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The difference is, when you and I are sleep deprived and we get enough sleep, we’ll be fine. Narcoleptics are always sleep deprived. They’re as if the rest of us, who are normal, haven’t had sleep for 24 or 48 hours. They feel that fatigued. And when they take their naps, they feel restored. So they may need to take naps two or three times a day, whether they want to or not, but it makes sense to schedule it in. And then they’ll have energy for a few hours if they’re lucky. About an hour of a nap for a narcoleptic for the rest of us is about five milligrams of Ritalin and amphetamine. So it gives them energy, they feel better, but it doesn’t last very long. The rest of us, if we slept well at night, we’re going to be pretty well rested the whole day and have energy to make it through the day. The other part of narcoleptics is even when they’re sleeping at night, they’re not getting good quality sleep. Their sleep is not very restorative. They have more dreaming. They have less of a stage three, good stuff that makes us feel better. And their sleep is very fragmented. It’s broken up. It’s not continuous or consolidated. So again, during the day they don’t function that well, during the night they don’t sleep that well.
