Vitamin D Deficiency & Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that involves abnormal sleep-wake cycles and irregular patterns of rapid eye movement. The disorder affects approximately one in 2,000 people in the United States, but the cause is not fully understood and no cure has been discovered. Research from the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy reveals that the cause may be related to the immune system and that certain nutritional deficiencies may cause or aggravate certain symptoms. If you have symptoms of narcolepsy, consult with a sleep specialist.

Symptoms of Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is characterized by several disturbing symptoms, including excessive daytime sleepiness, sudden sleep attacks and cataplexy, or brief and abrupt episodes of sleep paralysis. A person with narcolepsy may also suffer from disturbed sleep at night and vivid hallucinations, especially when transitioning in and out of sleep.

Autoimmune Disease

Narcolepsy has recently been confirmed to be an autoimmune disorder. Autoimmune diseases arise due to the mismanagement of your body's natural immune system response. This means that the body is unable to tell the difference between its own tissue and foreign tissue. This misjudgment causes the immune system cells to attack your own body, causing injury, damage and disease.

Narcolepsy and Autoimmunity Theory

People with narcolepsy have low levels of a hormone called hypocretin. This hormone helps regulate wakefulness and sleep cycles in the brain. Autoimmunity from narcolepsy causes the destruction of hypocretin-producing cells in the brain. Narcoleptic patients are also observed to carry a variant T-cell gene, which may be the cause of this disorder.

Role of Vitamin D in Narcolepsy

Vitamin D plays a very important role in autoimmune diseases. Research conducted at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center on numerous narcoleptic patients has concluded that they often also have vitamin D deficiency. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations are extremely low in narcoleptic patients, especially when compared to individuals without an autoimmune disorder.

Vitamin D Deficiency

Considering the importance in vitamin D in autoimmune disorders and its relation to narcolepsy, scientists at Louisiana State University have conducted research on patients with vitamin D deficiency. This research sought to understand whether low levels of vitamin D could lead to narcolepsy and if improvement of that deficiency could improve symptoms in narcoleptic patients. Administration of 50,000 IU of vitamin D once a week for two weeks improved sleep pathology in the study.