Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast.

Today we're talking about perhaps one of the most misunderstood sleep disorders and that disorder is

narcolepsy. Unfortunately, narcolepsy is even used as a pejorative term in society.

In today's show, I'd like to offer you a clearer picture of this sleep disorder

narchilepsy. Let's start with a general

definition and then we can speak about different things such as prevalence and

the symptoms and the underlying mechanisms mechanisms were always interested in in this show

because if we understand mechanisms maybe we can think about potential

treatments and we'll speak about those too. So what is narcolepsy? Medically,

narcolepsy is classified as a neurological disorder, meaning it is of the

brain, but even though its root cause is in the brain it doesn't

change the fact that it also affects the rest of the body's nervous system.

And in fact, there's a very interesting interplay

between the brain and the body,

interlinked by way of those things called emotions emotions and we'll get to that. As a result

narcolepsy significantly impacts the quality of life of a patient. And moreover, it's what we classify as a chronic neurological condition,

meaning that it has a long duration of condition action.

And as I mentioned towards the end when we speak about treatments,

very sadly, currently at least, there are no cures for narcolepsy.

But there are some treatments and we'll get to those don't worry.

How common is it? What's the prevalence? Well, Norklepsy is considered a rare condition.

Based on our current estimates, it affects about one out of every 2,000 people. So here, where I currently live in the United States,

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