Lindsay Scola

Narcolepsy Went Undiagnosed for 19 Years as Exhaustion Was Mistaken for Laziness

For nearly two decades, sleep health educator Lindsay Scola treated her exhaustion as the cost of ambition, until a narcolepsy diagnosis showed that what she had taken for laziness was a neurological disorder. In her TEDx talk, she argues that many people with sleep disorders remain undiagnosed because symptoms are mistaken for ordinary tiredness and medical training gives sleep too little attention. She urges people whose fatigue feels unusual to seek answers beyond sleep-hygiene advice.