Brain Buzz – My head just exploded!!!

A weird thing has been happening to me in the last few months. Just as I am about to drop off to sleep, I get this really loud noise that sounds a lot like a Tesla coil going off in my brain big time and then BANG… the blast happens… as if the Tesla has exploded!!! It accompanies this strange light that flashes and I actually see lighting/zigzag patterns behind my eyelids, as if a TV has just been degaussed or like an old TV that hasn’t got any good reception. I jump out of my skin when this happens to me, as there is no warning and the noise is soooo loud and electric sounding and the light so static and bright!

It happened again only two nights ago and I was starting to get worried, I thought that maybe I was having mini epileptic fits… so I googled it and came up with something.

As it turn out, I have something that is called “Exploding Head Syndrome“.

Seriously… you should read some of the visuals that people are getting and the noises they are hearing! The other night mine looked like a massive TV screen that had an extreme zigzag pattern all over it and the sound of it was like my brained had been zapped with a massive electric shock. It lasted all of around .5 second or so. (percieved time that is, it could actually be a nano second, who knows for sure?)

Other people have the following…

My experience is best described this way–the flash is like the flash you see when you turn on the light switch and the [filament in the] light bulb blows and the pop sound is a sudden, loud, “WHOP!”

I also have a visual description: a thick, bright, white, severely “zig-zaggy” lightning bolt with a trumpet (formed from the same electricity of the lightning) on the ends. Its positioned horizontally in my head, behind my eyes with the trumpets poised to blare a sudden,super-charged blast of sound thru my ears outward!

Other people hear things like a gun shot noise or a really loud shout and even their name being shouted out, while others say it sounds like a really loud phone ring or even an nuclear explosion. It seems to happen more often to woman rather than men, and a lot of them seem to be either stressed, overtired or have high anxiety. I have read that a lot of sufferers also have migraine headaches as well. I suffer with migraines and I get the aura of flashing lights and the temporary blindness. The aura looks very similar to my “Brain Buzz”.

“Exploding Head Syndrome” is in the top ten of the most interesting and strangest mental disorders, although I don’t think it is a mental disorder as such, much more study needs to go into this and into migraines to be honest. I think it is a brain disorder, not a mental one!

One particular person who suffers with this and has researched it a bit said that it is basically your brain entering into a deeper stage of sleep which should only happen when you’re completely unconscious, but sometimes when you are stressed, overtired or highly wired you may enter this deep sleep stage while being semi-conscious. This means that you were actually aware of your brain starting to switch off! This made sense to me. Now I understand why it is that I jump out of my skin.

When you reach the deepest part of sleep you become paralysed and if you are semi-conscious and you have a loud explosion that is audible only from the inside of your brain and a visual that is only seen from the inside of your brain, this does wake you up rather suddenly. Some people have said that they remain in a paralysed state for a few seconds which makes sense because their body is in the deep sleep state but their brain is still lingering in semi-conscious state. They tend to great fear coming upon them because they are powerless to do anything for what must seem like an eternity. Some have pointed out that it happens to people who have low levels of dopamine.

Anyway, after reading over 300 or so comments found at this website called “The Daily Ping: The Big Bang in My Head” I was absolutely intrigued by the various perceptions that these people had during their head explosions.

There is a website that I found through wiki which has medical papers on the “Exploding Head Syndrome” called “PubMed” it is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

I find the whole thing really fascinating.

Even migraines — if they weren’t so painful — are intriguing too. It wasn’t uncommon for the migraineur to be institutionalised in mental hospitals in years gone by because of their auditory and visual hallucinations. You should see some of the art produced by migraine sufferers when asked to paint what they see when they get the auras! If you didn’t understand what happens physically, it could easily be regarded as either madness or even spiritual.

Here are two paintings from migraine sufferers that I could really relate to. One has the flashes, while the other has the blind spot. These drawings are one of many found in a book that I own written by Oliver Sacks called “Migraine” and you can find more of these drawings at this site HERE.

I sometimes get optical/ocular migraines . My aura’s are often shaped as an arc on the right side of my right eye with flashing zigzag patterns of many colours — just like a kaleidoscope. The aura moves from the right side of my vision to the top it then proceeds to the left and then finishes in the middle. It leaves in its wake a grey hole which I can’t see out of at all, and I end up having a blind spot that then goes away. I remember one time as I was driving home from the gym that I could not see part of the car in front of me. There were flashing lights which I thought at the time was the sun shining through the windscreen really brightly. As I was driving along, more of the car was started to disappear. But because I was so close to home (literally around two corners and I was home free) and I had realised what was really happening to me I kept driving. I took some medication and just rested until this passed. Sometimes a headache follows these optical migraines, and other times it does not and these are called silent migraines.

I have an interest in this because many of my family members suffer with migraines. If I was to explain more about my migraines and the many symptoms I get I could write a book, especially if I was to include all of my family members who are sufferers like me.

Things like the migraine hangover and another symptom called the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome that has accompanied only just a few of my migraines that I got when I was younger are not too pleasant at all. Deja vu is another form of migraine aura, I have had this on occasion too, it’s not just the normal sense that most people get now and then, but a very strong sense of deja vu. My mum, when she was small, used to get a strange smell just before her migraines came on. My other family members have had “Stomach Migraines” when they were young. And the list goes on.

Anyway, I wonder if “Exploding Head Syndrome” has any relationship with migraines in anyway?