Fatal Familial Insomnia
Understanding The Fatal Familial Insomnia
This is probably one of the rarest forms of sleeping disorders
around. In fact, it is an inherited disorder that has only
been found in 28 families in the world which have the dominant
gene for it.
The children of a parent(s) developing the disorder are about
50% and there is no cure for this. The age of child is around
the ages between 30 and 60 and the disorder's time frame runs
between 7 to 18 months.
This disease comes in 4 stages which it goes through and
1st stage of the disease starts off with the sufferer dealing
with increased insomnia leading to severe panic attacks, and
various kinds of phobias, this stage lasts about 4 months,
2nd stage sufferer deals with hallucinations and panic attacks
become more obvious and lasts about 5 months, 3rd stage Complete
and total inability to sleep. Usually, a drastic weight loss
follows and lasts about 3 months, 4th stage Dementia will
set in and progressively becoming irresponsive and mute over
a course of 6 months and this is the final progression of
the disease.
This might sound a lot like Alzheimer's because if you notice
the time frame it's a much shorter than the actual time span
of someone who has to deal with Alzheimer's because the sufferer
is dealing with it for several years instead of a year where
the disease progressively degenerates the mental capacity
to such a degree that the sufferer has a hard time with memory.
As far as treatment is concerned, generally the sleeping
pills will not have side effects for victims of Fatal Familial
Insomnia and not even non-medicinal therapy doesn't work either.
Medical science has no idea why it's a fatal disease and how
they can create effective treatment options to combat this
problem.
It's just a matter of how much attention the medical world
will take note of this and increase the funding to find a
cure and effective genetic testing of families and tracking
diseases through the generations so that they can have some
kind of record of the disease passing down through generations
or skipping generations which is what some diseases have done
in some families for those who have a disposition for certain
things.
This doesn't get as much attention as all the other sleeping
disorders since it is rare and only appear in so many people
and births making it not rare enough for it to get the recognition
as regular insomnia and to qualify for the treatments.
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