Bangungot

Bangungot is sudden unexpected death of adolescents and adults during sleep. Bangungot is observed in all East Asian countries. The term originated from the Tagalogword meaning 'bad dream'. The explanation for this term is due to the fact that survivors of Bangungot often describe dreaming about falling into a bottomless pit. It's rare in the Western world, and appears to occur more commonly among young men in Southeast Asia.

Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome (SUDS), called bangungot in the Filipino vernacular, has claimed many young Asian men's lives while they sleep, and it has only been recently that the scientific world has begun to understand this syndrome.

SUDS, called lai tai in Thailand and hukuri in Japan has been cloaked in superstition. In Thailand it is believed to be linked to eating rice cakes. Filipinos believe ingesting high levels of carbohydrates just before sleeping causes bangungot.

Victims of bangungot have not been found to have any organic heart diseases or structural heart problems. However, cardiac activity during SUDS episodes indicates irregular heart rhythms and ventricular fibrillation, which causes the victim to lose consciousness during sleep. The victim survives this episode if the heart's rhythm goes back to normal.

Ongoing genetic studies by Spanish electrophysiologist Dr. Josep Brugada Terradellas show that SUDS results from mutations in the cardiac sodium channel gene. This means that it is a chromosomal problem, which is why it runs in families.

Thus, doctors say that families who have kin that have suffered from or died of SUDS must see a heart specialist.

Popular belief holds that the eating of riceand sleeping just after eating are just two of the many factors said to cause the disorder. In the Philippines, most cases of Bangungot has been linked with Acute Hemorrhagic Pancreatitis, whereas in Thailand and Laos, Bangungot (or in their term, Sudden Adult Death Syndrome) is caused by the Brugada syndrome.[1].

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangungot Wikipedia article Bangungot.