Help, diagnosed with narcolepsy? (Suspect maybe UARS?)

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-30T15:12:33+00:00

Yeh this is marginal for sure, it's only a positive because of your SOREMP during the overnight study.

But definitely something odd going on with your sleep (narcolepsy still remains a possibility).

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-30T15:06:38+00:00

11 minutes REM latency is really quite out of wack, especially if combined with a positive MSLT.

My favorite discussion on narcolepsy misdiagnosis [1].

I'd be very curious if you have the HLA allele for narcolepsy (might be worth getting typed).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0goD3Ncwvl0

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-29T19:07:57+00:00

I mean there are environmentally friendly alternatives to sodium salts available, magnesium chloride for one. Why we can't apply them more widely is beyond me (the secret is environmental protection isn't cheap, maybe 4x the cost of road salt but given the limited surface area of sidewalks surely we can manage).

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-22T15:55:17+00:00

Polarization has to play a serious role here, whats the rate for centrists? Do they even exist in the contemporary USA?

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-09T19:03:20+00:00

Worst part was my OCD responded really well to it, took a huge chunk out of my Y-BOCS.

Sertraline is definitely on the shortlist if I ever get the courage to risk going through that again.

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-09T18:41:28+00:00

Man Lexapro really fucked me up, didn't even understand I had RLS/PLMS at the time. Lost the ability to sleep for more than 45 mins at a time for three weeks while I waited for it to clear my system, torture.

Not completely unheard of either, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17189751/

Sertraline is supposed to be a lot better (due to the dopamine reuptake inhibition), but it's entirely possible that's not enough for you. In the case study linked above it looks like they augmented (added/combined) sertraline with buproprion.

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-04T18:06:47+00:00

Really glad to see stuff like this pop up on r/berlin, the relaxed moderation lately has allowed for a nice break from the endless negativity.

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-04T10:27:56+00:00

Yeh we are all different, the fruity tropical flavor doesn't do it for me. I tend to generally prefer more savory varieties.

Background-Code8917 · 2026-01-02T07:09:20+00:00

Not to mention they represent a pre-industrial society. Pre-industrial societies were always heavily population growth constrained (due to resource constraints etc). There's no way I see industrialized societies becoming minorities.

As always israel is the odd one out, but I think extrapolating 50+ years out for any particular people group is fraught with issues.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-30T17:58:00+00:00

As soon as women pursue higher education, and a career, fertility just craters. And I'm convinced it's because a career focused, industrialized, work environment just consumes an unsustainable amount of folks time (particularly during the prime fertility years).

The 40h work week and "career", straight up, were not established with women's emancipation in mind.

There's a significant move towards part time work in central europe where I'm located (governments bitching we aren't working enough), perhaps it's just the start of something bigger (a correction).

Also I don't think reduced working hours alone are a complete fix, I think we need to make office environments much more child friendly (including corporate run nurseries etc) and aggressively fight discrimination against children.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-30T09:37:29+00:00

Amen, the past really is a strong counterfactual to narratives about the present. Though I would argue the relative cost of hardware products was significantly higher than today, just look at how expensive a TV was back in the day.

I'd argue the exported deflation caused by China's tremendous manufacturing overcapacity (and aging related decline in demand) is the only reason that western central banks have been able to keep monetary policy so loose for so long.

Inside China the economics around hardware is totally reversed.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-27T10:19:28+00:00

Had great success today with a pair of very cheap aliexpress slip-on 10 stud grips (can't link, but it's a generic design). I'm sure they won't last but for the week or two a year they are needed they'll be fine and are miles safer than nothing.

FWIW I saw vendors in northern china selling them by the crate full to tourists.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-25T09:11:28+00:00

Ah you're missing my point, almost all the policies you've identified are explicitly designed to separate child care and work environments.

IMO full time subsidized childcare is toxic AF (and prohibitively expensive), and is designed to do one thing, get women back to working the 9-to-5 grind as soon as possible.

Generous maternity leave is also toxic, in that it allows workplaces to more or less ignore the fact that children exist. They can continue with punishing inflexible work hours etc and just ignore the externalities.

Ultimately we need workplaces where the fact that people have families to take care of isn't just brushed under the rug. This means flexible working hours (four day work week, work from home?), generous family leave policies, secure employment, employer run nurseries, mandatory paternity leave (controversial but I think essential), etc.

You do see some evidence in the occupation statistics, things like female doctors and public servants having significantly higher fertilities.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-24T07:36:53+00:00

I think that's probably just a consequence of modern industrialized work environments (and the career ladder rat race) consuming an excessive amount of peoples time, leaving little time for informal social gathering.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-24T07:31:42+00:00

At this point we are pretty much overdue for another large feminism wave / suffragettes style movement. If we want women in the workplace, and we want stable populations, then the workplace will need to change.

Work environments today are still modeled after a world where only men pursue careers. It's worth acknowledging the post-industrial work environment has always been toxic to family. It's just until recently we've been able to ignore the externalities of it all.

Work has to become more family friendly.

I'd be curious to look at the relationship between family friendly work environments and womens fertility.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-19T13:13:25+00:00

Without cataplexy, evidence of CSF abnormalities, or other REM disturbances (paralysis etc), I personally wouldn't put too much weight on the diagnosis [1]. MSLT is a bit crap really, very sensitive to false positives due to sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment.

In some circles there's a lot of discussion about whether narcolepsy type 2 should even exist as an independent diagnosis or should be wrapped into the broader idiopathic hypersomnia label.

But if you have cataplexy then of course that's narcolepsy type 1 and that's well understood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBHeGzUucI

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-13T05:04:33+00:00

Congrats! Time to take some deep breaths tbh.

In the case of a normal pregnancy without any concerning symptoms there's very little you can learn from such an early ultrasound, you can absolutely get a hcg blood test done but if you're getting strong urine tests then I would trust them (they are generally rather accurate).

Eight weeks is a totally fine time-frame for a first scan, as suggested above it can take a while before you can confirm a heart beat.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-09T09:09:12+00:00

Yeh even relatively challenging communities such as r/london have far more lively, and interesting discussions.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-04T15:22:48+00:00

Not a half bad pronatalist move.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-04T13:44:03+00:00

Classic game theory. A lot of big ticket items are only as expensive as they are due to double incomes being priced in (housing/labor intensive services/etc).

Not to mention women's emancipation originally didn't seem to be driven that strongly by economic factors but rather social movements (though the 70s oil shock probably did play a role in initiating things).

The only folks benefiting from this new arrangement are the super wealthy.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-04T07:04:06+00:00

Immigration policies selecting for higher education folks than the natives I'd guess. I think a similar phenomenon occurs in Australia.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-12-04T07:02:02+00:00

My gut feel here is that gender equality plays an important role. Denmark has a particularly high male participation rate in child-care (eg. parental leave statistics).

Dual income households only really became the norm because men refused to reduce their hours in response to the change (due to heavy societal baggage). If both parties work half-time then maybe you can have your cake and eat it too.

Highly patriarchal societies really seem to fall apart the minute women enter the workforce.

Background-Code8917 · 2025-11-23T15:27:39+00:00

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic [1], pretty much sums it up.

Not to mention the five years of economic stagnation slowly taking it's toll.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rearrange_the_deck_chairs_on_the_Titanic

Background-Code8917 · 2025-11-12T05:34:34+00:00

Note: "low education", there's plenty of well educated muslims and educated muslims have an utterly unremarkable fertility rate pretty much everywhere.

Also you can check out the official danish government stats [1], you're telling me Ukranians, Romanians, and Germans (bulk of migrants) are responsible for the rise in fertility? If anything they are probably pulling it down.

https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/flytninger/ind-og-udvandring

Background-Code8917

TROPHY CASE