Me: “I have narcolepsy.”

Someone: “Oh I know how that feels. :( I’m alllllwwaaaays tired lol.”

Narcolepsy “Fun” Facts I Guess

So today I was diagnosed with narcolepsy… and honestly, it makes sense. I have almost all the symptoms, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions since it’s a 1 in 2,000 people kind of disorder.

Basically, since my brain already doesn’t know how to emotion correctly ((see: depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, etc….)) it may as well not know how to sleep either. Not that sleep and mental disorders are particularly related… but it’s just funny that my brain can’t to anything right. Huzzah.

Here is a breakity-breakdown of what the study showed me and I feel like sharing because reasons.

1. Sleep Architecture

They analyzed my overnight sleep architecture, i.e. what stages of sleep I experience when I sleep at night.

TIME FOR THE SCIENCE, YO.

Stage N1: This is the stage where you’re half-awake, half-asleep. Your body is starting to settle on down and get ready for some serious sleeping. This is the one that a noise or bump can wake you up from. It should comprise 2-5% of your sleepy times. For me? 0%. None. I fell asleep in 36 seconds. ((more on that later))

Stage N2: Okay, so now you’re asleep for realsies. This is where the sleep spindles happen! Sleep spindles are where your brain processes all the info from the day and does whatever else it needs to do. You’re in a tranquil sleep while your brain works out its kinks. It should comprise 45-55% of your sleep ((over half)). For me? 22.9%. Less than half of what it should be.

Stage N3: This is the DEEP sleep. N3 is now the sum of stages 3 and 4, as both are similar enough that in 2008 scientists decided they’re now just one stage. This is also the slow-wave sleep, which means that your neocortical neurons ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex)) get to rest for once. In what used to be N4 but is now the latter part of N3, they excite the neurons to get them ready to roll for the next day. This stage of sleep is also heavily linked to solidifying memories, having night terrors and sleep walking, and other things that happen when you’re in super duper deepy sleepy. This should take up no more than 23% of your sleeping. For me? 59.6%. I am way beyond double what this should be. I am in deep sleep for all the time I should be in N2.

REM Stage: This is where you dream. There’s much more to it than that, but it’s mostly known for when you have your more vivid dreams. This is also when your body takes extra care to shut down your muscles so you don’t act out what you do in your dreams. Normally, this should comprise 20-25% of your sleepy times. I thought this would be the high one for me, but I’m actually slightly under with 17.4%. So this is the closest to normal, surprisingly.

Though this alone wasn’t what lead to my diagnosis. The next morning I was subjected to five sleep latency tests, which is just a fancy word for “lay down for twenty minutes and see if you can fall asleep.” They measure if you fall asleep, how long you’re asleep if you do, and what stages your brain goes into during the sleep. This is the main test for narcolepsy, and the giving factor is your sleep latency ((how quick you fall asleep)) and if you engage in REM sleep during your naps.

So I had five naps. Each two hours apart, and I was not allowed to sleep at all in between naps. They started at 7:30 and ended around 3:30. Many normal people don’t even fall asleep for the naps, but here were my results.

Nap #1: ~7:30 a.m.

Sleep Latency: 2 minutes, 17 seconds

REM?: Yes

Nap #2: ~9:30 a.m.

Sleep Latency: 1 minute, 14 seconds

REM?: Yes

Nap #3: 11:30 p.m.

Sleep Latency: 5 minutes, 40 seconds

REM?: No.

Nap #4: 1:30 p.m.

Sleep Latency: 15 seconds

REM?: Yes.

Nap #5: 3:30 p.m.

Sleep Latency: 4 minutes, 9 seconds

REM?: No.

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A person without narcolepsy likely wouldn’t have fallen asleep for many of the naps, and would have never entered REM sleep for any of them. I slept for every single one, and had REM in three. That’s already secured the hypothesis, but nap 4 really solidified it. It was 1:30 p.m. That’s after lunch, and I fell asleep within 15 SECONDS and had REM.

Whelp.

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So what’s the cure?

There is none. Like mental disorders, there’s no straight up cure for narcolepsy. It’s suspected to be from an absence of a sleep/wake chemical, but drugs looking to synthetically replace said chemical are still being developed.

The best I can do for now is start stimulant drugs to stake ever morning and every afternoon, and to be very mindful of when I sleep and wake. At this point in time, ADD/ADHD medications are effective in treating narcolepsy because they keep the patient awake and alert.

Media portrays narcolepsy as people who just suddenly pass out and fall asleep. That’s grossly incorrect ((as those are sleep attacks, an uncommon side effect of narcolepsy)). Narcolepsy, in short, is an inability to stay awake to a significant level. It sounds simple, but it’s disruptive, destructive, and a nightmare to live with. Imagine sleeping 12 hours and waking up tired. Hell, you can sleep as little or as long as you want but YOU’RE ALWAYS TIRED. You fall asleep in class, you have to chug caffeine to stay awake at work, you can’t sleep at night but you sleep all day if you can, you blur what happens in dreams with what happens in reality ((WHICH GETS SUPER CONFUSING)), you drop things at random because of the cataplexy, you’re just so freaking tired ALL THE TIME.

Sorry this turned into a rant… but it just sucks.