I thought I was losing my mind… then doctors told me I had ‘exploding head syndrome’. It strikes at night – and you may be among the MILLIONS who have it too

For Dr Chelsie Rohrscheib, it seemed to be an evening like any other.

She had just spent at least an hour sitting in bed flicking between history and nature documentaries with her partner, before closing her eyes at 11.30pm.

Then, it happened.

‘It sounded like a car crash, like something hit the ground,’ Rohrscheib, then 36, told the Daily Mail. ‘It was like a meteor had hit the ground.’

‘I jumped out of bed, it was so jarring. I jumped out of my skin.’

The sound – like a ‘popping explosion’ – lasted barely a second, but it had her standing at the foot of the bed, heart pounding, blood racing, thinking she should flee.

Then, she looked at her partner, who was still in bed and had only vaguely opened one of his eyes, which was peering inquisitively at her.

Rohrscheib, who is a neurologist, had a sudden realization. 

There had been no loud explosion. Instead, she had experienced something millions of Americans do, an imaginary loud bang caused by a condition known as ‘exploding head syndrome’ (EHS).

First described in the 1870s by an American neurologist, EHS is a little-known condition estimated to affect as many as one in five Americans.

It often strikes just as someone is entering sleep, and is described as hearing a loud noise like a bomb, gunshot, pan hitting the floor or door slamming. 

In some cases, the noise is so severe that patients say they wake up their partners or head outside to check whether something hit their house or if the neighbors’ property has exploded.

Dr Jeremy Liff, a vascular neurosurgeon at NYU Langone, told the Daily Mail that there was ‘nothing wrong’ with the brains of people who experience exploding head syndrome.

‘It’s really just what you would call a parasomnia,’ he said, ‘meaning a defect in the way that sleep is either coming on or being removed. It doesn’t mean there’s anything organically wrong with your brain or anything dangerous.’

In some cases, it can disrupt sleep and cause insomnia, with the sound striking several times in a night or for several nights in a row.

It is not clear what causes the condition, although doctors have suggested it may be linked to a sudden surge in neural activity as someone shifts from awake to asleep.

Rohrscheib, now 41 years old, told the Daily Mail she had been asleep in the primary bedroom of her two-story urban Michigan house when it first happened – and although it wasn’t painful, it came as quite a shock. 

‘I remember looking around my room and wondering what it was, but pretty quickly I rationalized it,’ Rohrscheib said.

Rohrscheib said the first incident sounded like a car had crashed outside or a meteor had hit the ground

‘I went back to sleep, but it took me a solid minute to realize that what I was hearing was actually in my head and not an actual explosion outside of my house.’

Rohrscheib told the Daily Mail she took several deep breaths to calm down. 

It was the next day, while discussing what she had experienced with colleagues who were also doctors, that she confirmed it was EHS.

Her first episode happened in the summer of 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic. 

Rohrscheib said this period was a stressful time when she was put into work-from-home and clinical trials she was working on were disrupted. 

Since then, she said she suffers EHS symptoms about once every two months.

‘My life has really normalized, but they continue,’ she said, ‘I think stress may have initially triggered them, but there are other neurological reasons why they seem to persist.’

‘My partner, Kevin, he is a pretty sound sleeper, but every time I jumped out of bed from this, I’ve woken him up. 

‘The good thing is, he’s usually able to fall back to sleep quickly. But, I mean… it does also raise his anxiety and his alertness. There’s unfortunately been a few times where I’ve abruptly woken him and he’s had trouble falling back to sleep.’

Rohrscheib said the noise, which strikes once every two months or so, has not worsened over time, although she is concerned for the future

Rohrscheib, who is a sleep expert and founding member of the sleep company Wesper, said that the sounds have been about the same each episode and have not worsened, which she linked to an improvement in her sleep hygiene.

The neurologist said that the TV has now been banished from the bedroom, while she stops looking at screens an hour before bed and always aims for eight hours of sleep a night, as is recommended by the CDC. She also always tries to go to bed at the same time.

‘I suspect that if I did not follow those rules, that this would probably occur more often than it does,’ she added.

When she does hear a noise, it takes her about five to ten minutes to fall back asleep, although, in some severe cases, it has kept her awake for 30 minutes to an hour.

She has not sought any treatment or medical attention for her EHS. There is no cure or EHS-specific treatment. 

Liff told the Daily Mail that in many cases, treatment focuses on behavioral modifications first, such as encouraging patients to sleep more and get to bed earlier. In more severe cases or if it causes insomnia, patients may be offered drugs to calm the nervous system. 

Rohrscheib said that, for now, EHS does not affect her quality of life, but she is worried about the future.

‘I don’t think this is something that is going to go away,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘Knowing what I know about the brain and how it matures as we age, it could potentially get worse, especially when I go through menopause.

‘I’m hoping it doesn’t, but, so far, it’s been pretty consistent.’