St. John's Wort, Narcolepsy & me

Well, I up & decided to try some St. John's Wort to help me sleep & it turns out that it did help me sleep but ... it also made me incredibly groggy the next day. I did research it first & found that the grogginess doesn't typically go away so I'm thinking it will need to be something saved for use only on weekends. I will say though, I did sleep really well & even fell asleep fairly quickly without as much anxiety as usual so that's good. The other thing I noticed is that I spent a lot of time in REM (more than usual & I usually spend a LOT of time in REM) which is not good ..

I've also been researching narcolepsy as of late & I'm finding HUGE similarities between my symptoms & narcolepsy. I also found out that although we all associate people falling asleep in the middle of conversations with narcolepsy, that assumption is incorrect. A symptom of narcolepsy - cataplexy is what causes sudden REM (falling asleep) & not everyone has that symptom!

Other symptoms of narcolepsy include:

• excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS)
• sleep paralysis (SP)
• hallucinations (hypnagogic & hypnopompic) (HH)
• cataplexy (C)

You'll notice that SP & HH are listed separately.  In researching, that is how I found the symptoms presented.  At first I thought that seemed odd, but as we all know - people can have SP & not have HH. 

Now, remember, you can have narcolepsy & not have all the symptoms listed above.  I even found a forum for narcoleptics & there were several posters that label themselves PWN w/o C (Person with narcolepsy without cataplexy).  The majority of the narcoleptics on the site had been tested at sleep centers & diagnosed by doctors (some even neurologists since it is considered a neurological disease).

Another interesting fact I came across is the reference to "hypocretin".  Hypocretin is the chemical in the brain that is thought to control sleep & awake signals.  Per the Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep by Lawrence J. Epstein MD w/Steven Mardon, hypocretin is thought to regulate when wakefulness & sleep occur.  They refer to Dr. Clifford Saper of Harvard Medical School, a researcher that studied narcolepsy, describing this process as a "flip-switch".  The go on to state that hypocretin appears to be involved in when the flip between states occurs, as well as keeping you in that state. The belief is that when there is little or no hypocretin, people will (of course) flip between sleep & wakefulness frequently thus, causing muscle paralysis & dreaming to occur during wakefulness.  I found that a great deal of the book is available for reading via Google books (great site!) so I encourage everyone to check it out!

I also found a lot of material that refers to SP as being a result of REM occurring first rather than gradually going through the normal sleep stages (beginning with light sleep).  This makes complete sense to me because it happens every time I go to sleep.  The unfortunate instance is when that occurs before I actually fall asleep (SP), which it sooo often does (arg!).  That's when my (ever so wonderful) cycle of jerking myself up once I start to dream while not completely in a sleep state begins (along with my anxiety).  I found a lot of posters on the narcolepsy board stating this happens to them as well & it's actually part of the testing required to diagnose narcolepsy.  Narcoleptics hit REM much more quickly than "normal" people & spend more time in the REM state than other "normal" people as well.  Often, switching sporadically between REM & other stages throughout their sleep time.  (I wish I was one of those "normal" people ... lol).

Anyway, I hope everyone finds this information as helpful as I did.  Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure whether I just have ISP (or RSP) or something more (like narcolepsy) would be to get sleep testing done at a sleep center ... which I can't afford ... but, judging by my symptoms & the amount of time I spend in REM I would say it may just be a obvious that I do in fact have narcolepsy.  If only I were a doctor ...

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