Always falling a sleep? Maybe it’s Narcolepsy
Have you ever been sitting and all of a sudden you dooze off? I have seen co-workers sitting at a computer charting and the next minute the computer is buzzing. I look at the person and they had fallen asleep with there finger on the keyboard and the same letter going across, row after row after row.
This person most likely is suffering from lack of sleep - sleep deprivation. But there is a sleep disorder that causes people to fall asleep at anytime. It’s called Narcolepsy.
Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder caused by the brain’s inability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally. People with narcolepsy fall asleep for periods of time from a few seconds to several minutes and sometimes for as long as an hour or longer.
Narcoleptic sleep episodes can occur at any time. People may involuntarily fall asleep at anytime. Besides daytime sleepiness, three other symptoms characterize narcolepsy-cataplexy, or the sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone-vivid hallucinations during sleep onset or upon awakening-brief episodes of total paralysis at the beginning or end of sleep.
People with narcolepsy do not spend a greater proportion of their time asleep during a 24-hour period than do normal sleepers. People have daytime drowsiness and involuntary sleep episodes, but have frequent awakenings during nighttime sleep.
For most adults, a normal night’s sleep lasts about 8 hours and is composed of four to six separate sleep cycles.
Scientists believe that narcolepsy is caused by disease processes affecting brain mechanisms that regulate REM sleep. For normal sleepers a typical sleep cycle is about 100 - 110 minutes long, beginning with NREM sleep and transitioning to REM sleep after 80 - 100 minutes. But, people with narcolepsy enter REM sleep within a few minutes of falling asleep.
Well, it’s time for me to go to sleep. Come back and visit again and you will learn more about narcolepsy.
Good Night to All,
Cheryl
Tags: narcolepsy, Sleep Disorders, sleep paralysis, the science of sleep, too much sleep