Can someone suffer from insomnia and narcolepsy?

[ERICA L]

Remember, there are different types of narcolepsy. It's not just where you fall asleep when you are walking around. Please only reply if you know what you are talking about or suffer from one of these conditions because I am truly interested in the answer.

[aWellWisher]

Occasionally I suffer from insomnia, I don't take any medicine for that. But I never had narcolepsy. As a doctor I have seen some cases.
About narcolepsy-
At various times throughout the day, people with narcolepsy experience fleeting urges to sleep. If the urge becomes overwhelming, individuals will fall asleep for periods lasting from a few seconds to several minutes. In rare cases, some people may remain asleep for an hour or longer. In addition to excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), three other major symptoms frequently characterize narcolepsy: cataplexy, or the sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone; vivid hallucinations during sleep onset or upon awakening; and brief episodes of total paralysis at the beginning or end of sleep. Narcolepsy is not definitively diagnosed in most patients until 10 to 15 years after the first symptoms appear. The cause of narcolepsy remains unknown. It is likely that narcolepsy involves multiple factors interacting to cause neurological dysfunction and sleep disturbances.

Theoretically, it is possible that a person has insomnia when he tries to sleep at night. This lack of adequate sleep at night may cause narcolepsy in the day. All is due to altered biochemistry in the brain. But really I never came across any person having both the conditions.

I may feel sleepy in the day following a sleepless night, but it won't amount to narcolepsy.

Hope it helps, good luck!

[sleepycatz1972]

it's not that there are different types of narcolepsy, it's that there are varying degrees and manifestations of its symptoms. not every narcoleptic has cataplexies, paralysis, hallucinations...but it's still all physiologically the same disorder. and among all the narcoleptics i know, no one has ever fallen asleep while walking, lol. that's just in the movies.

contrary to another poster's thoughts, insomnia at night will NOT cause narcolepsy during the day...these are two very different and very definitive sleep disorders. while insomnia may cause the excessive daytime sleepiness usually associated with anrcolepsy and make someone fall alseep (as any interupption to sleep causes those issues), it will not cause someone to have a separate sleep disorder like narcolepsy itself. someone with insomnia may fall asleep at inappropriate time of the day, but their brain waves when asleep would not show the same screwed-up brain pattern as a narcoleptic. that's not to say someone can't have both, it just means that one has nothing to do with the other.

i was diagnosed with insomnia at 14 yrs old...and then with narcolepsy at 17. insomnia caused me to have trouble falling asleep at night to begin with, and then would wake me up several times throughout the night. and narcolepsy would cause my sleep stages to be all screwed up...instead of going thru stages 1-4 then hitting REM like the average person, i'd skip the first four stages and head right into the dream stage immediately. this caused hallucinations & paralysis, which are two of the symptoms of narcolepsy. my sleep attacks during the day had originally been attributed to insomnia, until later bloodwork showed the genetic marker for narcolepsy (i am one of four in my family with it...for us it is hereditary). a sleep study confirmed it soon after. more narcolepsy sypmptoms have developed since being diagnosed (cataplexies and automatic behavior), but this disorder targets a different part of the brain than insomnia, so that's not unexpected.

most of my insomnia had been caused by stress factors like depression, so over time, that particular sleep problem has resolved. narcolepsy is lifelong. and although the symptoms have become more manageable over the years, i'll always have them.

so to answer your question...as one who has had both, yes, it is entirely possible to suffer from each. they each affect different parts of the brain, have different causes, different (and not entirely opposite) symptoms, and different treatments.

the odder question to ask is how someone can have ADD and narcolepsy at the same time. those two disorders really are damn near as close to polar opposite as you can get. to add to the oddness, the brain glands affected are the same one (the hypothalamus) and each disorder uses the same meds for treating their opposing symptoms. yet my nephew has both disorders. the human body really is a strange thing. :-)

[Teri lou]

ive got insomnia, dont sleep well at all. thank god for yahoo answers!