Narcolepsy Symptoms: How to Recognize

Narcolepsy symptoms are often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed by doctors. This is because they do not consider the diagnosis of narcolepsy often enough when confronted with the symptoms. The prevalence of narcolepsy is therefore believed to be more than what is reported.

To know if you are suffering from the disorder, here's the list of the narcolepsy symptoms;


Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS)

It is present in all narcoleptics. The person feels an overwhelming tiredness during the day. The feeling occurs even when they had rested enough at night. Mental cloudiness, memory lapses and lack of energy can often result.

They will also experience sleep attacks at various times of the day.  They literally sleep in the middle of doing something, without warning. The sleep attacks occur even when they are eating, driving, talking, or playing. It can be really inconvenient and embarrassing for the person. It can also lead to serious mistakes and accidents if the person is doing a dangerous activity when the sleep attack occurs.

A sleep attack usually lasts for 15 minutes to one hour. It tends to recur within one to several hours. They feel refreshed after waking up from sleep attacks. But after an hour or two, they feel tired and sleepy once again.

Cataplexy

It is the only unique symptom of narcolepsy. It is the sudden loss of muscle tone and strength in the body. The person loses control of his reflex and voluntary muscles. It can be mild, where the knees buckle or the head drop or the jaws go slack. But if it is severe, a person loses control of all his muscles resulting to body collapse. They cannot talk or move, but they will remain conscious during the episodes. This differs from epilepsy where they became unconscious during an attack. It commonly lasts for only a few seconds or up to 30 minutes. Sudden strong emotions trigger the attack. These could be laughter, excitement, anger, fear or surprise.

Hypnagogic & Hypnopompic Hallucinations

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These are dreams that interfere on wakefulness. Thus, it will cause episodes of seeing or hearing things that the brain recognizes as real. They seem realistic and is terrifying. If it happens as the person fall sleep, they are called hypnogogic hallucinations. If they happened when waking up, they are called hypnopompic. In visual hallucinations, they usually see colored forms that change sizes or shape. Auditory hallucinations include random sounds or melodies. Tactile hallucinations include feelings of rubbing or even levitation.

Sleep Paralysis

It is the inability to move or speak at the beginning or end of sleep. They hear strange noises, like footsteps or voices. Some may feel an existence of someone being in the room. They can also feel an inability to breathe, like there's someone sitting on their chest. These can be terrifying to a person, especially when experienced for the first time. The condition does not present a true danger to the person though.

Disturbed Nocturnal Sleep (DNS)

Nighttime sleep is usually disturbed for a narcoleptic person. They experience difficulty falling or staying asleep. They will also have increased body movement while sleeping. They can experience hot flashes, increased heart rate and intense alertness. Their daytime sleepiness worsens because of not being able to sleep well at night.

Automatic Behavior

It happens during brief sleep attacks, called "microsleep". Automatic behavior is when a person continues to function even when sleeping.  They are doing routine activities when this happens. They are not aware of their actions, so they cannot perform the activity well. For example, a person driving may end up in a different destination. Or they can be having a conversation and suddenly jumps from one unrelated topic to another.

Narcolepsy symptoms can often go undiagnosed for decades. How can a person begin a step towards treating the disorder when he doesn't know what he has? If you think you are a narcoleptic, talk to your doctor right away. Only through understanding can a person learn to live with its symptoms.

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