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What Tests Are Used to Diagnose Narcolepsy

What is narcolepsy?

Narcolepsy is a neurological condition that is a disorder that begins with the brain resulting in excessive sleepiness during the day despite otherwise getting enough sleep. It will also affect your quality of sleep—the condition results from the brain’s inability or difficulty to control your sleep-wake cycles.

According to a study, adult individuals fall into the REM state of sleep (a sleep stage that allows you to dream) in 60 to 90 minutes. At this stage, your brain keeps your muscles limp to stop your body from responding to your dreams.

On the other hand, people with narcolepsy tend to enter the REM stage within 15 minutes of sleep and wake up feeling the muscle weakness from the dream experienced during the REM stage. Narcolepsy also makes you feel exhausted during the day. This fatigue can cause you to fall asleep in the middle of an activity such as driving. There are other symptoms of narcolepsy, some of which include hallucination, muscle weakness, also known as cataplexy [4], and sleep paralysis [5].

The symptoms may appear mild, such that you don’t suspect narcolepsy. You must pay attention to them and visit your doctor if you think it is narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy will deprive you of a good night’s rest which is very important to your health and wellbeing. Like the disrupted sleep-wake cycle caused by narcolepsy, frequently interrupted sleep can lead to long-term effects on your overall health, starting from affecting your brain function.