Narcolepsy and
Symptom
Narcolepsy is not really well known and
familiar for many people. People don’t really realize that
narcolepsy is actually a chronic disease affected from central
nervous systems. Extreme sleepiness in the daytime is the main
and most problematic symptom. Research of narcolepsy on
epidemiology proves that incident of 0.2 up to 1.6 per thousand
in US, Europe, and Japan, there’s at least as wide as of the
Multiple Sclerosis.

However, there are many cases where only
until many years after the onset symptom, it was diagnosed.
This was due by the fact that people who suffer narcolepsy will
only consult a doctor or physician after few years of over
sleepiness, which at first they did not indicate this as a
disease.
Being a very undiagnosed and uncontrollable
kind of illness, narcolepsy might really gives effects on its
victim and it really frustrating and devastating. Even patients
that were treated well still suffer from impaired in work
surrounding, their relations with others, leisure and are
exposing to accidents more frequently.
Nowadays, majority of people who had
narcolepsy are still undiagnosed. There is one study that shows
mean number of years between correct diagnosed and onset
symptoms was 14 years long. Because normally narcolepsy occur
during adolescence, most narcoleptics were diagnosed very late
to prevent the effect of narcolepsy on their professional and
personal development.
Using special medical procedures, narcolepsy
can be diagnosed. The diagnosis is normally simple and easy if
the illness and symptoms of narcolepsy present. Often, symptoms
that associate with the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep are
mild, sleep latency test, and nocturnal polysomnogram were
highly recommended. Those tests can be performed at sleep
disorders specialist clinics or hospitals. As a result, it can
confirm the patient’s daytime sleepiness only by showing a
sleep latency which normally takes less than five minutes
including the abnormal short latency related to the first rapid
eye movement period.
There are many symptoms caused by
narcolepsy. One of the main narcolepsy symptoms is obviously
the extreme sleepiness during daytime and abnormal rapid eye
movement sleep. Many people don’t really know about this
disease but it is actually dangerous and serious. This gives an
opportunity to researchers to gather information about central
mechanisms relating to alertness and rapid eye movement sleep.
It is known that some uncontrollable symptoms of narcolepsy
like cataplexy, sleep paralysis and hallucinations are caused
of rapid eye movements sleep.
Additional narcoleptics symptoms include
automatic behavior, where patients usually carry out some
actions with no consciousness and disturbance in nocturnal
sleep. All of these symptoms may occur in many degrees and
combinations of severity. This disease usually starts to occur
in young adults and teenagers no matter the gender or race. The
first symptoms that occur are the excessive sleepiness. People
doesn’t really notice it until it get worst over
time.
Changes of lifestyle, medicines, and
stimulants can really help to make the narcolepsy’s patient
better and help them to live a normal life.
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