If You Sleep a lot You Might Be Narcoleptic – See Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

Exams are just around the corner, and you are having butterflies flitting in your stomach. Once again you feel motivated toward your exam and just want to nail it this time. But you have come to a realization about how good you’re at sleeping. You are like, ‘’it’s always been my special talent, in past few weeks my ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, and in any way has grown exponentially’’.  Sleep is the perfect way to relax and most obviously, to re-energize. It’s only natural that people, especially busy students, take every available opportunity to catch up on some Z s. The gift of having the ability to fall asleep at any time, any place, regardless of the situation is most cherished during the times when students need to take a much needed short break or when they are finally done with one assignment and need to reward themselves before starting the next. But let me tell you that slumbering anywhere, at any place, at any time is not any kind of talent at all. It’s a medical condition called NARCOLEPSY.

What is narcolepsy?

It is a chronic disease in which the patient can fall asleep at any place and at any place that one cannot help, no matter how long they had slept in recent days. The patient will feel great after sleeping for about 15 minutes, but then energy decline and they fall asleep again. Narcolepsy can occur while driving, working, or talking. It is a lifelong disease with no absolute treatment. Anyone can get this Narcolepsy. Among all ages, the most vulnerable age is between 15 and 30Narcolepsy occurs equally in men and women and is thought to affect roughly 1 in 2,000 people.

Causes and symptoms

Narcolepsy has four general symptoms:

• Excessive daytime sleeping
• Sleep paralysis
• Hallucinations
• Disturbed sleep at night

It is caused due to an autoimmune disorder, brain injury, and family history.

Treatment:

Modafinil is a drug approved by FDA used orally for improving wakefulness in patients with sleepyhead. Tentative evidence suggests that this drug improves cognitive function and handle mood swing. It also enhances cognitive performance in schizophrenic patients as an adjunct to antipsychotic medication,   in healthy subjects deprived of sleep, and non-deprived subjects alike, and improves executive function in patients depending upon alcohol by modulating the functional connectivity of the default mode network. Modafinil is the world’s first “smart drug” that is safe, proved by researchers and scientist at Harvard

Dosage:

• 50 mg to enhance cognitive function
• 200mg once a day for narcolepsy or shift work disorder
• For treating narcolepsy, use in morning
• For shift work disorder, use one hour prior to work

Even though it’s safe, a prescription is a good option, and you should handle it with care. With that said, different smart drugs affect people differently according to various factors. What works excellent for one does not necessarily work well for all.