Do you have such friends around you, they are always sleepy for no reason. One second they may be in class, working, or playing games, and the next second they will find that they are asleep;
Sometimes in the middle of the chat, I suddenly don't reply to the message, and after a while, I send a message: "Sorry, I fell asleep"......
They may not be "blood thickened" as they say, and "eating too much carbohydrate is sleepy"; Rather, it may be that you have a "strange" disease - narcolepsy:
What is narcolepsy
If you're also constantly sleepy, take a look at these typical symptoms:
1、过度白天嗜睡（EDS）
This is the most common symptom of narcolepsy, and patients often suffer from extreme daytime fatigue and drowsiness, making it difficult to stay awake and severely affecting work and daily activities.
2、猝倒（Cataplexy）
Cataplexy attacks are usually triggered by strong emotional reactions such as laughter, happiness, anger, sadness, etc., and a small number of people may also have seizures when eating or exercising.
Cataplexy occurs with a decrease in respiratory rate and amplitude, which is usually brief (within 2 minutes) and can be quickly and fully recovered.
3. Sleep paralysis
The patient is temporarily unable to move or speak when falling asleep or waking up. Although conscious, unable to move or speak independently, often accompanied by dyspnea and various forms of hallucinations, mostly terrifying experiences, generally lasting tens of seconds to minutes, can immediately return to normal under external stimuli.
4. Hallucinations
In particular, very real, often visual hallucinations may occur when falling asleep or waking up.
This disease seriously affects the patient's learning, life and social functioning, affects the patient's education, participation in employment, and may also affect the income situation, loss of promotion opportunities, etc.
How narcolepsy is diagnosed
However, because narcolepsy is not common, some of its symptoms can be confused with other diseases, so it is easy to be misdiagnosed and missed clinically. Like what:
Sleep apnea syndrome: it also causes repeated pauses in breathing during sleep, often resulting in excessive daytime sleepiness and may be confused with the main symptoms of narcolepsy [1];
Chronic fatigue syndrome: people feel extreme tiredness on a persistent basis, but unlike narcolepsy, tiredness in CFS is usually not caused by a sleep disorder;
Epilepsy: Especially in the case of cataplexy seizures, seizures may be mistaken for epileptic due to muscle weakness.
Therefore, in addition to judging from symptoms, an important method for diagnosing narcolepsy is neuroelectrophysiological examination, including nocturnal polysomnography and a sleep latency test for multiple daytime naps the next day.
Clinically, questionnaires are also used to assist in assessing the core symptoms and severity of narcolepsy for screening, diagnosis and efficacy evaluation.
Although narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disease, there is currently no way to prevent it, but it can also be helped to alleviate symptoms through medication and some other adjuvant treatments
Editor: Dr. Chunyu
Source: Yitu.com
Bibliography:
[1]Scammell, T. E. (2015). Narcolepsy. The New England journal of medicine, 373(27), 2654-2662.