Sleep patterns with narcolepsy?

i just want to know how important it is to have a regular sleep schedule(waking up at the same time and going to bed at same time) espically if i have narcolepsy? and why is it so important...and i have to wake up at 6 am on school days so would waking up at 8 on weekends be a big difference or is it best to get up at exactly the same time? cuz 6 am just seems so early for me...iv been sleeping since 3 pm on weekends lol. please post any info u have about this...im relly trying to feel better and more awake so if it will really change the way i feel i might try it..

hi again. :-)

the key to good sleep hygiene (sleep habits) is that it trains your body. it will force it to get into a "rhythm" and improves your nighttime sleep. that will then improve your wakefulness during the day. it's kind of like someone who works midnights...people inherently want to sleep at night. our circadian rhythm (mother nature's naturally-determined wake/sleep pattern) is set that way. midnighters have to train themselves to be asleep during the day and be awake at night. it's very difficult at first, but over time, it becomes habitual and much easier to do. eventually it gets to the point where they have difficulty being awake during the day, even on a day off, because they have reset their body's pattern. having a few days off together for something like a vacation really throws them off because their body's inclination tends to want to shift back to sleeping at night. so they try to stay awake at night, even on their days off so they won't have to readjust it when they are at work again.

it's the same way for you. a regular sleep schedule will help you train your body so that it will not have as hard of a time functioning on school days. this is actually general advice for everyone if they don't want to feel dragged out when having to return to work during the week. it's just more important for narcoleptics because it takes us longer for our bodies to respond to changes in our sleep patterns than the usual person. having a totally different sleep pattern on weekends will really throw your weekdays off. i'd guess that right now, mondays are your worst days for feeling awake at school. (not that any of them are exactly easy, lol.) it takes time to reset our sleep patterns, so give it plenty of time to work (several months).

this doesn't mean you have to do the exact same time every day. you can fudge with it a little...you just don't want to have huge vast differences between your weekend & weekday patterns. if you normally get up at 6 during the week, getting up at 8 on sat & sun isn't that big a deal instead. but you won't want to make extended sleep-ins your norm. nor do you want to have huge long naps on the weekends because your body will want that during the week too...usually at really inconvenient times like during math class. make sure you're getting enough sleep at night, too. getting your body on a schedule doesn't do much good if you're only giving yourself 5-6 hrs of sleep at night. at your age and with your disorder, you probably need a good solid 8+ hrs of sleep each night. hard to do when all the best stuff on tv and the internet is late at night, but that's what they make DVR for. :-)

it's not a cure, by any means, from the the symptoms of narcolepsy. neither are drugs alone going to do the trick. but maintaining a good sleep pattern will work with your provigil to helping you feel more awake and less miserable during the day. but bouncing your sleep patterns all over the place will make your body work extra hard at staying awake during the day...and what narcoleptic has the energy for that?