Strange sensation when laughing

One of the funnier questions the doctor asked me when assessing me was whether I noticed any weird body sensations when laughing or getting angry. I wonder what disorder that question was aimed at evaluating for...

Knabino wrote:One of the funnier questions the doctor asked me when assessing me was whether I noticed any weird body sensations when laughing or getting angry. I wonder what disorder that question was aimed at evaluating for...

Thats a screening question for narcolepsy, specifically the symptom of Cataplexy:

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/narc ... #139513201

Whoa, that's interesting!

I sometimes feel like I stop breathing (or can't get my breath) when I'm laughing really hard. My head gets kind of fuzzy, my vision darkens, and I had a sort of seizure just once. My head went back and kind of banged against the wall (not hard) behind my chair a few times and I had no control for what seemed like a minute or so. My family thought I was faking it--scared the pants off me but I tried to laugh it off not to scare them.

Since CPAP I haven't had these "eipisodes" as frequently, and that seizure-like thing happened only once, but it does sound like the description for cataplexy. Kind of scary