![]() The hallucinations are often very vivid and can even be frightening.ĭisturbed nocturnal sleep. Sufferers of narcolepsy can experience hallucinations during times when they are waking from sleep (hypnopompic) or during sleep onset (hypnogogic). ![]() During cataplectic attacks, sufferers are fully conscious of the event but unable to control it. Cataplexy can also occur in various degrees of severity ranging from a slight loss of motor functions such as weakness in the muscles or drooping eyelids to a complete loss of muscle tone resulting in physical falls and an inability to move or speak. Instead of occurring at the beginning or end of sleep, cataplexy can occur at any time during the waking period and is usually triggered by intense emotions such as surprise, fear, anger, stress, or even humor. While very similar to sleep paralysis in conditions, it is usually onset by varying circumstances. Cataplexy is very similar to sleep paralysis in that there is an involuntary inability to move muscles or speak. Sleep paralysis usually lasts only a few seconds up to a few minutes with no permanent effects.Ĭataplexy. During REM sleep, the voluntary muscles are "paralyzed" to keep people from being able to act out their dreams. During sleep paralysis, the sufferer is consciously aware of their surroundings but is unable to move because the body is still in REM sleep. Sleep Paralysis is the inability to move or speak while one is falling asleep or beginning to wake up. EDS occurs even if the patient appears to have gotten plenty of sleep the night before, and usually persists throughout the day. People with EDS report it as feelings of mental cloudiness, a lack of energy and concentration, a depressed mood, or extreme exhaustion. Sleep attack bouts can last anywhere from several seconds to several minutes. EDS is characterized by a chronic persistence of feeling sleepy and involuntary episodes of falling asleep without warning. EDS is the most common symptom of narcolepsy and usually the first symptom to appear (usually between the ages of 10-20 years old). Symptoms of NarcolepsyĮxcessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS). In truth, people with narcolepsy sleep approximately the same amount as ordinary people, but they are unable to regulate the timing of their sleep. However, for people with narcolepsy, REM sleep begins almost immediately in their sleep cycles and fragments of REM occur involuntarily during waking hours.Ī common misperception about narcolepsy is that they sleep much more than the average person. Throughout the course of a night, we experience 5 cycles alternating between NREM and REM sleep with about 75% of sleep spent in NREM. After approximately 90 minutes we enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep where dreaming occurs. These early stages of sleep are called non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. We enter sleep lightly and gradually progress into a deeper sleep. Narcolepsy affects approximately 1 in 2,000 people making it one of the most common sleep disorders.įor most people, sleep occurs in various stages. Sleep attacks are not limited to periods of dull or low engagement activities but can happen during school or work hours, in the middle of a conversation, while eating, while exercising or playing sports, or most dangerously– while driving. These "sleep attacks" can occur at any time, during any activity. People with narcolepsy suffer from chronic daytime sleepiness and episodes in which they fall asleep unexpectedly during the day. Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by the brain's inability to control sleep/wakefulness cycles. For sufferers of the sleep disorder narcolepsy, this is daily life. Now try to imagine what it would be like to live with a condition in which you rarely ever felt fully awake and hardly ever felt fully asleep existing in a perpetual state where your life always feels caught in between the two, and without a moments notice may suddenly slip from one to the other. But for the most part, when we're awake, we're awake, and when we're asleep, we're asleep. We may even doze off occasionally during a boring lecture or a dull movie. We may periodically become tired or rundown during the day, and need a little nap to refresh us. Most of us go through our daily lives within one of two states of consciousness: sleep and wakefulness, with little overlap between the two.
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