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.
