Fatal insomnia is a rare condition. Often called the FFI sleep disorder, the illness can develop in a patient spontaneously but is frequently inherited and onset is usually seen between the ages of 30 and 60. The illness has 4 stages beginning with insomnia and moving on to hallucinations, a total inability to sleep at night and finally dementia that often leads to death.
To Start With patients typically exhibit minor signs of increasing insomnia. An increasing lack of sleep however leads many people to experience anxiety attacks and irrational fears that may grow to the point at which they come to feel unsafe and are not able to handle their usual daily life. They then start to hallucinate and the overpowering stress they feel makes it even harder to sleep and locks them into a vicious loop.
This often get rapidly more serious at this stage since this rare disorder is often not diagnosed and sleeping pills are likely to be prescribed which just make matters worse. If successfully diagnosed there are treatment methods available which can help to slow things down but, if this is not recognized, the condition can develop very rapidly through to the ultimate phase of dementia within a matter of months.
There is no cure for the condition but there are several useful treatment methods available which will help provide relief to affected individuals. With therapy individuals are frequently able to live a reasonably normal life and avoid major depression and the very last state of dementia.
If you consider that you could be struggling with familial insomnia then you ought to speak to your doctor straight away because the condition can develop rapidly and, after it is in its end phases, there is often no effective treatment. Even though it must be taken seriously, you mustn't automatically presume that this disorder is fatal and proper treatment can ease its symptoms and, at the minimum, improve your quality of life and get you time. Nevertheless, since the condition can progress pretty fast, and run through all four phases in some patients in a little over six months, you should not hold off in going after medical help.
Finally, it must be realized that fatal familial insomnia patients are aware of what's going on around them during all but the very last days of the disease and that it is essential that they have the love and support of their friends and relations.
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Discover much more about insomnia and specific conditions such as as pregnancy insomnia and terminal insomnia.
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