the Norwegian looked her age.

Dolls first

Lethargy also slows down mental development. So, the first thing a 25-year-old girl from Buenos Aires wanted to do, waking up from a lethargic dream, was to play with dolls. An adult woman at the time of awakening fell asleep when she was only six years old, and simply did not understand how much she had grown.

Concert at the Morgue

There were cases when patients with lethargic sleep were already found in the morgue. In December 2011, in one of the morgues in Simferopol, a man woke up from a long sleep to the sounds of heavy metal. One of the city's rock bands used the mortuary as their rehearsal space. The room was well combined with the image of the group, and so they could be sure that their music would not bother anyone. During one of the rehearsals, the metalheads heard screams that came from one of the refrigeration units. The man, whose name has not been released, was released. And the group after this incident found another place for rehearsals.

However, the case in Simferopol is a rarity in the modern world. After the invention of the electroencephalograph, a device that records the biocurrents of the brain, the danger of being buried alive is practically reduced to zero.