Leg jerks, nightmares, and restlessness.Disturbed nocturnal sleep - waking up repeatedly throughout the night.Sleep paralysis may last for a few seconds to several minutes and may accompany hypnagogic hallucinations. Sleep paralysis - a temporary inability to move during sleep-wake transitions.Hypnogogic hallucinations - during transition from wakefulness to sleep, the patient has bizarre, often frightening dream-like experiences that incorporate his or her real environment.Consciousness is maintained throughout the episode but the patient is usually unable to speak. It may only affect certain muscle groups and result in slurred speech, buckling of the knees, or weakness in the arms. It may involve all muscles and result in collapse. Cataplexy - cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle tone, usually triggered by emotional stimuli such as laughter, surprise, or anger.The sleepiness occurs in spite of a full night's sleep and may persist throughout the day. Unless they're being treated for the disorder, the need to sleep can be overwhelming for narcolepsy patients: someone who has narcolepsy is prone to falling asleep while engaged in conversation, driving, eating dinner, or at other inappropriate times. Excessive daytime sleepiness - this is usually the first symptom to appear in people who have narcolepsy.The main symptoms associated with narcolepsy are: The results of one recent study, in which hypocretin was directly administered to the brain, suggest that using hypocretin derivatives may be an effective way to prevent cataplexy and improve wakefulness. Researchers believe that narcolepsy may be caused by a deficiency in hypocretin production in the brain. Yet the devastating potential of this disorder is reflected in studies showing that narcoleptic patients are more accident-prone and have difficulty with interpersonal relationships. Narcolepsy patients typically endure many years of daytime sleepiness before seeking treatment because sleepiness is not indicative of disease to most people. The instance of a familial connection with narcolepsy is quite small but a combination of genetic and environmental factors may be at the root of this sleep disorder. Narcolepsy affects both sexes equally and develops with age symptoms usually first develop in adolescence or young adulthood and may remain unrecognized as they gradually develop. That is, narcolepsy patients sleep a normal amount but cannot control the timing of sleep. Narcolepsy is considered a "state boundary" control abnormality. When you consider that during REM sleep our muscles are paralyzed and dreaming occurs, it is not surprising that narcolepsy is associated with paralysis, hallucinations, and other dream-like and dramatically debilitating symptoms.ĭespite the perception that people with narcolepsy are perpetually sleepy, they do not typically sleep more than the average person. For people with narcolepsy, sleep begins almost immediately with REM sleep and fragments of REM occur involuntarily throughout the waking hours. After about 90 minutes, we enter the first stage of REM sleep, which is the dreaming portion of sleep, and throughout the night we alternate between stages of REM and non-REM sleep. Both light and deep sleep stages are called non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. When we fall asleep, we initially enter a light stage of sleep and then progress into increasingly deeper stages. In order to understand the basics of narcolepsy, it is important to first review the features of "normal sleep." Sleep happens in cycles. However, with increased public education about narcolepsy and physician training in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, these figures are expected to rise. Its prevalence in the developed world is approximately the same as that of multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease. The disease is also often associated with sudden sleep attacks, insomnia, dream-like hallucinations, and a condition called sleep paralysis. The main features of narcolepsy are excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy. Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder caused by the brain's inability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally.
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