It is totally fascinating. It could just be me, because I'm so interested in narcolepsy and sleep in general, but it is really well written and includes stories about real people with real problems, the symptoms, how it's diagnosed and treatments. The section about narcolepsy is actually kind of small, but I was expecting that - it even says in the book that narcolepsy is not very well researched. It says, "Narcolepsy is uncommon enough that much of the general medical community doesn't understand it, yet common enough that they should." I think this is the case for regular people as well... people just flat out don't understand what it means to be tired, what it means to genuinely NEED to sleep all the time. I guess it just makes it that much harder to have medical professionals also in the dark about it.
Some of the stuff is so interesting. Restless Leg Syndrome is a disorder where people have severe 'twitches' in the their legs when they are sleeping, or just resting. It apparently affects between 10 and 15 percent of the population. That is ABSURDLY huge!!! This is an American statistic, but translating that to Australia, that's 2 million people affected by RLS. Wow. And I had not heard of it until I read this book.
It has some interesting stuff to say about sleep in general, how people are affected when their sleep isn't adequate, and what tests need to be taken in order to officially diagnose a sleep disorder. As I read more I'll write a bit more about it. For anyone who is interested, the book is by Carlos H. Schenk. Here's the link for Amazon. I got my copy from my local library.
Sleep by Carlos Schenk