Narcolepsy in people
Common Questions and Answers about Narcolepsy in people
narcolepsy
I think I read somewhere that people with Narcolepsy should try to keep the levels above 350. But i am not sure.
Narcolepsy is a serious neurological disorder involving excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy (loss of muscle tone with emotions such as laughter), sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations. Although narcolepsy affects 1 in every 2,000 people worldwide, it's often misdiagnosed or goes undiagnosed for 3 to 15 years. When will health professionals WAKE UP to the REAL narcolepsy?
i see people, first it started with a woman she is always wearing a pink long gown that flows when she walks. she brought some friends along. one is a young girl about seven she has something in her right hand, i cant tell what it is and the other is a man. the little girl looks sad all the time. the woman looks frightened and the man look really mean. they dont say anything they just stand there with a small gap between them. they go every where i go.
Do you also know if people with this disorder have periods of sleep walking. I have walked in my sleep from time to time since I was a child but it seems to have suddenly multiplied in the last few years. I am now 56 and have had some very life changing events in my life during these last 3-4 years. I am wondering if these traumatic events could have caused the sleep walking to increase. I stay exhausted.
You might have the same symptoms as many of these people and there are a couple suggestions. I found it interesting to know others had the same sensations and all around the same age. I was 17 or 18 when mine started. Still not sure what it is but have much better idea about possibilities I never even considered which is great since it's gotten much worse in short time. Doctor bound after the New Year armed with some way of describing what I'm going through.
http://www.medhelp.
I was diagnosed with CFIDS in 1994. Narcolepsy in 2005. I get basically no stage 4 or Rem sleep at night. Its no wonder why our mind and muscles can't heal themselves. I can go into almost instant dreaming during day (MSLT naps). I haven't been able to get anyone to help me figure out how to correct my sleep cycle. If you get any ideas, let me know. (I am on meds to help sleep and keep me awake at the right times, but it hasn't helped the sleep cycles.
Probably the hardest thing about narcolepsy is getting other people to understand the condition. Most people will just think you are lazy and unmotivated. They will tell you to just suck it up and get out of bed. For the longest time my dad would tell me to that if I went out and did things I wouldnt be sleeping all the time - he never noticed that I would fall asleep anyway.
I here voices of people arund the house sometimes family memebers sometimes people are in the room tooo I can sense and hear them. I try yelling to get my family to help me up because at this point I am hurting all over my entire body. Nobody ever hears me screaming. I then realize I am still sleeping and I and try to force myself awake. When I do finally awake my body is in pain almost a tingling but in a painful way. No quite the same as in a leg or arm falling asleep much worse.
Over the last year I have had a serious problem waking up in the morning. I can sit the alarm clock beside me and have even tried sitting it across the room so I would have to get up out of bed to shut it off. The problem is I don't hear it. The alarm goes off for hours before I even hear it. I have even tried going to bed at the same time every night and still nothing has changed. People have tried to yell at me and shake me awake and I still don't wake up.
sixty to eighty percent of people with narcolepsy suffer from cataplexy. It can be triggered by surprise, fear, anger, or laughter. The effects include slight feelings of weakness and sagging facial muscles, head nodding, buckling knees, loss of arm strength, and mumbling or "garbled" speech. But it may also lead to immediate total body collapse ... these attacks may last from a few seconds to half an hour or so. There is no loss of consciousness.
People with narcolepsy often have a sudden loss of muscle control while awake, usually triggered by strong emotions, such as laughing.
Hallucinations: Some people with narcolepsy experience vivid, sometimes frightening, visual or auditory sensations while falling asleep or upon awakening.
Sleep paralysis: Sleep paralysis is the inability to move or talk at the beginning or end of sleep.
I would describe the pain as deep (feels like it is in the bone), sharp/stabbing (Severity a 7-9 on a scale of 10 - where 10 is excruciating pain) and short in duration (lasts 3-10 seconds). It occurs frequently throughout my day and randomly in different places on my body (i.e. ribs, shoulder, upper and lower arms, fingers, upper and lower legs and sometimes my head).
I'm also always fatigued, sleepy and low energy, but I keep myself moving and motivated.
memory problems, insomnia symptoms, chronic pain, taste hallucinations, smell hallucinations, and twitchy feelings in muscles are actually very characteristic of narcolepsy with cataplexy, and it can be exacerbated by the hormone shifts that happen with menstrual cycles. In fact, often times, people don't have "Bells Palsy," but cataplexy. Viruses and some vaccines (namely the H1N1) can actually precipitate this, but it can happen seemingly in random fashion, too.
The vast majority of doctors have absolutely no idea what it is or what it looks like, and no routine lab tests, MRI, CT scan, x-ray or anything of that nature will detect it. 75% of people with narcolepsy never get diagnosed in their lifetime.
It doesn't look the way you think it looks. Common misdiagnoses are depression, epilepsy, and migraines. I struggled for years to find an answer, and was misdiagnosed several times.
When I started getting older I began seeing things, I would be asleep with my eyes open and see the ceiling falling on me, babies falling from curtains, and sometimes people in my room. Not only would I see these things happening but I would react to them, which always resulted in me running out of my room sometimes falling or not seeing the things around me and running into things. These hallucinations have become a nightly thing and are very scary.
I have narcolepsy with cataplexy. Cataplexy is rare in the absence of narcolepsy, but I believe it is possible. You may want to get a referral to a sleep neurologist to rule out narcolepsy w/ cataplexy, even if you're not sure you have symptoms of it, especially if these attacks are bothersome to you.
The other thing you could be experiencing is presyncope, which can be accompanied by a loss of muscle tone as well as the sensation of almost passing out.
symptoms disappeared with some quality sleep over time. A diagnosis of narcolepsy can radically affect your life in regards to driving license rights and insurability. I wouldn't accept that label until there's nothing else to do to help your symptoms. Then after that, it is what it is.
Although the pt has RLS and PLMS, the arousal associated with these do not likely explain EDS- given a short overall sleep and REM latency, consider narcolepsy clinically. I had 156 arousals, 110 spontaneous, the rest due to limb movement. I also spent most of my sleep time in sleep stages 1 and 2, whith REM episodes scattered randomly. I had no time in stage 3, and when I had REM sleep it was from wake to REM with no progression through the other cycles.
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