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Recently I've been falling asleep in school (for the past 3-4 years) during my classes. At first I thought it was due to a lack of adequate sleep at night. However recently I've been sleeping more (7-9 hours a night) and for some reason, it still persists.

Last night I went to bed around 10:10-30ish and I woke up at 7 AM. I felt good, refreshed, and ready for school.

Yet to my disbelief, I fell asleep in three classes today. In Psychology, Pre-calculus, and American Government. I'm starting to believe I have have some signs of Narcolepsy.

Does anybody have any ideas? I guess I ought to get this checked out or something.

I seriously doubt it. You mention you fall asleep in class. So what? Class is sometimes boring, and it's hard to stay awake, especially when all you're doing is sitting there.

If you had narcolepsy, you would be falling asleep constantly, at inopportune times. You would fall asleep while driving, while walking to class, while eating your dinner, so on and so forth. Narcolepsy isn't just being tired and falling asleep.

By the way, another symptom of narcolepsy is frequently waking up when you sleep at night. Other symptoms also include hallucinations, sleep paralysis, cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle control), and sleepwalking/sleeptalking. Those symptoms do not occur in all patients, however.

You're just sitting in class, bored. You more than likely don't have narcolepsy, as estimates say only about 200,000 people in America are afflicted with it. It's fairly rare.

Sleeping disorders run rampant in my family. my sister herself was diagnosed with Narcolepsy awhile ago, because she would fall asleep everywhere, even suddenly during conversations..scary really. she also has all these freakishly vivid dreams, wake up screaming random crap...thinking someone's after her, you know what i mean? she's also a catapletic or something along the lines of that, so her diagnosis was very deffiante...

However, that sleeping disorder itself is very rare. when i was around your age (or in high school at some point, dont recall) they gave us all these sleeping tests once, told me i had four or five different disorders and i had symptoms similar to yours.

do a bit more research i suppose. all i can really give as far as advice.
drink some nice caffiene ! lol

kaemmerite wrote:I seriously doubt it. You mention you fall asleep in class. So what? Class is sometimes boring, and it's hard to stay awake, especially when all you're doing is sitting there.

Exactly why I said "Semi" or something of the sorts. No I don't have all traits of a narcoleptic, but it's still shocking. I do my best to stay awake, but I seriously can't. Even when it's an interesting class. It's quite annoying really. I can't get myself to stay awake when I want to.

Red Jester wrote:drink some nice caffiene ! lol

lol no. Caffeine = Bad

Go and see a neurologist if you are not sure about it.That is the only way to be certain wheter or not you have it.

The first rule to diagnosing any sort of mental or neurological disorder: don't do it yourself, or you'll have everything.

I nod off ALL the time in class - I could challenge you to a sleep off. That doesn't mean you have narcolepsy. :3 Being sleepy and having narcolepsy are two entirely different creatures. Narcoleptics suffer from falling asleep anytime, not just in class. Walking down the street? Sleep. Driving? Sleep. If you're keeping yourself awake during more stimulating activities, I'd say you're far from having narcolepsy.

It could be possible that you're affected by the light change - the amount of sleep doesn't always determine how alert you are in the mornings. I was told that the amount of light you're exposed to triggers certain chemicals in your body to say "wake up!" And getting up at 7 and going to class doesn't leave you out in the sunlight for too long.

My own guess is that it could possibly be the opposite disorder: hypersomnia. Heh just remembered that now, because I'm transfering my notes for when our class had a lecture on sleep disorders, and that's just what I'm writing down now... It's a disorder all right, and means simply that a person gets TOO much sleep. It is just a guess, but possible.

I find personally, that days that I get lots of hours of sleep in, because I sleep so much that night, I'm STILL tired in the morning. So who knows, might be a connection with getting tons of sleep, and still wanting to sleep and be tired afterwards. Either way, I always used to take naps in high school, just cause^^ Those were nice... always used to get tired in them. Of course last year since sociology personally bored me, I had to take my mind off being tired and start to doodle. I can draw and listen at the same time! Still took all my notes and everything, but just focused on something else so I wouldn't fall asleep...

Oh thought I'd bump quickly because I found something else in my notes. A quick definition my prof gave on narcolepsy was "out of the blue, you're in REM sleep". So basically if it WAS the real deal, you'd have to be dreaming RIGHT when you start sleeping... And not to be fooled with the short hallucinations that aren't really dreams that you get in Stage 1 sleep (or as I call them "pre dreams" because they're just quick blurry images when you're JUST falling asleep, and not real dreams at all).

Yeah. I doubt I'm a narcoleptic. But it's suuuch a pain in the butt to fall asleep when I don't want to.

You might want to check with a nutritionist becuase a lot of people with food allergies have similar symptoms...My mom is allergic to wheat and if she eats it she gets really tired afterwords. So yeah I'd advise you to see if you can check it out with a good nutritionalist.

Before anything else check with a neurologist,it's probably nothing but having an expert do a thorough exam wouldn't hurt matters.

I looked it up.Nacropelsey can occur without warning but generally can begin when one is in one teens.There is no cure for it and if you do have it you would have to take medication for the rest of your life.

I seriously doubt it. You mention you fall asleep in class. So what? Class is sometimes boring, and it's hard to stay awake, especially when all you're doing is sitting there.

If you had narcolepsy, you would be falling asleep constantly, at inopportune times. You would fall asleep while driving, while walking to class, while eating your dinner, so on and so forth. Narcolepsy isn't just being tired and falling asleep.

By the way, another symptom of narcolepsy is frequently waking up when you sleep at night. Other symptoms also include hallucinations, sleep paralysis, cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle control), and sleepwalking/sleeptalking. Those symptoms do not occur in all patients, however.

You're just sitting in class, bored. You more than likely don't have narcolepsy, as estimates say only about 200,000 people in America are afflicted with it. It's fairly rare.

Nate, how do you know this?

I guzzle several cups of coffee daily and usually get a fair amount of sleep. But I ALWAYS fall asleep on the bus. It takes me about thirty minutes of bus riding to get home each day and I typically end up snapping awake right before my stop. I figure one of these days I'm going to wake up on the far north side of the city with no idea where I am O_o

I also used to sleep in class alot, but that was when I was frequenting four hours of sleep a night. Worse thing is that I'm a drooler when I sleep

Are you sure it isn't residual sleep deprevation? Even on the nights when I got eight hours I always used to doze the next day due to a sleep debt. It took an entire summer to finally catch up and fix the damage.

Tidus20 wrote:Nate, how do you know this?

While I am not Nate, the answer to this should be obvious, for it springs forth from the fountain of all knowledge!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy#Prevalence

BTW, just for anyone who may be interested, I don't believe narcolepsy is always as bad as what some people have mentioned. I know someone who suffers from narcolepsy, and he's still quite active-- I've been on backpacking trips and camping trips with him (he taught our youth group for several years), and he never just randomly fell asleep while active. It was only in times where he wasn't actually actively involved in something, like when he was driving or sitting in church or anything along those lines, when he'd nod off.

maybe your just bored^^