The Symptoms of Narcolepsy

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The symptoms of narcolepsy involving diagnosis and treatment on patients
Being able to stay awake is important. There are many tasks that a person will need to stay awake and be alert. For example, a surgeon will need to stay focused to not harm a patient during surgery. Being awake while driving is vital if one does not want to risk an injury or death. There are some people that may have trouble to stay awake. A sleep disorder that affects the function of sleep and ability to stay awake is called narcolepsy. People with this disorder can experience drowsiness that will result in sleep during the day. It can last from several seconds to minutes. Narcolepsy will affect a person’s schedule, such as performance in school or work.
Both males and females around the world can be affected by narcolepsy. The symptoms can begin in childhood or later throughout the years, around the age of 10 to 25. They can worsen for the early years and progress for life. The four main symptoms are excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.
Excessive daytime sleepiness is the first symptom to be seen for narcolepsy; a person will fall asleep easily without any waning. It can happen in relaxed situations and at the wrong times and places. Some examples would be people falling asleep while watching television, having a conversation, or attending a meeting. People may still experience excessive daytime sleepiness even after a sufficient amount of sleep. This can last from a few minutes to a half-hour before one will wake up feeling replenished and then continue to sleep. “Patients may describe this symptom as being tired, fatigued, sleepy, feeling lazy, or having low energy.”
The symptom of cataplexy involves a mus...

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... multiple sleep latency test, or the MSLT. The MSLT consists of observing a person’s habit to fall asleep and see if isolated elements of REM happen at unusual times during the waking hours. It measure the amount of time it takes

The symptoms of narcolepsy 7 for a person to fall asleep. A patient is told to take from four to five naps, but each nap is two hours apart. With sleep latency periods usually being twelve minutes or longer, an eight minute or less of a sleep latency proposes a disorder of excessive daytime sleepiness. Heart rate and respiratory rates are measured by the MSLT. If a person goes through REM sleep either at the beginning or after a few minutes of sleep onset during at least two of the required naps, it is seen as a sign of narcolepsy.

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