Narcolepsy the French "narcolepsie". The French term was first used in 1880 by Jean-Baptiste-Édouard Gélineau, who used the Greek νάρκη ("narkē"), meaning "numbness", and λῆψις ("lepsis") meaning "attack". There are two main characteristics of narcolepsy: excessive daytime sleepiness and abnormal REM sleep. The first, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), occurs even after adequate night time sleep. A person with narcolepsy is likely to become drowsy or fall asleep, often at inappropriate times and places, or just be very tired throughout the day. Narcoleptics are not able to experience the amount of restorative deep sleep that healthy people experience – they are not
Fitness to dive secondary to the effects of the underlying condition. Drugs with strong effects on moods should be used with care when diving. A mild state of anxiety can improve performance by making the person more alert and quicker to react, but more severe levels can degrade performance, by narrowing focus and distracting attention, culminating in extreme and debilitating anxiety or panic, where rational response to a developing emergency is lost. A tendency to be generally anxious is known as trait anxiety, as opposed to anxiety brought on by a situation, which is termed state anxiety. Divers who are prone to trait