Narcolepsy & Cataplexy Chronic Condition

We are humble praying to raise ZAR 100 000.00 by end of November 2016 to enable us to help 20 people that has this Chronic Disease in very severe cases. (We would love to help more people, so every ZAR 5000.00 extra will help another person)

20 people each will receive ZAR 5000.00 to help them with what is necessary to improve their lifestyle, by means of:

• Transport (taxi, uber, drivers)
• Nutrition (special diets, vitamins)
• Medical (Doctor visits, medicine, physio)

Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by overwhelming daytime drowsiness, sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and in some cases episodes of cataplexy (partial or total loss of muscle and sudden attacks of sleep.

It can be accompanied by a sudden loss of muscle tone (cataplexy) that leads to weakness and loss of muscle control.

We are trying to raise money to seriously help people with this chronic disease, and to start a Narcolepsy Foundation in South Africa. Very few people have ever heard of this disease and the impact it has on the person with this disease is enormous.

Close family members are the ones who really know what impact this disease has, not only on the patient, but also on their immediate family.

In future, we want to use money for research, as the Doctors are saying “there is NO cure” for this chronic disease. We also want to use this money to make life easier for the patients to go by their normal day to day tasks.

My wife for instance falls asleep while driving to work. This is serious!

These people also have to have special diets and special vitamins daily. The cost of getting these people to work and back (by taxi or dedicated driver or whatever means of transport is huge)

They also have to go for physio training to improve muscle loss. In conclusion it amounts to a fare amount of money monthly.

For example, cataplexy is the muscle paralysis of REM sleep occurring during waking hours. It causes sudden loss of muscle tone that leads to a slack jaw, or weakness of the arms, legs, or trunk. People with narcolepsy can also experience dream-like hallucinations and paralysis as they are falling asleep or waking up, as well as disrupted night-time sleep and vivid nightmares.

Narcolepsy with cataplexy is caused by the loss of a chemical in the brain called Hypocretin. Hypocretin acts on the alerting systems in the brain, keeping us awake and regulating sleep wake cycles. In narcolepsy, the cluster of cells that produce hypocretin—located in a region called the hypothalamus—is damaged or completely destroyed. Without hypocretin, the person has trouble staying awake, and also experiences disruptions in the normal sleep-wake cycles.

People with narcolepsy often find it difficult to stay awake for long periods of time, regardless of the circumstances. Narcolepsy can cause serious disruptions in your daily routine.

Narcolepsy occurs equally in men and women and is thought to affect roughly 1 in 2,000 people.

People with narcolepsy feel very sleepy during the day and may involuntarily fall asleep during normal activities. In narcolepsy, the normal boundary between awake and asleep is blurred, so characteristics of sleeping can occur while a person is awake.

Narcolepsy is a chronic condition for which there's no cure.