Maxwell Adeyemi

HAVE YOU sat next to or worked with someone who habitually falls asleep on the job and in every situation you see them they tend to nod off or snooze off with relative ease? They may be suffering from narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder that affects the control of sleep and wakefulness. People with narcolepsy experience excessive daytime sleepiness and intermittent, uncontrollable episodes of falling asleep during the daytime. These sudden sleep attacks may occur during any type of activity at any time of the day.

In a typical sleep cycle, we initially enter the early stages of sleep followed by deeper sleep stages and ultimately (after about 90 minutes) rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. For people suffering from narcolepsy, rapid eye movement sleep occurs almost immediately in the sleep cycle, as well as periodically during the waking hours. It is in the REM phase of sleep that we can experience dreams and muscle paralysis – which explains some of the symptoms of narcolepsy.

Symptoms of narcolepsy

People with narcolepsy experience various types of daytime and night-time sleep problems that are associated with REM sleep disturbances that tend to begin subtly and may change dramatically over time. The most common major symptom, other than excessive daytime sleepiness, is cataplexy, which occurs in about 70 per cent of all people with narcolepsy. Sleep paralysis and hallucinations are somewhat less common.

Excessive

daytime sleepiness

Excessive daytime sleepiness, the symptom most consistently experienced by almost all individuals with narcolepsy, is usually the first to become clinically apparent. This interferes with normal activities on a daily basis, whether or not individuals had sufficient sleep at night.

It is a persistent sense of mental cloudiness, a lack of energy, a depressed mood, or extreme exhaustion. Some people experience memory lapses, and many have great difficulty maintaining their concentration while at school, work, or home.

As many as 40 per cent of people with narcolepsy are prone to automatic behaviour during such “micro sleeps.” Automatic behaviour involves performing a task during a short period of sleep but without any apparent interruption.

During these episodes, people are usually engaged in habitual, essentially "second nature" activities such as taking notes in class, typing, or driving. They cannot recall their actions, and their performance is almost always impaired.

Their handwriting may, for example, degenerate into an illegible scrawl, or they may store items in bizarre locations and then forget where they placed them. If an episode occurs while driving, individuals may get lost or have an accident.

Loss of muscle tone (Cataplexy)

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle tone while the person is awake that leads to feelings of weakness and a loss of voluntary muscle control. Attacks can occur at any time during the waking period, with individuals usually experiencing their first episodes several weeks or months after the ons