Diagnosing Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy, defined by WebMD as a neurological disorder that affects the control of sleep and wakefulness, is a rare disorder that usually starts between 15 and 25 years of age. On a normal night, a person would go to sleep and enter into a much deeper sleep stage called rapid eye movement (REM). During REM, one would experience vivid dreams and muscle paralysis. Although narcoleptic people go into REM during the nighttime, they also do during the day at any point. Diagnosing Narcolepsy can be easy. A common way to diagnose a narcoleptic person is by a polysomnogram, or PSG, and multiple sleep latency test, or MSLT. The PSG testing, where doctors observe the patient sleeping at night, is a crucial part of diagnosing the problem. The test …show more content…
The MSLT, unlike the PSG, is used during the day to assess if the patient falls asleep and to evaluate if parts of REM came about at inappropriate times. In this test, the patient is required to take four or five short naps during the day, where the doctors would calculate how long it took the person to fall asleep. So, if the doctors determine that the latency was eight minutes or less, that would show a disorder for daytime sleepiness. Even though these two tests could benefit diagnosing a patient with narcolepsy, some cases aren't recorded or recognized, so, they are not …show more content…
That is when an individual is unable to move or speak when waking or going to bed. Luckily, sleep paralysis only lasts a few seconds and the person goes back to normal. Hallucinations are yet another sign of Narcolepsy. Hallucinations are vivid, yet frightening images that a person experiences. Hypnagogic hallucinations occur during sleep, while, hypnopompic hallucinations occur when waking. Lastly, if one experiences disrupted nocturnal sleep, then they might have Narcolepsy. Disrupted nocturnal sleep is when a person can fall asleep, but not stay asleep. Someone might sleep talk, move legs numerous times and act out while