Better Sleep Better Health

Are you looking for CPAP devices, masks, and accessories? Dr Daniel Root is proud to announce the grand opening of BuyPAP.com, your new online source for PAP equipment at the lowest prices around.

BuyPAP carries devices and accessories from the industry leading manufacturers such as ResMed, Philips Respironics, and Fisher & Paykel. Whether you need a whole new machine, a new mask, or just some replacement supplies you can easily find it on our site and get it to you’re door quickly without any hassle. Rely on our staff’s 20+ years combined experience in the sleep medicine field to help guide you to a better night’s sleep. Check out BuyPAP.com here or call 1-855-NOAPNEA (1-855-662-7632).

Oregon Sleep Associates is proud to announce the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has renewed our sleep center full accreditation status for the next 5 years.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine is the only professional society dedicated exclusively to the medical subspecialty of sleep medicine. As the leading voice in the field of sleep medicine, the AASM sets standards and promotes excellence in health care, education and research. Accreditation with the AASM is considered the gold standard of sleep medicine and reflects a commitment to ensure that sleep disorders patients receive the highest quality of care.

Since opening in 2005, Oregon Sleep Associates has helped thousands of people get a better night’s sleep by diagnosing and treating all manner of sleep disorders. We offer a five bed sleep center outfitted with comfort features including Sleep Number beds, private bathrooms, cable television and wifi to ensure your stay with us is a pleasant one. Results of overnight testing are available immediately after the sleep study in most cases. OSA also specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia and can provide patients with portable home monitoring as well. Our DME office carries the latest in CPAP devices and masks from the industy leaders in PAP technology.
If you are having problems sleeping and would like help, visit us at www.oregonsleepassociates.com or contact our main office at 503-288-5201 to schedule a consultation with one of our sleep specialists.

Despite being the gold standard treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnea, CPAP machines have traditionally had a fairly pedestrian clinical feel to them. Compliance to using them can be complicated, especially when first starting therapy. Some people feel embarrassed to have a device that looks like it belongs in a hospital sitting on their bedside table.

Now users of Resmed CPAPs can customize their machine to fit their personalities, decor, or hobbies. Resmed has partnered with Skinit to create custom decals for their S9 CPAP machines. Skinit also produces adhesive skins for other electronics such as iPhones, iPads, and computers. Their extensive CPAP skin library includes different colors, decorative designs, sports teams and entertainment logos, and also allows users to upload their own images to personalize their machines. Check out Resmed’s site to see all the designs.

We’ve covered REM behavior disorder and it’s strange effects before, but this story shows how this odd condition can affect an entire family’s well-being.

As reported on ABC’s Good Morning America and KATU News, Adam Kearns of Keizer, Oregon and his wife of ten years were recently ordered by the court to have no contact with one another after he was arrested on assault charges. The charges stem from an incident earlier this year in which Adam punched his wife in the face three times while in bed. The twist is that Kearns was actually asleep during the incident and after hitting her, he laid back down and continued snoring.

His wife went to the hospital and police were called. The law makes no provision for REM Behavior Disorder and requires police to make an arrest if a domestic assault occurs within the home. Kearns’ wife, Randi, says he was never violent towards her in any way and the law is keeping their family, including two young children, apart. Adam has undergone testing at a local sleep center and been diagnosed as having REM Behavior Disorder. Despite the fact that this is a documented sleep disorder and patients cannot control their actions when asleep, the courts are pursuing prosecution. He said it’s frustrating that authorities don’t believe him when it comes to this newly-diagnosed condition. “You can only tell somebody something so many times,” he told KATU news.

Getting adolescents to get the sleep they need can be a hard task to accomplish. Today’s world is filled with distractions that keep kids and teenagers awake. But a new study released in the latest issue of the journal SLEEP suggests that parents that take the hard line when it comes to bedtimes are truly helping their children’s futures.

The study looked at 385 children from different schools in South Australia. Researchers found that 17.5% of the those studied reported a parent-set bedtime. That group demonstrated earlier bedtimes, more sleep, and improved daytime functioning compared to their peers without parent enforced bedtimes. This is significant because especially in children sufficient sleep time is essential for cognitive and physical development. Lack of sleep has been linked to lower school test scores, depression, increased traffic accidents, and childhood obesity.

Teens may not like it when their parents make them go to bed, but in the long run the benefits of sufficient sleep may far outweigh the costs of struggling over bedtimes.

Recently two stories of overly tired air traffic controllers have made headlines. First, an air traffic controller inadvertently dozed off at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, leaving two cargo planes to land themselves. Then reports came out detailing a Nashville controller purposely sleeping during a busy shift. These incidents are frightening considering the important responsibilities these individuals are given every day.

One would expect sweeping changes to the follow such revelations about air traffic security, yet as an open letter from the chairman of the National Sleep Foundation to the FAA shows, the changes needed are not happening:

“Americans are justifiably concerned by the recent spate of incidents involving air traffic controllers who fell asleep on duty.  But now that the FAA/DoT has outlined the steps it intends to take to address this problem – minor tweaking of the controllers’ work/rest schedules combined with a threat of stricter disciplinary action against offending controllers in the future – the public’s response ought to escalate from concern to alarm.

This is because the announced changes amount to tokenism – gestures more likely to assuage public anxiety than to meaningfully reduce fatigue in air traffic controllers.  For example, although it is true that extending the time off between shifts (from 8 to 9 hours) will probably result in more sleep (which is good) it will not result in adequate sleep (the amount of sleep necessary to sustain normal alertness during the night shift).  Prior research shows (and common sense dictates) that a significant portion of the 9 hour break will be devoted to commuting, eating, personal hygiene, socializing with family, etc.  If the FAA was truly serious about optimizing alertness in air traffic controllers, and if the policy makers based their decisions on scientific evidence, the time off between shifts would have been extended to at least 12 hours – and scheduled napping would now be encouraged during work shifts, rather than prohibited. Likewise, prior sleep research (and, again, common sense) suggest that the threat of more severe punishment will have no beneficial effect on alertness.  Those air traffic controllers who fell asleep did not do so because they were not properly motivated to maintain wakefulness.  They fell asleep because they had a significant, physiological need for sleep.  And they probably didn’t even realize they were falling asleep – sleep onset can be insidious. (Think about it. If sleep onset was not insidious, would anyone ever fall asleep while driving an automobile?)

Also, it should be pointed out that both the airline industry and the FAA have known about this problem for decades.  In 1981 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) published a special investigative report on air traffic controller fatigue. However, the recommendations outlined in that report were essentially ignored – and classified as “Closed—Unacceptable Action” in 1989.  Since then, the NTSB (which is the congressionally-mandated special investigative body charged with determining causes of transportation accidents) has issued more than 80 new fatigue-related safety recommendations.  Care to guess how many of these recommendations have been implemented?

History is replete with accidents resulting in human death and injury caused by sleepy transportation workers, and the NTSB routinely cites air traffic controller fatigue in its findings. One tragic example is the August 2006 accident involving Comair flight 5191 in Lexington, Kentucky, in which the air traffic controller cleared the plane for take-off on the wrong runway, resulting in a crash that killed 49 people. Unfortunately, given the inadequate response to the recent incidents, we can expect more sleep and sleepiness-related errors and accidents involving air traffic controllers in the future.”

The hectic schedule of an NBA team can wreck havoc on players’ performance and well-being. Constant traveling leads to sleep deprivation which increases recovery time from injuries, lowers judgement and reaction times, and leads to losses on the court. One team has found a way to gain the edge over the competition with sleep medicine.

The Boston Celtics coaching staff realized the impact constant traveling and a lack of sleep were having on their players, so they enlisted the help of Harvard’s Sleep Medicine director, Dr. Charles Czeisler. Czeisler detailed the detrimental effects of sleep loss to Celtics coach Doc Rivers and they took action to ensure a rested team. Paul Flannery of Boston Magazine recounts the changes on his blog:

The Celtics soon eliminated morning practices and instituted the “2 a.m. rule,” which holds that if the players can’t get to their hotel rooms in the next city by that time, then they stay where they are for an extra night and get their eight hours. Sound rest is all the more important for a veteran team like the Celtics, who have struggled playing games on consecutive nights. “Trying to create a window of 8 to 10 hours of sleep — it’s almost impossible during an NBA season,” Rivers says. “The way we were doing it made it completely impossible.”

The lessons learned from the Celtics sleep hygiene practices can be applied to everyone’s daily life. Allowing oneself plenty of time for sleep and eliminating distractions such as TV and computers from the bedroom are good steps to maintaining a balanced sleep schedule.

As reported by the New York Post:

“Yankee captain Derek Jeter has a new clubhouse — a $15,500-a-month, two-bedroom, three-bath rental at Trump World Tower, reports The Post’s Jennifer Gould Keil. Yes, that’s the same building where Jeter already owns a $20 million apartment that is now on the market. We hear that a neighbor’s noisy construction was hampering the star shortstop’s crucial rest. So Jeter signed a lease for a 2,087-square-foot corner pad away from the racket to ensure some serious shut-eye during baseball season.”

As expensive as that sounds, Jeter is taking a proactive approach to protect his sleep, something that is all too often ignored by many people. Having a proper sleep environment is very important to getting a good night’s rest. Sleep specialists recommend that your sleep environment be dark, cool, and quiet. Remove televisions and computers from the bedroom and don’t let pets sleep in the room to limit sleep disruptions. For more tips on proper sleep hygiene visit Oregon Sleep Associates.

The National Sleep Foundation recently talked to comedian Mike Birbiglia, author of the book Sleepwalk With Me, about his experiences with REM Behavior Disorder, living with a sleep disorder, and taking part in Downy’s Clean Sheet Challenge.

One of the highlights of the interview comes when he talks about his experience jumping out a hotel room window as a result of his REM Behavior Disorder, a condition in which people physically act out their dreams:

SleepMatters®: “You are well-known for talking about your experience with a rare sleep disorder (RBD). (I will never forget your description of jumping out a hotel window in Walla-Walla, Washington.) Can you tell us a little about this? How are you doing now?”

Mike: “In my early twenties I was a young comic hustling to get any foothold in the business. I took every gig, every red-eye flight, and drove any distance to make my career work. In my apartment in Brooklyn I had experienced a series of frightening sleepwalking episodes, but I just didn’t think they were serious. I would stand on my bed and try to fight flying jackals, and I had fallen off the bookshelf in my living room, which in my dream was an Olympic podium. Still, I thought I was too busy to see a doctor.

On one trip to Washington state, I was performing at 5 colleges in 4 days. I was staying up late, obsessed with cable news coverage of the war, and eating pizza on my bed while on the Internet right before I went to sleep. That night I nearly died when I jumped through my hotel window in my sleep.

That’s when I saw a sleep specialist and was diagnosed with REM Behavior Disorder. For the most part, I have been able to control these episodes with medication and behavioral changes. I definitely have a lot more respect for the importance of proper sleep.”

Read the rest of the interview with Mike Birbiglia here.

The National Sleep Foundation conducts a nationwide poll each year to gauge Americans thoughts, attitudes, and habits concerning sleep. This year’s topic related to electronic connectivity and sleep. Here are some highlights from the NSF website:

Many Americans report dissatisfaction with their sleep during the week.
The poll found that 43% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 say they rarely or never get a good night’s sleep on weeknights.

Communications technology use before sleep is pervasive.
Americans report very active technology use in the hour before trying to sleep. Almost everyone surveyed, 95%, uses some type of electronics like a television, computer, video game or cell phone at least a few nights a week within the hour before bed.

Interestingly, cell phones were sometimes a sleep disturbance. About in one in ten (9%)of generation Z’ers (13-18 year olds) say that they are awakened after they go to bed every night or almost every night by a phone call, text message or email.

Baby boomers are less sleepy than generations Y and Z.
Roughly one in five of generation Z’ers (13-18 year olds) and generation Y’ers (19-29 year olds) rate as “sleepy” using a standard clinical assessment tool (included in the poll) compared to about one in ten generation X’ers (30-45 year olds) and baby boomers (46-64 year olds).

Coping with sleepiness through caffeine and naps.
Americans are coping with sleepiness by drinking caffeine and taking regular naps. The average person on a weekday drinks about three 12 ounce caffeinated beverages, with little difference between age groups.

Sleepiness also played a factor in safe driving practices. Half of generation Y’ers (50%) say they drove while drowsy at least once in the past month. More than a third of generation X’ers (40%) and approximately a third of generation Z’ers (30%) and baby boomers (28%) also say so.