Narcolepsy: Symptoms and meaning

Let’s find out the narcolepsy symptoms. By the end of this post, you will able to know everything about narcolepsy meaning and more about it.

Narcolepsy meaning

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that causes a man to suffer from abnormal sleep during the day. People with narcolepsy often feel sleepy at any time and drowsiness. Which is called a “sleep attack”.

They often do not sleep well at night and during the day they sleep at anywhere and any time. This situation negatively impacts your daily life.

Study shows that narcolepsy is a very rare condition. Among 2000 people it affects only 1. Between the age of 10 to 25, its symptoms are more common.

In some cases, there is a risk of a sudden loss of muscle tone due to narcolepsy. This condition is known as cataplexy.

People with narcolepsy often face the problems like concentration and memory issues in work or school, relationship issues, etc. Some lifestyle changes and medicine can help you to manage narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy symptoms

Excessive daytime sleepiness

This symptom is normally the first symptom of narcolepsy. Excessive daytime sleepiness makes you feel more drowsiness and low.

People with narcolepsy feel sleepy suddenly and fall asleep anywhere and any time. For example, narcolepsy individuals suddenly fall asleep when they talking or doing something with their friends.

And they sleep for up to half-an-hour sometimes. After waking up you feel sleepy again after some time. Your focusing and concentration level is decreased during this condition.

Cataplexy (KAT-uh-plek-see)

This condition can cause a temporary loss of muscle tone. It causes several physical changes from drooping eyelids to the weakness of most muscles. This condition is triggered by intense emotions like excitement or laughter and anger, fear, etc.

Cataplexy is usually uncontrollable. When some people suffering from cataplexy laugh, their heads droop uncontrollably. Some people with narcolepsy face cataplexy several times a day, on the other hand, some people face it one or two times a year only.

This does not mean that everyone who suffers from narcolepsy has cataplexy.

Hallucinations

There are two types of hallucinations. One is hypnagogic hallucinations and another is hypnopompic hallucinations.

Hypnagogic hallucinations occur when you fall asleep and hypnopompic hallucinations happen when you walking.

These hallucinations are usually vivid and terrible because even when you do not sleep fully, you still dream.

Sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis is a condition, in which the victim fell temporarily unable to move or speak while waking or falling asleep. It can be fearful for some. Usually, it lasts long for a few seconds or minutes.

Sleep paralysis mimics the temporary paralysis seen during a period of sleep, which called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. It does not affect the movement of the eyes or the ability to breathe.

Remember one thing that, not every sleep paralysis individual has narcolepsy and some people face sleep paralysis without narcolepsy.

Affects on rapid eye movement (REM) sleep

In the REM sleep stage, you experience vivid dreams. In normal people it happens only after about 90 minutes you fall asleep deeply.

But people with narcolepsy REM sleep stage can happen in just 15 minutes after sleep at any time of the day.

Low quality sleep at night

People with narcolepsy often sleep multiple times in the daytime. So it is seen that their quality of night sleep is often poor.

Automate behaviors

When people with narcolepsy fall asleep after some work, they may keep doing that work unconsciously without realizing that they are doing that work.

Restless legs syndrome, obstructive sleep apnea, insomnia are some conditions that can also be related to narcolepsy.

Find out everything about snoring here.

Conclusion

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