What Causes Muscle Stiffness,body Clenching And Hyperventilation?

A friend of mine has a problem and since she doesn’t want to bother anyone with it she doesn’t speak about it but when she slept over recently I got so see it for myself and it really scared me. I would like to get some more information before confronting her about it.

She has "Episodes" of very intense pain. I observed the following Symptoms during these episodes.

Hot Body (Probably a fever temperature)
Have occasional shivers
Have sudden Sweat bursts
Episodes occur in intervals of about 1 min lasting up to 30sec.
I believe that the pain starts in the Back / Spine

Starts by some muscles lightly tensing, then she holds her breath, then her whole body clenches (sometimes all muscles trembling simultaneously) at that point she is mostly hyperventilating. Then within seconds she unclenches / relaxes and starts breathing normally.

At some point then she develops a headache.
I lost count of the amount of episodes but believe that it was around 40 increasing in intensity.
With the last 5 decreasing rapidly, though I believe that she simply had no more energy in her muscles.

About half an hour after the last episode (that I was aware of) she was feeling light headed, felt like throwing up, head kept on spinning.



As far as she tells me she only has these episodes at night, though I believe that she has just become quite adapt at hiding it.
I don’t know for how long she has had these episodes but I believe it has been for some years.

Regards Ingo