The Narcolepsy Sleeping Disorder

Narcolepsy is a chronic quietudeing disorder with no sure cause. The main characteristic is excessive and over day conviction sleepiness, even after(prenominal) a good nights rest. A person with narcolepsy will usually be truly drowsy or fall asleep, particularly at unappropriate times and places. day attacks may or may non occur withouth some(prenominal) warn (This is a personal account of someone with Narcolepsy that i found on the Science News website) My problems started in the fall of 1954 when football practice began middling before school started. I would be so exhausted after practice that I could bargonly make it ome.Upon doing so I would identify down on the floor and go to sleep. I knew that something was seriously handle with me and there wasnt anyway that I could play football. The previous year I was a starter on the varsity team. The adjacent ten years were very difficult for me. Doctor after doctor made diagnoses that were abuse. battalion around you thi nk that you are lazy, sleep all the time, you have no interest in anything and worst of all, you begin to think you are offensive and lazy. During this ten years, I have had sleep attacks while driving a car. When I would awaken, I would have traveled 20 r 30 miles and not remember a thing.I have gone to sleep on my feet while working and standing still. I would go to the tin apprize buoy just to be able to close my eyes for a hapless period of time. I would use cigarettes as a timer. You can informal a cigarette and slide it between your fingers down toward your palm, different lengths to prepare the time. When the cigarette burns down toward your fingers How I found out what was wrong with me There was an article in a magazine which came with the Sunday paper. When I read the article, I immediately knew that i had found the answer to my problem. The next morning I went to the local Doctor and asked him if he had read the article.He responded that he had, but the symptoms wo uld fit just about everyone in town. I told him he might be right, but how many people did he k flat have their knees buckle or lose control of their deal when they laughed, got mad, or were surprised. I asked if he would write a prescription for Ritalin. When I took my first pill of Ritalin, it was the first time I had felt any source of energy for over 10 years. I am now 61 years old and I am from a time when the workplace was very different from today. Management id not take the time, nor were they necessary to try to understand disabilities.If a company found out that you were a narcoleptic, they would terminate you, because they were afraid you would hurt someone else in the work place. I worked as a professional mechanic for 20 years and thusly worked in the gas industry on the retail level for another(prenominal) 22 years. I have not had an accident of any configuration as a result of my narcolepsy. It seems as though subconsciously, I knew when I was in danger and would always wake up. My advice to anyone that has had a proper diagnosis as to their narcolepsy is the following. Get to know thy self, be aware and study what set up your behavior when this or that happens.Symptoms typically appear during adolescence, although the disease itself may not be diagnosed for many years afterward. The primary symptom is an overwhelming touching of fatigue, together with sleep attacks that may occur with or without warning. About 75% of patients also experience cataplexy, a sudden loss of muscle life lasting a few seconds to 30 minutes, but without loss of consciousness. Episodes of narcolepsy can be triggered by emotions such as laughter, fear, or anger. Other symptoms implicate sleep aralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations as the person wakes up or locomote asleep.Some patients may also have trouble staying asleep at Recent research suggests that the cause of narcolepsy maybe involves a dead enchantment of cells in your brain, in dogs and mice they hav e found this patch of dead cells that they ahave support causes narcolepsy to these animals. The exact cell pattern has not been identified in humans, and scientists give voice we may find the source in as close to 2 years with good research. Twin studies suggest that narcolepsy is not definately a contractable disease, since only 25% of the ime will both twins have the condition. The put on the line for a person whose immediate relative has narcolepsy is only about 1-2%.This baffles doctors because narcolepsy can show up out of nowhere, but also may rush in the family, but not always. The treatment for narcolepsy usually involves taking medications to subdue sleepiness during the day and in those who have cataplexy, other medications to proceed cataplexy. The medications to prevent sleep during the day are a group of medicines called stimulants that includes Ritalin, Adderall, Dexedrine, Provigil and others. Cataplexy is usually toughened with antidepressant edications that repress REM (dreaming) sleep such as Tofranil, Norpramin, Prozac, paroxetime and Zoloft.Narcolepsy can be diagnosed easily when all the symptoms are present. Two tests are usually done to verify the diagnosis. These tests are usually done by a sleep doctor. The polysomnogram records your brain waves when you sleep in the night, and once you go into REM (Rapid Eye Movement) if the brain waves look the same then this helps in diagnosis. With the multiple latency test people are to do an exercise they regularly do any other day and every 2 hours the doctors tell them if they feel drowsy that they should try o sleep and so forthI have also read though that doctors usually practise diagnose narcolepsy easily, in many stories like the one above, people enjoin that doctors said that they had anything but narcolepsy. Narcolepsy usually can show up as many things, doctors usually at at first call it a lack of sleep, and other times they may say that you I wise(p) a lot from this report. Before I did this report I design that narcolepsy was just always being tired and sometimes taking a nap during the day, but I was wrong. I think narcolepsy would be a very aggrevating and embarrasing disease.