Narcolepsy
Facts
An
Introduction
N
arcolepsy is a type of
chronic neurological disease that is caused by inability
and failure of the brain to stimulate sleep wake cycles. At
certain times in a day, the patient with narcolepsy
suffers extreme sleepiness especially during the day.
For times which the sleepiness becomes uncontrollable,
narcoleptics will suddenly fall asleep in minutes. There
are also cases where patients fall asleep suddenly for an
hour or even longer. However these cases are very
rare.
People with
narcolepsy’s sleep episode frequently appear at any
time. They may fall asleep even while doing
something or at any places like school, work place,
while driving, while playing games, and even while
having a conversation. This can be really dangerous
to them as it can bring harm to them especially when
they are using hazardous machinery and
driving.
Furthermore, in the daytime
excessive sleepiness, there are three main
symptoms that normally summarize narcolepsy that
are hallucination upon waking up, cataplexy, or
a sudden muscle control loss, and paralysis at
the end or start of their
sleep.
Commonly believed, most
people that have narcolepsy did not spend
much proportion of their time to sleep in
the 24 hours day as normal sleepers. Beside,
there was addition of drowsiness that leads
to sleepiness during the day for
narcoleptics. Most of them also experiences
awakenings during night time. Because of
these, this narcolepsy disease are
considered as a disorder of their usual
boundaries between waking up and sleeping
period.
For adults, usual
night sleep is when they get to
sleep for almost eight hours. But it
is different for people with
narcolepsy. A sleep cycle were
showed by segments of non rapid eye
movement (NREM) sleep then only the
period of rapid eye movement (REM)
sleep. Non rapid eye movement period
can be divided into groups according
to the frequent and size of brain
waves. For rapid eye movement sleep,
it is followed by rapid eye movement
along with heightened activity in
brain and temporary muscles
paralysis.
This affects
the body movement and body
posture.
When patient
are awakened, they tend to “have
a dreams” often if they had been
in rapid eye movement sleep than
when they had been in non rapid
eye movement sleep. The period
from non rapid eye movement sleep
to rapid eye movement sleep were
caused by interactions in neurons
that are the nerve cells which
stay in certain part in
brain.
Scientist
and specialist doctors
believe that narcolepsy is
caused by the process that
affect the brain mechanisms
and regulate rapid eye
movement sleep. For normal
people, their usual sleep
cycle is from 100 up to 110
minutes, beginning with the
non rapid eye movement sleep
to rapid eye movement sleep
after 80 until 100 minutes.
For narcoleptics, they
normally enter rapid eye
movement sleep within only a
few minutes from the
beginning of falling
asleep.
Until
today, there is no
proven cure for treating
narcolepsy. So, the
sudden sleep onset,
cataplexy and over
sleepiness on the
daytime were treated by
involving the
combination of the
practice in getting
sufficient sleep, drugs
and medicines, and
special
treatment.
While
there is no one
proven method for
treating
narcolepsy,
you can help
yourself
tremendously by
understanding this
condition.
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