Why do some people with narcolepsy crave sweet foods? It all
started on the Narcolepsy UK forum; a member was discussing how
they craved sweet things on a regular basis and wondered why.
The general consensus that came back was that craving sweet
things was simply your body craving a stimulant to help it stay
awake; but could it really be that simple? Well of course, this
being narcolepsy the answer had to be no. To start at the
beginning with orexin, as most things do with narcolepsy. We use
the term orexin but it is also known as hypocretin. Two groups
were studying rat brains completely independently and within
weeks of each other they both discovered the same compound. One
group called it orexin, from the Greek meaning appetite while
the other group called it hypocretin because it is produced in
the hypothalamus and has a slight similarity to secretin.
(Secretin is a hormone found in the gut). In the entire brain
only between 20,000 and 40,000 neurons produce orexin out of a
total of perhaps 100 billion.