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Cataplexy
Cataplexy
A lot of people are confusing cataplexy with another very common disease, epilepsy. But cataplexy is only found to affect those people who are already suffering from narcolepsy, which is a disorder that makes one feel very tired and fall asleep during the day.
Cataplexy actually means "to strike down" and the patients who are suffering from narcolepsy are describing it as some strange attacks of muscle weakness that affect each side of their bodies.
When the patients are struck by this condition, they will experience muscle a sudden loss of muscle tone. These can happen either when they are suppressed by the daily activities that induce stress, by excessive laughter, frightening experiences and anger. The phenomenon can be measured by sending some electric signals through the muscles and having their response gauged. One thing to note is that people that suffer from this condition will often injure themselves.
But the treatment for cataplexy is quite different from the one used in narcolepsy. Desipramine and Inipramine are some often used drugs which are known to cope with this condition, but one thing that must be said is that they must be taken in increasing doses.
The causes of cataplexy
There are different severities the attack can have and some people may drop their jaw or head, begin to feel their face slackening, they may feel a weakness in the knees or they may just drop completely on the floor and injure themselves.
The speech is also affected and becomes slurred. The eyesight won't be so great, thought when it comes to awareness and hearing, these 2 are the only ones that remain undisturbed.
But there is also a time that cataplexy can be more severe and it depends on how much the patient is rested. If the patient is very tired, then the attack will be much more ferocious, leading to a considerable anxiety, but this itself is not a trigger. The total time of this attack can prolong up to a few minutes and in the end the patient will just start behaving like he did before the attack.
The symptoms of Cataplexy
Cataplexy can be categorized due to the help of sudden and unexpected loss of skeletal muscle tone (paralysis or weakness). When it comes to the muscle tone, the severity of it can be either mild or severe. The total time it lasts for, ranges from a few seconds to a few minutes. The muscles that cataplexy affects (given the fact that it can be partial or complete) are the facial ones and the muscles that are controlling the entire body.
Treating cataplexy
Unfortunately there is no treatment that is viable yet when it comes to narcolepsy, but the best treatment available at the moment is focused on controlling the symptoms. The daytime excessive sleepiness is treated using the CNS (central nervous system) stimulants and some other effective wake promoting agents.
When we're talking about cataplexy, its symptoms have been controlled using Tryciclic antidepressants and some highly effective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, even though there is no clear approval for them towards this type of condition. The only product that is approved by the FDA for treating cataplexy is Xyrem.
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