Falling Asleep on the Job: The Story of Narcolepsy

Falling Asleep on the Job: The Story of Narcolepsy

Have you ever pulled two all nighters in a row? If you have then you know that afterwards, during the day, you drift off to sleep very easily. You feel physically and mentally exhausted and your body tells you that you need to rest. This is a normal reaction by the body to the lack of sleep. This however is something that people suffering from narcolepsy must deal with on a daily basis even when they have had a full nights sleep. One of the major symptoms they suffer from is overwhelming daytime sleepiness.

Imagine you are in a boring lecture and you start to drift to sleep, usually you can manage to force yourself to wake up. This may be common occurrence but try to imagine falling asleep while driving or walking. These situations seem more rare. A narcoleptic’s body doesn’t care what it is doing when it goes into these paralyzed sleeping episodes. The sudden overwhelming feeling drives the narcoleptic person to fall asleep. One type of episode that they experience is called cataplexy, which is usually caused by some stressful situation or other common activities such as laughing or running (6). During these periods the person suffers from muscle weakness and paralysis. Although the person appears to be sleeping, they are still conscious, but unable to move. They can hear and feel but cannot react to stimulation. For this reason narcolepsy is a very dangerous condition to have without receiving treatment because serious vehicle accidents can result as well as an general inability to succeed in school (6).

Another major symptom that affects narcoleptics is called hypnagogic hallucinations, which they experience when they are falling asleep. These hallucinations can in...

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... narcolepsy as well.

6) Narcolepsy: Althogh people with the disorder do not fall face-first into their soup as in the movies, narcolepsy is still a mysterious disease. But science has new leads., Siegel really knows what he is talking about.

http://www.sciam.com/missing.cfm

7)Mystery of Human Narcolepsy Solved, He is the master of these studies

http://websciences.org/narnet/current_news/01_winter1.html

8)University of Pennsylvania Narcolepsy Research Project, A nice summary

http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/Narcolepsy/narcolepsy.htm

9)Organization of amygdaloid projections to brainstem dopaminergic, noradrenergic and adrenergic cell groups in the rat, Brain Res Bull, 1992, volume 28, pp 447-454, Very detailed info

10)Living with Narcolepsy, Go info about the lives of Narcoleptics

http://www.sleepfoundation.org/publications/livingnarcolepsy.html