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Post by marionk on Jul 20, 2016 6:29:40 GMT
Looking into narcolepsy, I'm having more and more difficulty working out where one ends and the other starts. Until I looked up narcolepsy, I thought disappearing into la la land was a symptom of ADHD(pi), now I find that going straight from awake to REM is the key thing with narcolepsy! Some narcoleptics even carry on talking or doing things even while asleep, and omg - I was going to say that I don't understand how that can happen, and I realised I actually did that sometimes as a child!! I'd 'come to' e.g. by the school gate, and wonder how I'd got there. That's a far cry from the classic idea of a narcoleptic falling asleep with his face in his food! (Although that can happen too, but probably not to the same person.) I thought ADHDers excessive daytime sleepiness was due to insufficient sleep, due to not being able to get to sleep because of not being able to stop thinking (ADHD), but again, it's a key thing of narcolepsy. I also have cataplexy, I thought it was normal. I get restless leg syndrome a lot too, and apparently that's another sleep disorder. So . . . do I have ADHD or narcolepsy, or both, or are they the same thing? Does one cause the other?, if so, which causes which? or are they co-morbid?
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Post by shiningbright on Jul 20, 2016 6:47:53 GMT
Bless you marionk it can be frustrating to get mixed messages. I think a part of why ADHD (and other 'disorders') are so hard to diagnosis is because of how similar they all are, it's hard to tell them apart and Drs don't want to call anyone by one label without being sure that's the correct label. Maybe see if there are any symptoms that differ between the two, then see which you have more off. There is nothing so amazingly complex and mysterious as the human brain. We can travel through space and time, dig to great depths, fly and swim and sail. But out of 7 billion of us of thousands of years, no one has ever been able to understand our brain, least of all it's programming ;-)
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Post by marionk on Jul 20, 2016 9:37:21 GMT
So true! Apart from the bit about traveling through time (forwards doesn't count). I'm pretty sure I have both, and have had both as long as I can remember. I definitely have ADHD, but need a polysomnogram for narcolepsy dx (I think). The only bit that's relatively new is the eds (excessive daytime sleepiness) and the very broken sleep at night. I guess, what I'm trying to figure out, is what proportion of ADHDers also have narcolepsy, and what proportion of narcoleptics also have ADHD. If narcolepsy is 'falling into la la land', then I know a lot of people on here that have both, but only dx for ADHD. The crap working memory and executive function and a bunch of other things are not part of narcolepsy, but are often considered to be as a result of poor sleep. I had trouble with EF and memory long before I had any sleep deficit.
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Post by contrarymary on Jul 23, 2016 0:55:27 GMT
hi marionkthere were some threads on here about narcolepsy a while ago, with a few people talking about their experience. if the search function is working..? or google adhd & narcolepsy & adults and hopefully you'll land in the forum xx
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