Narcolepsy

Video Transcript

"Another condition that we would see in the sleep disorder clinic is known as narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is alternately not well known by the bulk of the population, and it's sort of a rare disorder if you will. And also there's a social conception of it. There's been portrayals of it in the media and sort of misconceptions about it and exactly what it is. Narcolepsy is a condition in which a person has sleep attacks, is constantly sleepy. It's sort of a malfunction of the sleep center of the brain which causes a person to feel fatigue when they're not fatigued. Even after what they perceive to be a full night's sleep, they're still not rested. They're tired during the day. It can appear with and without cataplexy. Cataplexys are forms of attacks that happen in somebody with narcolepsy where upon feeling a strong emotion, laughter, sadness, anger, sometimes during orgasm, something happens to a person's body where there muscle tone is lost. And they can collapse, it can look like a seizure, look like fainting. It's often misinterpreted as such. And narcolepsy doesn't need to have cataplexy to be narcolepsy. There's, it doesn't change the diagnosis other than to say you have narcolepsy with cataplexy or without cataplexy. But cataplexy is generally, it's not seen without narcolepsy. So if you experience cataplectic attacks, it means you have narcolepsy and the cataplexy needs to be treated along with it. "