Narcolepsy Symptoms
People that suffer from narcolepsy often have a number of problems that are related to day and night sleep. There are four main symptoms of narcolepsy, and the main symptom is called excessive daytime sleepiness; the second one is cataplexy which happens in about 70%.
Hallucinations and sleep paralysis are less common, and during the illness only less than 25% of people would have all four of those symptoms.
Excessive Daytime Sleepiness
Excessive daytime sleepiness is the most common symptom that people with narcolepsy would have, and usually it is the first to become clear as well.
It interferes with usual activities on a daily basis, regardless of the amount of sleep you had last night. People describe it as a sense of mental cloudiness, feeling depressed, being out of energy and being extremely exhausted. A lot of people also find it hard to concentrate at work or school, some people might even suffer from memory loss.
Many people find it difficult to be alert in situations that would include watching TV, listening to lectures and similar.
They also suffer from involuntary sleep episodes or sleep attacks, that can lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes. About 49% of people with narcolepsy would have those so called micro sleeps or automatic behaviour. That involves doing a task during this period of sleep without having apparent interruption. During this time people would be involved in doing activities such as typing, driving or taking note on lectures, however they can never recall their actions.
Cataplexy
Cataplexy can be described as a sudden less of muscle tone that leads to a feeling of weakness and loss of some or all of the muscles control. The attacks can occur at any time, and usually they would start a few months later after the person started experiencing excessive sleepiness. Sometimes it can be the first symptom.
Attacks are different in severity and duration, and sometimes can be mistook for a seizure disorder. As mentioned earlier, the loss of muscle tone can be just a moment of slight weakness in a limited amount of muscles, or it can be quite severe and can result in a total loss in all muscles, that can lead to physical collapse when a person can not be able to speak, move or even keep the eyes open.
However even through the most severe episodes, people remain fully conscious, which helps to distinguish narcolepsy from seizures. It can appear suddenly, however in most cases it would be triggered by strong emotions, such as anger, fear, stress or strong positive emotions. The most common trigger is laughter.
Sleep Paralysis
Sleep paralysis is a temporarily inability to speak or move. Usually it goes unnoticed because it is happening when people are fully asleep. Sleep paralysis would be similar to a cataplectic attack that affects the whole body, and people also remain conscious.
These two symptoms can be very scary, and many people, especially when they first had it thought that they were dying. However, even after strong and severe episodes, people gain full capacity to sepal and move.
Hallucinations
Hallucinations sometimes will accompany sleep paralysis, and images that people see could be quite frightening because they are vivid. Most often people see things, however sometimes other sense can be involved, and people can hear or smell something.
People might also have disrupted sleep, as most would have difficulties to maintain sleep, as it can be disrupted by insomnia, dreaming, acting out while asleep, sleep talking and leg movements. Narcolepsy can sometimes cause obesity, which can be a side effect, however it can be managed by a proper treatment.
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