Additional KLS Reading

Hello KLS family! I was honored and thrilled to join the KLS Foundation as our first-ever executive director in May of 2024. With more than 20 years of nonprofit
leadership and fundraising experience for higher education, disease advocacy, and medical research, I committed to helping the Foundation board of directors make a difference in the lives the people and families impacted by this rare syndrome.

 

The author, Dr. Guy Leschziner, devotes an entire chapter of his book to KLS.

 

Book description: “Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors, apnea, and sleepwalking are just a sampling of conditions afflicting sufferers who cannot sleep – and their experiences in trying are the stuff of nightmares. Demoniac hallucinations frighten people into paralysis. Restless legs rock both the sleepless and their sleeping partners with unpredictable and uncontrollable kicking. Out-of-sync circadian rhythms confuse the natural body clock’s days and nights. 

 

Then there are the extreme cases. A woman in a state of deep sleep who gets dressed, unlocks her car, and drives for several miles before returning to bed. The man who has spent decades cleaning out kitchens while ‘sleep-eating.’ The teenager prone to the serious, yet unfortunately nicknamed Sleeping Beauty Syndrome stuck in a cycle of excessive unconsciousness, binge eating, and uncharacteristic displays of aggression and hypersexuality while awake.

 

With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.”