Talk:Exploding head syndrome/Archive 1

message: I've experienced something similar, however it was not an explosion, but what felt like the after effects of a slap across the face. I was watching the late news and dozed off on my back and was awoken a few minutes later, feeling like I was slapped. There was no pain at all, but I could feel a kind of vibrating in my cheek and I sat straight up, adrelanline surging. It's happened once since, but since then, I take care never to sleep on my back and it hasn't happened since. I will say that once when I was twelve or so, I fell asleep, possibly on my back, maybe my stomach, on a bunkbed. While sleeping, I somehow wiggled further and further towards the front of the bed until I fell off and awoke on my back, feeling shock and not being able to move for a few seconds, and some dulled pain. Take that as you will. --PhoenixAvatar2 04:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: I felt a slap

message: Hello. I have expierenced this before. The first time I expierienced it I was at ends.  I felt something like a cock in my mouth, then an adrenaline rush.  I was breathing fast and my heart rate was sky rocketing.  My eyes poped open immediatly after and I thought something was wrong.  The first thing I did was count then though then moved and talked.  I felt like I had to do a "Systems Check".  Later I had them once every night for about a week and 1/2 I was getting worried so I told my friends "Tape" and "Duct".  Apparently Tape had the same thing going on and she described to me the same thing.  I was amazed.  We both desribed right at "middle sleep"  there would be kinda a body surge and a loud pop like popping your lips kinda but inside our heads.  I even got to the point beofre I told them I felt one kinda comming on... so i waited to expierence but thinking bout it it was the worst one I bolted uop and threw myself against the wall by my bed and was about to pass out from breathing.  I felt hysterical.  It was today the ided of March that we had a free day in science and I got off talking about it and my teacher looked surprised and told me it was called exploding head syndrome.  Naturally i thought she was joking, but guess not.  Please relay any information on this phenomenon you may have because I am very curious.  thank you for you time ~ Everleader
:Everleadr's experience more closely parallels my own than the one below or the description in the article. "something like an adrenaline rush" - yes, I felt my body/brain wanted me to alert and get up instantly. "middle sleep" - well for me it was always just after I was asleep - one to ten minutes after being asleep maybe. "a loud pop like popping your lips kinda but inside our heads" - this is EXACTLY it. It happened maybe a dozen times over a couple of months. It didn't worry me - much. 4.250.198.41 09:53, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Everleader's experience

message: I'm stunned to see this is a known condition (and, for me, thankfully rare).  Since childood I've had the occasional (once every few years) sudden, and quite frightening, shock of this sudden blast of noise.  In my dreams it sometimes is accompanied by a visual of a helicopter (although it doesn't sound like one, maybe it's a childhood thing) and it's so loud in my dream that I wake up immediately in mild terror --only to realize that it's quiet in my room and that it was, as surprisingly, a dream.  I then calm down after a few moments (again, as others its adreniline) and then go back to sleep fine.  These are actually the closest thing I get now to nightmares.  Because my mind is in a different state when asleep, this experience feels truly terrifying in a way I've (thankfully) never experienced in real life.  Bobak 00:59, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow, I get this (rarely) too! 

message: FYI, I fixed a typo that said that EHS _does_ make your head explode when, in fact, it doesn't. :) Xenon 21:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oops ! 

message: I may have experienced something similar. Occasionally, I would feel (in my right ear) something like holding a leaf blower up to the side of my head. I'd cover my ear with my hand, but it won't help much.
Is this something close, or a different anomaly?
p.s. I'm a 14  year-old caucasian male. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.189.81.2 (talk • contribs) 
:My suggestion would be to check with a doctor. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a medical forum. See our medical disclaimer: Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer. In fact, Wikipedia isn't any kind of forum; talk pages like this one are supposed to be focused solely on how to go about improving the article they're associated with, not on the subject of the article in general. Bryan 07:47, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions? 

message: "... exploding head syndrome is a real phenomenon and not caused by psychological disturbances." -- I don't understand; does this mean EHS has physical causes as opposed to psychological (or even psychosematic) causes? This is not backed up by the text. Do we have a citation? --Jquarry 23:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real Phenomenon 

message: I have had this happen several times.  Just before drifting off to sleep it sounds like a shotgun going off and light flashing inside my head and one awakes scared to death with heart racing.  It has only happened a couple of times.  The first time it happened I thought someone had fired a gun off by my head, but my wife was sleeping peacefully and didn't hear a thing.   It scared me thinking maybe I had had a blood vessel or something burst in my head.  Glad to know it is nothing serious! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bronqito (talk • contribs) 11 November 2006
:Be sure to read Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer - if you had some sort of medical concern you should really check with a doctor about it and not put it off because of something you read here, there's no guarantees about the accuracy of any of it. And also bear in mind that these talk pages aren't intended to be general chat forums like this, they should be used to discuss the editing of the associated article rather than the topic as a whole. Bryan 00:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I have had this 

message: Ever since I was little, whenever its completely quiet, sometimes I hear this loud tone in my head. It's not nessicarily before going to sleep, but its really loud. I never even noticed this was strange until someone told me about this syndrome... please help :) Thank you
:Wikipedia doesn't give medical advice, please see Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer. If you have a medical question you should probably ask a doctor. Bryan 00:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure, it might be like the "ocean" sound of a seashell, except in your ear chambers. I don't know about loud, but after hearing no other sounds for so long it can subjectively seem amazingly loud. If it's pulsing, that's the sound of circulation in ear vessels. Sagittarian Milky Way 08:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do I have exploding head syndrome? 

message: This "exploding head syndrome" seems very similar to what I had during most of my childhood. That is, I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night hearing tremendously loud noises and continued to hear them for some minutes until they faded away. I know what it was in my case, it was "just" classic migraine with aura. Since it sometimes came with other symptoms that I have during my aura attacks. (I have been diagnosed to have migraine with aura by neurologists.)
Considering how aura attacks work I am not surprised it can cause such strong audio effects. But I always found it a bit strange that I never get such loud noises during aura attacks in the day, only in the night. (I only get minor tinnitus like continuous "beeps" during some aura attacks in the day.)
For anyone interested in hearing the noise I heard just listen to the first 15 seconds of Mike Oldfield's song Five Miles Out. It is the pulsating synthesiser sound you hear together with the drums just before the singing starts. Although I like that song it made my stomach turn every time I heard the beginning of the song for like the first 100 times or so I heard it.
--David Göthberg 21:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classic migraine with aura 

message: As long as I remember, I've had tinnitus all my life, and when lying in bed, it would ALWAYS intensify until it finally exploded and my eyes burst open in fear and startle...ment... every night it happened; it never failed and still doesn't. I doubt it's as rare as the EHS disambiguation page says. Dagron12345 04:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Mayo Clinic link calls it "uncommon" and one of the research papers linked calls it "rare", but considering how many people come on here and say they have it (including me) I'm pretty skeptical too. Recury 17:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably due to self-diagnosis through research on Wikipedia, or being drawn to the page after diagnosis by a doctor.  I'm sure any medical page will have a high viewership by people who are described by the page. 68.181.241.86 (talk) 10:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Is this considered a rare condition?

message: It appears that it was first described in 1920 rather than 1988 as mentioned. Then as "snapping of the brain" in R. Armstrong-Jones, Snapping of the brain, Lancet ii (1920), p. 720 Perhaps someone who can access the Lancet (i can't) could have a look and change it if needs be. Nk.sheridan   Talk 21:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: loud noises in his head when on the point of going to sleep, as though a violent discharge were being made suddenly outside. The first few times the noise came, he got out of bed and went into his sitting-room to investigate, thinking that the crash had taken place there.*
Though not stated, the source is probably Butler's notebooks, five volumes of extracts from which have appeared: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Butleriana (1932), Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1934), Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1951) and The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1984), the last being the first volume of a planned definitive edition, publication of which seems to have been abandoned. I have the first four of these volumes, and to the best of my recollection there is nothing in any of them about his affliction. I have never seen the fifth.
* Vol. 1, p. 130.
alderbourne (talk) 13:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: First described

message: Having had occasional episodes of exploding head syndrome myself during the past 20-odd years, I have often been struck by the similarity of the symptoms to the mysterious clicks, vibrations, flashes of light, sounds of electrical discharges and roaring winds and so on that sometimes precede an out-of-the-body experience.
Before dismissing me as a crank, you might care to read some books on the subject. If you follow the instructions in Oliver Fox's Astral Projection (1939) and Robert A. Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body (1971) you might even begin having such experiences yourself.
Whatever your opinion of tales of the mind or consciousness functioning outside of the physical body, you cannot deny that many an intelligent, rational man has had the experience of finding himself in a disembodied state. It has happened to me a number of times. And on one such occasion I obtained evidence that I hadn't just stepped from a state of sleep paralysis (which is how all my out-of-the-body experiences have begun) into a lucid dream (which the phenomenon resembles): I saw two marks on one of the doors of my wardrobe and felt a small bump on the underside of another, none of which had I noticed before so far as I knew and which on subsequent investigation turned out to be really there. It was impossible to see them from my bed, where my body was, and I was definitely not physically wandering about my room, for, though I had been unable to see my body, I had not at first been visible in my mirror, despite standing immediately in front of it, and later, while in the garden, I "woke up" to find myself in bed. I wrote a detailed account of my adventure that day – 3 January 1985 – thus in my case rendering invalid one of the sceptics' favourite arguments, namely that an alleged paranormal experience remembered from years ago is more likely to be the product of a faulty memory than the accurate recollection of a real occurrence – an argument I personally have always found insulting. The only mundane explanation I am willing to entertain for my one veridical experience is that of cryptomnesia; in all the years I had slept in that room I must at sometime, if only subliminally, have noticed those marks and that bump.
I have often wondered how to devise the perfect experiment, something that would prove, to my own satisfaction at least, that all this is more than just dreaming, that I really do have a soul, which can leave my body, which may even be immortal. At this moment, in our lounge, on top of a tall bookcase – a good deal taller than I – is a sheet of paper on which is a drawing or message or something of the kind, the work of a member of my family. It has been there for about a year, awaiting my next out-of-the-body experience. I did something of the kind once before, but the results were inconclusive.
For the record I am not an alcoholic, have never taken a mind-altering drug and believe myself to be as sane as the next man.
alderbourne (talk) 01:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exploding Head Syndrome and Out-of-the-Body Experiences 

message: I've removed the following un-sourced statement: "Amphetamines can also help alleviate the condition. However, the latter is strongly discouraged.".  I've done so because there's no source of this information, and because the information could be potentially harmful I believe it should only be included if it is properly sourced. Wokstation (talk) 00:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amphetamine "suggestion" 

message: I typically have many months free of any of this, and then typically days in a row where it happens almost every night. When I am in a very stressed life situation, it may even happen during the day. My impression is that it becomes more likely, the more I over-worked on the computer. Also, and this is an odd thing, it seems to be much stronger when I've had sex that day. And I think it never happened so far when I did a lot of (non-sexual) physical exercises that day.
Also I wonder, are there no studies about influences and avoiding the problem? For me, in about 90% of the cases it happens, when I laid still on the left side. When it happened once, it then may happen a second time, slightly less though, when I've turned to lie on my back or on the right side (especially regarding how my head rests on the pillow). BUT whenever I thought, "ah, c'mon, won't happen again, I stay on the left side", it came back two, three, four or more times within only few minutes and every time stronger than before. Are there no research findings in this direction? I mean, it could give hints as to the mechanism... 91.14.203.177 (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influencing the Syndrome? 

message: I always experience this if I start going to sleep flat on my back with my face straight up; feels as though it starts as a low-volume mid-pitch buzzing/ringing at the base of my neck or mid-neck, rises in volume exponentially over 2 to 6 seconds and moves up to the rear base of my skull - all the way through below and behind my ears - then crescendos as loud as I can hear without being painful, plus a flash of light all through my head. Never managed to open my eyes, or to move my head fast enough to stop it crescendoing, which is unpleasant but not scary. I've been going to sleep on my front with my head facing one side or the other since I was a small child (3 or 4 years old), but this has only been happening since my late teens; I ride a road-race style motorbike and used to headbang, so minor neck damage may well be contributing.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.186.240.40 (talk) 01:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neck position 

message: The "Neck position" section from another writer matches my experiences (I also have occasional migraines and sleep paralysis), which convinces me that I have experienced Exploding Head Syndrome.  It sounds like "Speak to Me", the opening crescendo from The Dark Side of the Moon.  The "rattling engine" from the song is more like a flutter or baffle noise, though.  Given the album's theme of mental illness, I assume it was included to mimic the symptom of auditory hallucination.  I think the lyrics from the later track "Brain Damage" ("And if your head explodes" and "thunder in your ear") lends credence to the idea.  Any way to include any of this wild conjecture in the article?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.34.255.59 (talk) 22:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: First we would need to identify reliable sources, per WP policy.—RJH (talk) 18:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example in Art 

message: Two episodes-both I was fully awake and standing when unexpectedly, I heard statements which so stunned and devastated me emotionally that I perceived an immediate, distinct "snap" sensation (as if someone snapped their fingers hard deep inside my head), accompanied by a split-second flash of light centered behind my eyes. The snap/flash was followed with a vague and fleeting disruption of vision, or possible dizzyness similar to the sensation one notices immediately prior to fainting.  The first time I was 15, and the second I was 31 years old.  For the record, have also had 2 episodes of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder which caused significant injury and trauma so severe I began strapping myself to the bed to prevent further danger.  The REMSBD episodes both occured at 35yrs. during high stress due to career change/new job.  Also of note: my father's brother died of ALS at 62, while my father, his mother and her mother before her all developed dementia of such severity they recognized no one and were bed-ridden at their deaths.   I submit this information, despite the admonition on discussion, because perhaps it may help others as the info from other's helped me.    S. L. Hamilton female/48/caucasian 09/17/2011 108.76.177.142 (talk) 12:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Severe Psychological Trauma 

message: "Electroencephalograms recorded during actual attacks show unusual activity only in some sufferers, and have ruled out epileptic seizures as a cause.[3] But an attack must happen during an episode. If results are normal during the test, only then can epilepsy be completely ruled out." (This version)
"Attack" and "episode" are similar in meaning, so it would be nice if we could clarify which one refers to seizures and which to exploding head syndrome itself. Electricmuffin11 (talk) 00:20, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification needed (maybe) 

message: So that means if I get this syndrome, my head will explode or something similar?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.93.21.94 (talk) 12:59, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  So... 

message: Symtoms: Short intrusions while falling asleep: feeling that electricity runs through and occupies the brain, feeling that my heart stops or my body is 'shut off'/'disconnected', vision that someone smashes a big shield towards my head or someone suddenly moves closely towards me and cries extremely loudly, ... I also had a related episode, while walking seeing 'mouches volants' (Floaters) or the experience of getting hit to the head (Zaps) with a moment interruption of conciousness.
Possible explaination: * 1) Maltreadment of the neck nerves or vertebral column, caused by stress, overstraining office / computer / cellular work. When the body relaxes a non-painful or distressing trauma could be triggered to the according nerves, like a 'reset'. Physical therapy, exercises, concious sitting can help. Symptoms according to section of spine: neck - head, breast - chest/heart, ... | * 2) falling-asleep-process decouples body sensivity before concious awareness of it. Stress relaxing / chilldown phase before going to sleep, less caffeine can help. (Caffeine rises the awake-level over the appropriate necessity. Avoid anything that effects the circadian rhythm.) Sometimes the dreaming-conciousness wraps the physical experiences into some sort of visions or acoustic interpretations. The mentionned relation to out-of-body (maybe lucid dreaming) experiences seems obvious.
related: SSRI discontinuation syndrome (incl 'Brain Zaps') seem related to trigeminus symptoms, Trigeminal neuralgia, Floater, Phantom limb, Vertebral column
ps: Sorry for my English. Nothing empiric, but reflective attention to my body. -- 89.144.192.168 (talk) 23:17, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Experiences & Conclusions 

message: I feel like this article could benefit from an etymology section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.166.109.49 (talk) 14:07, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: This article is very informative and useful when examining the symptoms of exploding head syndrome. There is not a lot of research done on this syndrome, but if anyone could find the possible sleep stages (1,2,3,4) for when this phenomena could occur would be helpful. It is also important to expand on the numbers and statistics of males who have this condition compared to females and the variants in age probability. Overall great article for a syndrome that does not have significant data explaining its mechanism and cause.
Jokeck7 (talk) 01:38, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments 

message: The citation for out of body experience appears to be Self-Published (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome#cite_note-6, which links to: http://www.astralinfo.org/survey-results/).  Does anyone else see this or believe it should be left.  It obviously leads to a commercial website, but also holds what might be original work.
IamM1rv (talk) 15:28, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Related phenomena

message: There is no clear ICD-10 classification for this Dx, so G47.59 is the appropriate identifier for someone who wants to update the wikidata box. Dr.khatmando (talk) 13:09, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  ICD-10 

message: At the end of the article it mentions one person as Welsh and another as British. This is odd considering Welsh people are British. Perhaps someone should try to find out where Pearce is from and change the remark about his personality.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.0.236.8 (talk) 11:54, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: That is how they are described in the source provided. Jytdog (talk) 12:48, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Welsh and British

message: This classification is incorrect and misleading. The sound is real and I can prove this to myself by flexing a muscle in my ear and hearing the same sound while I am awake. How would I go about correcting the article without a legit citation?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.183.145.149 (talk) 03:24, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the thing about Wikipedia-- you can't.  In order to add that kind of information to an article, it needs to be described and published elsewhere first.  Once THAT has happened, then by all means, add it in!  But there is a policy called no original research which makes pretty clear that Wikipedia is not a place to describe personal findings of truth, no matter how "true", because without being clinically described and reviewed by medical peers, there is no way to determine if your experience is part of some kind of pattern or whether you happen to be some kind of anomaly.  A loose noose (talk) 10:24, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Auditory Hallucination

message: The Unicode Consortium has created a character for this syndrome in [standard version 10.0](http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/). The character codepoint is 1f92f and appears as 🤯. What do you think? Is this information relevant enough to be included on the main article?
  עבד יהוה   talk 23:45, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode standard update 

message: Hard to read the article with the flashing image on a fairly fast repeat. Is it possible to stop the image or pause between loops so it's not flashing as often? Thankfully I don't get migraines and I can remove page code on the fly, not all visitors to the site have these luxuries. The Crisses (talk) 10:11, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed - I went ahead and removed it.--AlexandraIDV 22:36, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flashing Image 

message: Why is there a citation needed thing on the part that says the head doesn't typically explode? 49.147.190.8 (talk) 04:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It's clearly a joke, but please don't ever change it. 50.72.9.214 (talk) 06:27, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Citation needed"