Coping With Fatal Familial Insomnia

Fatal familial insomnia is an autosomal dominant inherited prion illness of the brain and is a rare condition. Also recognized as the FFI sleep disorder, the disease can develop in a patient spontaneously but is most usually inherited and onset is generally observed in between the ages of 30 and 60. The condition follows 4 stages beginning with insomnia and moving on to hallucinations, a total inability to sleep and lastly dementia that commonly results in death.
Initially patients typically exhibit mild symptoms of growing insomnia. A growing lack of sleep yet leads countless patients to expertise panic attacks and phobias which can create to the point exactly where they feel unsafe and are unable to cope with their normal day-to-day routine. They then start to hallucinate and the overwhelming tension they feel makes it even additional challenging to sleep and locks them into a vicious cycle.
At this point it is frequent for patients to be prescribed sleeping pills but, in a large number of circumstances, sleeping pills are not the answer and can in reality make the condition worse. The difficulty here is that this condition is so rare that it is often not diagnosed correctly in its initial stages and there are only a exceptionally few remedies out there which will work to a greater of lesser degree depending upon the individual patient. Once the third stage of the disease is reached and the patient is experiencing an almost complete inability to sleep rapid weight loss normally occurs and dementia sets in within three months or much less.
There is no remedy for the illness but there are some powerful treatments on the market which can assist supply relief to patients. With therapy patients are quite often able to live a somewhat standard life and steer clear of depression and the final state of dementia.
If you believe that you could be suffering from fatal familial insomnia then you should really speak to your doctor with out delay since the disease can progress quickly and, once in its final stages, there is regularly no effective therapy. Even though it have to be taken seriously, you will need to not automatically assume that this illness is terminal and appropriate therapy can relieve its symptoms and, at the quite least, boost your good quality of life and acquire you time. Nevertheless, since the condition can progress quite rapidly, and run by means of all 4 stages in some patients in a little over six months, you ought to not delay in searching for medical attention.
Finally, it should certainly be remembered that fatal familial insomnia sufferers are conscious of what is going on about them throughout all but the extremely final days of the illness and that it is valuable that have the love and support of their household and pals.