One of the top online articles of my year. Had read much of this research before – as it relates to hypnotic suggestion – but Barker does a bang-up job of putting it together. Read to end – there is something for everyone.
Doesn’t mean everything is in our head – but we might make a difference if we knew what was…
xox
V
The Lazy Way to an Awesome Life: Backed by Research
by Eric Barker
A lot of men were dying and nobody knew why.
In the late 70’s, the CDC realized that a shocking number of Hmong immigrants, ages 25-45, were dying in their sleep. They would gasp for breath but before help could arrive, they were gone. Autopsies revealed nothing. Perplexed, epidemiologists started calling it “Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome.” SUNDS was killing more Hmong men than the top five causes of death combined.
But someone had an idea. Oddly enough, she wasn’t a doctor; she was an anthropologist. Shelley Adler knew that in Hmong folklore it was believed that the “dab tsog” – an evil demon – could paralyze and smother victims at night. In their home country of Laos, shamans would perform magic to fight off the spirit. But here in the US, shamans were few and far between. And most Hmong no longer practiced the religion they had been raised with.
Enter “Sleep Paralysis.” A very real but usually innocuous medical condition that 8% of people experience. For most of your sleep cycle, your body “switches off” movement. In Sleep Paralysis, your body delays switching it back on. Briefly, you’re conscious — but unable to move. Very scary though harmless. But Shelley thought the men were interpreting this as the dab tsog attacking them. They’d panic and some would have a heart attack. And as word spread about the deaths, more and more Hmong men became afraid, and thereby susceptible.
Shelley turned out to be right. However, Western medicine wasn’t very effective in getting the Hmong to give up the ideas they’d been raised with. And the deaths continued…
