The National Sleep Foundation’s “Sleeptionary” site provides the following information about Narcolepsy. (Sleeptionary content reviewed by Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD)
Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder caused by the brain's inability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally. The main features of narcolepsy are excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy. The disease is also associated with sudden sleep attacks, insomnia, dream-like hallucinations, and a condition called sleep paralysis.
Normal sleep happens in cycles. When we fall asleep, we initially enter a light stage of sleep and then progress into increasingly deeper stages. After about 90 minutes, we enter the first stage of REM sleep, which is the dreaming portion of sleep, and throughout the night we alternate between stages of REM and non-REM sleep. For people with narcolepsy, sleep begins almost immediately with REM sleep and fragments of REM occur involuntarily throughout the waking hours. As during REM sleep our muscles are paralyzed and dreaming occurs, it is not surprising that narcolepsy is associated with paralysis and hallucinations.
Narcolepsy is considered a "state boundary" control abnormality. That is, narcolepsy patients sleep a normal amount but cannot control the timing of sleep.
Narcolepsy affects both sexes equally and develops with age; symptoms usually first develop in adolescence or young adulthood. A combination of genetic and environmental factors may be at the root of this sleep disorder.
Narcolepsy is often undiagnosed as sleepiness is not thought to be indicative of disease. Yet the potential dangers of this disorder is reflected in studies showing that narcoleptic patients are more accident-prone and have difficulty with interpersonal relationships.
Researchers believe that narcolepsy may be caused by a deficiency in hypocretin production in the brain. The results of one recent study, in which hypocretin was directly administered to the brain, suggest that using hypocretin derivatives may be an effective way to prevent cataplexy and improve wakefulness.
I have never had any real symptoms, except maybe daytime tiredness that I fought off, and yet I went into REM sleep during naps in a MSLT study. I thought that I had deiberately dreamed during those naps, do people who are able to meditatevely think themselves into dreams also show signs of REM sleep?