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01st Jul 2018

Mum suffers from ‘sleep attacks’ whenever she laughs or sneezes

You learn something new everyday

Olivia Hayes

Well, you don’t hear about this everyday.

Jessica Southall is a young mum from Nottingham who suffers from a very odd condition.

Whenever she laughs or sneezes… she falls asleep.

Yep, the rare condition can even strike when she gets upsets or orgasms.

She has a form of narcolepsy cataplexy which forces her to sleep for 13 hours a day, and she has to make sure that she’s sitting down if she’s watching something funny on the TV.

Image result for sleeping gif

However, there is a rather scary side effect of the condition, which gives her extremely vivid nightmares and pre-sleep hallucinations.

Jessica, who is pregnant with her second child, told The Mirror, “One minute I’ll be there in stitches laughing my head off, not able to stop and the next moment my head is on my chest or I’m lying on the floor.

“I’m fully awake, I can hear everything, but I can’t talk and I can’t move.

“I can’t respond or snap out of it until the emotion stops and to every other person it looks like I have fallen asleep.”

She also told the paper that when she began dating her boyfriend, it made for some pretty awkward conversation.

“It happens when I orgasm too. When me and my partner were first dating it was near enough every time.

“It might sound funny – and I do have to try and be light hearted about it – but it’s horrible really.

“I just had to explain to him that it’s only going to happen when he makes me feel at my very best, but it’s not ideal.”

Jessica first started experiencing the symptoms at age 15, and was diagnosed a year later.

Topics:

narcolepsy,sleep