Narcolepsy 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.
