Narcolepsy Drug Treatment

As of now, there is no cure for narcolepsy yet. However, lifestyles and behavioral modifications can help people cope with narcolepsy in their daily lives.  Certain narcolepsy drug treatments are known to give positive results in minimizing narcolepsy symptoms.

One of the most common narcolepsy drug treatment is using stimulants.  Stimulants is a drug that helps to stimulate the system in central nervous and it is a primary treatment to make narcoleptics stay awake. Modafinil, also called Progivil, is a new stimulant which is not as addictive and it also does not drive people to the lows and highs that usually can be found in other drugs. Some narcoleptics need  stronger treatment with Ritalin and Amphetamine. These medications are very effective in helping them to stay awake but it does cause some side effects such as addictive and nervousness.

Antidepressants are another narcolepsy drug treatment used to treat people with narcolepsy. It is usually prescribed by a doctor to suppress rapid eye movement sleep and to help in the symptoms of hallucinations, sleep paralysis and cataplexy. Other antidepressant includes Tofranil, Vivactil and selective serotonin like Prozac and Zoloft.

Another drug treatment for narcolepsy is the Sodium oxybate. This type of medication drug helps patient to control cataplexy. Besides, it helps in improving night sleep which is very hard for narcoleptics. If taken in high doses, it can also help to control the problems of excessive sleepiness. However, this drug can lead to some serious side effects like sleep walking and breathing problems. That is why it is regulated by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).

For both cataplexy and excessive sleepiness in daytime, Xyrem were used. It is approved for small subset of narcoleptics that didn’t respond to other drugs. The mechanism by which it affects cataplexy is still unknown. It has its own history of abused drug. Therefore, FDA has approved it as controlled drug and it is legally approved to be used to gives control on narcolepsy symptoms.

There are increasing concerns that all these kind of drug treatments for narcolepsy will no longer be as effective if used regularly and continuously for a long period of time. That is why some healthcare providers recommend that narcoleptics to have a drug holiday, that is, not to take these drugs for one day or two in a week. On that day, the patients need to do activities that require them to stay awake, but it is important there is someone should be there to look after the patient or in other words, the patient is not alone. This is to ensure that patient is safe if anything happen like the occurrence of the sleep attack.