6. Fatal Familial Insomnia Disease
If you think you have trouble sleeping, just be thankful that it's not Fatal Familial Insomnia. This incredibly rare disease - which renders the sufferer completely unable to sleep - has fewer that 30 cases around the world. That's not just "having trouble dropping off", but actually physically incapable of sleeping. Symptoms begin with increasing insomnia, leading to panic attacks, anxiety, phobias and paranoia, usually lasting for around four months, the second stage then progresses to hallucination and the third is characterised by inability to sleep. This comes with rapid weight loss. The final stage of the disease is dementia, mutism and unresponsiveness. As the body continues to shut down through lack of sleep, pulse and blood pressure rocket and gross motor skills are lost. Throughout this process, the person remains conscious and able to comprehend everything that is happening to them right up until the point of death. As the disease is so rare and so bizarre that experts don't really know how to treat it. There have been cases in which a patient has managed to extend their life expectancy by about a year through the use of vitamin pills and meditation but, so far, there's no cure. Sleep is currently so little-understood by science that experts still don't even know why we do it. One thing FFI demonstrates to us is just how important it is and how quickly and badly things go wrong when it goes away.