Narcolepsy is a disease that has been on the receiving end of many jokes in our society. Yet it is a serious and life altering disease that is no laughing matter to the 1,000 in every 2,000 people in the U.S. that have it.
I was drawn to this article because a former supervisor that I worked with had this disease. She was prescribed the drug Ritalin. It always impressed me that she could confront an angry client or give a speech without succumbing to the symptoms of her disease. She revealed that her case of narcolepsy wasn't that bad, but without the Ritalin she would just fall asleep anywhere.
"The overall incident of narcolepsy is about 10 times that of Lou Gehrig's disease, half that of multiple sclerosis, five times that of cystic
Damage to the hypocretin/orexin system due to environmental factors may mimic the symptoms caused by mutations. They feel that narcolepsy may be an auto-immune disease, in that the body turns against one of its own tissues are cell types. "The next step will be to determine whether the immune systems of narcoleptics are mistakenly targeting the hypocretin/orexin receptors in their own brains as foreign." according to
We never seem to care about a disease until it strikes us or a loved one or friend. I'm thankful we have scientists out there who are working on answers to the causes and cures of various diseases, that hopefully, we may never have occasion to know about.
However, they state that it is unlikely that most human narcolepti
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