Tell friends and whānau about how you are feeling and ask for help if you need it.Keep yourself safe when you are feeling sleepy during the day – especially when driving.Plan to have short naps regularly throughout the day at times when you feel most sleepy.doing something relaxing before going to bed, eg, a warm bath.avoiding caffeine, alcohol and heavy meals before bed.going to bed and getting up at the same times each day.Try to maintain good sleep practices including:.Here are some things you can try to help with your symptoms: Narcolepsy might be accompanied by other sleep disorders like obstructive sleep apnoea, restless legs syndrome and insomnia.

This is likely to happen during familiar activities such as writing/typing or driving. Automatic behaviour: being able to keep talking and doing things while half asleep and having no memory of it later.It doesn’t affect your ability to breathe. It can result in slurred speech or can cause weakness in most of the muscles in your body. Cataplexy: a loss of muscle tone that can last up to a few minutes at a time and occur a few times a year or up to several times a day for different people.Excessive dreaming with motor activity (movement) at night can also happen. REM sleep changes: If you have narcolepsy, REM sleep (when you dream the most) can happen at any point during the day.They can happen at the same time as sleep paralysis. If they happen as you go to sleep they are called hypnagogic hallucinations the ones experienced when waking are called hypnopompic hallucinations. As they happen when you are still partly conscious it is hard to separate them from reality which can make them especially frightening. Hallucinations: vivid and sometimes disturbing dreamlike experiences happening when you are dozing, dropping off to sleep or waking.This is similar to what you normally experience during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep which stops you acting out your dreams. Sleep paralysis: a temporary inability to move or talk when you fall asleep or wake up which can last up to several minutes.Difficulty staying asleep at night: although it may be easy to drop off to sleep you may have problems in staying asleep for longer than a few hours at a time.These short sleeps seem to refresh you, but you soon feel sleepy again. It may be while you are working or talking.

Extreme daytime sleepiness: you may drop off to sleep anywhere and at any time, for a few minutes or up to half an hour.

Narcolepsy involves a range of symptoms but apart from daytime sleepiness, they don’t apply to everyone with narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy with cataplexy medications