foodconsumer.org: Real Life Sleeping Beauty Struggles to Live Normal Life

Real Life Sleeping Beauty Struggles to Live Normal Life
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admin on 02/10/2010 00:49:00
 
While most teenagers require more sleep than any other age group, 15-year-old
Louisa Ball, a real life sleeping beauty, has been forced to take her sleeping
habits to the next level.
Last year, Ball had flu-like symptoms which were a prelude to days of sleeping
without rousing for anything.  The official name of the condition is the
“Kleine Levin Syndrome” or sleeping beauty syndrome; it is so rare that only
1000 cases have been diagnosed world wide.
Her friends can tell when Louisa is about to go down for the proverbial count;
she gets irritable, distant and groggy.  Soon thereafter, she falls asleep for
days at a time.  Her most recent episode lasted 13 days; her parents awakened
her only to go to the bathroom, as periods of wakefulness are not fully
experienced until the episode has lapsed.
Certainly, the sickness interferes tremendously with Ball’s everyday
existence.  Being a real life sleeping beauty, she resents having to make up
exams and homework assignments at this age, as it gets harder and harder to
catch up with her peers.
Where does the sickness come from?  Some physicians believe sleeping beauty
syndrome is set off by some sort of viral infection that simply must run its
course (from 8-12 years)
Other Sleeping Illnesses
Sleeping beauty syndrome or disorder isn’t the only sleeping sickness humans
can contract.  African trypanosiomiasis is a fatal condition that is spread by
tsetse fly bites; symptoms include fever, headache and extreme fatigue.  At some
point the disease attacks the central nervous system, leading to severe
infection and ultimately, death.
Narcolepsy
Most experts believe that narcolepsy is triggered by a chemical imbalance in the
brain; patients with the illness suffer from bouts of daytime sleepiness, and
lapse into a deep sleep within only a few minutes (the average adult enters into
REM sleep after 90 minutes).  According to WebMD, scientists have made great
strides in identifying the genes associated with narcolepsy, even though they
are still stumped over what triggers it.  Symptoms of narcolepsy include
excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, sleep paralysis and hallucinations.
By Rachel Stockton