Narcolepsy is a fairly rare sleep disorder where sufferers frequently fall sound asleep without warning and often at the drop of a hat.

Imagine dozing off behind the wheel or during an important business meeting; but not because you didn't get enough sleep. Sleep disorder specialist Dr. Holly Hannon explains, "It can be dangerous especially depending on the situation, if the person is drowsy while they are driving, that can be an especially dangerous situation."

Dr. Hannon says that if the urge becomes overwhelming, they'll fall asleep for periods lasting from a few seconds to several minutes - and in rare cases, even hours. "Narcolepsy is actually a pretty common sleep disorder, its very under-diagnosed. People with narcolepsy pretty much 100% across the board have sleepiness during the daytime, which can vary in severity day to day. They can have sleep attacks where they fall asleep unpredictably and in unusual situations or they can have just a pervasive sleepiness all day long."

Polysominagrapher Rob Galbreath says that the other major symptoms for narcolepsy include: the sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone, vivid hallucinations when falling asleep or waking up, and brief episodes of total paralysis at the beginning or end of sleep.

"What you can do is have a sleep diary. After a couple of weeks, go see the doctor what they can do isevaluate the need for a sleep study and once you get here, we will monitor the different stages of your sleep, the quality of your sleep."

Dr. Hannon also says that once a patient is diagnosed with narcolepsy they can start making positive changes to improve their lifestyle. "Is very treatable, we usually treat with medications and what medications we use depends on what symptoms are bothering the person the most usually sleepiness is the biggest complaint so most often we prescribe medications to increase daytime alertness.

Medications can help control some of the symptoms, but there is no cure for narcolepsy.  Patients usually find that the symptoms of narcolepsy tend to get worse over the two to three decades after the first symptoms appear. And many older narcolepsy patients find that some daytime symptoms decrease in severity after age 60.