Thomas Heric - Rem Sleep Behavior Disorders

Thomas Heric served as Medical Director for South Bay Diagnostic Medical Group and New Century Sleeping Disorder Laboratory. He is a Member of the British Sleep Society (BSS) and The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).

Thomas Heric

A person who suffers from RBD physically or verbally acts out their dream.  Many times injury can result from the actions of a person suffering with this condition so proper diagnosis and treatment is imperative.

Sleep, as we know it, involves three important transitional states.

• Wakefulness
• N-REM sleep (non-rapid eye movement) 
• REM sleep (rapid eye movement, when most dreaming occurs)

In an RBD patient, the brain is not successfully separating these stages of sleep. This causes the actions of wakefulness to cross over into the REM and N-REM stages. A person without RBD would remain still while sleeping, but patients with RBD move around and sometimes even become violent.

Patients have been known to shout, grab, kick and punch during sleep which can cause injury to themselves or their sleep partner. They may even suddenly leap or jump out of bed which can also cause injuries. RBD can sometimes be linked to other medical problems, you need to have a medical exam from a neurologist to properly diagnose the disorder.

A sleep study is often used in diagnosis of RBD. It records arm and leg movements, brain waves, breathing patterns and heartbeat during sleep. Videos of your sleep study will record whether or not you actually get out of bed. As Thomas Heric knows, very successful treatment for RBD is available and brings relief to patients suffering from this disorder.

Sources:
https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-disorders-problems/rem-behavior-disorder/treatment

Thomas Heric - The Early History of Vaudeville

Thomas Heric is a neurologist and author who also has an interest in theatre, particularly vaudeville. Unlike many other genres of theatre, vaudeville focuses on variety within the performance, often through the grouping of a number, often unrelated, acts. It became particularly popular in the United States in the late 19th century, enjoying a slow evolution in the process.

Early History

Vaudeville as a genre of theatre first began making an appearance in the early 1860s, when concert saloon and variety hall owners would enlist groups of performers, each of whom usually specialized in different types of acts, to entertain their patrons. It is unknown when the vaudeville moniker was first attached to such ensemble shows, however, they soon started to gain popularity. It is interesting to note that variety theatre already existed in a number of forms throughout Europe and elsewhere long before vaudeville, but it was the US-variant of the genre that established many of the common tropes of the genre that we know today.

Polite Vaudeville

Up until the 1880s, vaudeville was usually performed by travelling troupes of performers, much like you may find with a circus act. In fact, it was a former circus ringmaster named Tony Pastor who lead the charge into middle-class society when he established “polite” vaudeville, which was performed in a number of New York theatres for more affluent audiences. Thomas Heric notes that this is when the modern interpretation of vaudeville took form, with the “birth” of vaudeville as a true genre often being considered to be October 24th, 1881, when Pastor stage a show at New York’s Fourteenth Street Theater.