Does anyone know anything about Narcolepsy?
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at
8:27 pm
soccerstar19872002 asked:
Any of the causes or anything with treatments to it?
Any of the causes or anything with treatments to it?
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Filed under: Narcolepsy
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Yeah, you fall asleep all of the sudden. Be a little more specific.
Its a sleeping disorder
I DO!zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZX….
Symptoms of narcolepsy
The main characteristic of narcolepsy is overwhelming excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), even after adequate nighttime sleep. A person with narcolepsy is likely to become drowsy or to fall asleep, often at inappropriate times and places. Daytime naps may occur with or without warning and may be irresistible. These naps can occur several times a day. These naps are typically refreshing, but only for up to a couple hours. Drowsiness may persist for prolonged periods of time. In addition, night-time sleep may be fragmented with frequent wakenings.
Four other classic symptoms of narcolepsy, which may not occur in all patients, are:
* Cataplexy: sudden episodes of loss of muscle function, ranging from slight weakness (such as limpness at the neck or knees, sagging ****** muscles, or inability to speak clearly) to complete body collapse. Episodes may be triggered by sudden emotional reactions such as laughter, anger, surprise, or fear, and may last from a few seconds to several minutes. The person remains conscious throughout the episode.
* Sleep paralysis: temporary inability to talk or move when waking up. It may last a few seconds to minutes. Often frightening but not dangerous.
* Hypnagogic hallucinations: vivid, often frightening, dream-like experiences that occur while dozing, falling asleep and/or while awakening.
* Automatic behavior: Automatic behavior occurs when a person continues to function (talking, putting things away, etc.) during sleep episodes, but awakens with no memory of performing such activities. It is estimated that up to 40 percent of people with narcolepsy experience automatic behavior during sleep episodes.
Daytime sleepiness, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations also occur in people who do not have narcolepsy, more frequently in people who are suffering from extreme lack of sleep. Cataplexy is generally considered to be unique to narcolepsy.
In most cases, the first symptom of narcolepsy to appear is excessive and overwhelming daytime sleepiness. The other symptoms may begin alone or in combination months or years after the onset of the daytime naps. There are wide variations in the development, severity, and order of appearance of cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations in individuals. Only about 20 to 25 percent of people with narcolepsy experience all four symptoms. The excessive daytime sleepiness generally persists throughout life, but sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations may not.
The symptoms of narcolepsy, especially the excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy, often become severe enough to cause serious disruptions in a person’s social, personal, and professional lives and severely limit activities.
What happens in narcolepsy
Normally, when an individual is awake, brain waves show a regular rhythm. When a person first falls asleep, the brain waves become slower and less regular. This sleep state is called non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. After about an hour and a half of NREM sleep, the brain waves begin to show a more active pattern again. This sleep state, called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, is when most dreaming occurs.
In narcolepsy, the order and length of NREM and REM sleep periods are disturbed, with REM sleep occurring at sleep onset instead of after a period of NREM sleep. Thus, narcolepsy is a disorder in which REM sleep appears at an abnormal time. Also, some of the aspects of REM sleep that normally occur only during sleep–lack of muscular control, sleep paralysis, and vivid dreams–occur at other times in people with narcolepsy. For example, the lack of muscular control can occur during wakefulness in a cataplexy episode. Sleep paralysis and vivid dreams can occur while falling asleep or waking up.
In narcolepsy, the brain does not pass through the normal stages of dozing and deep sleep but goes directly into (and out of) rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This has several consequences:
* Nighttime sleep does not include much deep sleep, so the brain tries to “catch up” during the day, hence EDS
* Narcoleptics fall quickly into what appears to be very deep sleep
* They wake up suddenly and can be disoriented when they do
* They have very vivid dreams, which they often remember
Narcoleptics may dream even when they only fall asleep for a few seconds.
Causes of narcolepsy
While the cause of narcolepsy has not yet been determined, scientists have discovered conditions that may increase an individual’s risk of having the disorder. Specifically, there appears to be a strong link between narcoleptic individuals and certain genetic conditions. One factor that may predispose an individual to narcolepsy involves an area of Chromosome 6 known as the HLA complex. There appears to be a correlation between narcoleptic individuals and certain variations in HLA genes, although it is not required for the condition to occur.
Certain variations in the HLA complex are thought to increase the risk of an auto-immune response to protein producing neurons in the brain. The protein produced, called hypocretin or orexin, is responsible for controlling appetite and sleep patterns. Individuals with narcolepsy often have reduced numbers of these protein producing neurons in their brains.
The neural control of normal sleep states and the relationship to narcolepsy are only partially understood. In humans, narcoleptic sleep is characterized by a tendency to go abruptly from a waking state to REM sleep with little or no intervening non-REM sleep. The changes in the motor and proprioceptive systems during REM sleep have been studied in both human and animal models. During normal REM sleep, spinal and brainstem alpha motor neuron hypopolarization produces almost complete atonia of skeletal muscles via an inhibitory descending reticulospinal pathway. Acetylcholine may be one of the neurotransmitters involved in this pathway. In narcolepsy, the reflex inhibition of the motor system seen in cataplexy is believed identical to that seen in normal REM sleep.[citation needed]
In 2004 researchers in Australia induced narcolepsy-like symptoms in mice by injecting them with antibodies from narcoleptic humans, the research has been published in the Lancet suggesting strong evidences that Narcolepsy might be an autoimmune disease.[citation needed]
Narcolepsy is strongly associated with HLA DQB1*0602 genotype. This may represent linkage disequilibrium.
Despite the experimental evidence in human narcolepsy that there may be an inherited basis for at least some forms of narcolepsy, the mode of inheritance remains unknown.
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People with narcolepsy have trouble staying awake. Narcoleptic often feel drowsy and fall asleep, even in the middle of the day, sometime in the middle of activities that produce strong emotions. It is thought that narcolepsy occurs when rapid eye movement (REM) sleep occurs while people are awake. Although the cause of narcolepsy is unknown, it does occasionally run in families. If one person in a family has the disorder, another relative may be susceptible to developing it if certain environmental triggers occur.