Region's medical centers more alert to sleep disorders

CHESAPEAKE

Some real gems from the golden age of television come on in the wee hours of the morning, and insomniac Bob Blaisdell watched them all.

He has joked about it, but the problems that can accompany sleeplessness are no laughing matter. Lack of sleep, especially the deep kind needed to dream, can cause lapses in concentration, fatigue, depression, illness and injury.

And Blaisdell’s wife has likened the sound of his snoring to a freight train. He mentioned the insomnia to his doctor, who suggested a sleep test.

Hampton Roads, like elsewhere, has a shortage of beds for sleep testing and too few trained technicians for the exams. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center estimates the area needs at least 50 more beds.

The hospital opened a four-bed sleep center in 2007, joining the handful connected to medical facilities in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Suffolk and Newport News. The list of physician-owned sleep laboratories is growing.

Chesapeake Regional is where Blaisdell found himself a few weeks after a physical, sitting on a bed, being hooked up to a cluster of wires and sensors to monitor his blood, brain, heart and legs.

Extreme fatigue had caught up with him. “I fell asleep while I was talking to the sleep doctor,” he remembered, before taking a sleeping pill, watching TV and bedding down for his testing.

More than 70 million Americans suffer from some sort of chronic sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea , restless legs syndrome and night sweats, reports the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, or AASM.

Chesapeake Regional’s sleep center had a full house the night Blaisdell was tested.

The business of sleep is booming, not just because more federal and pharmaceutical company dollars are going into research but because sleeplessness is more prevalent today.

At no other time in human history have there been so many daily demands and 24-hour distractions to keep us from getting eight hours of shut-eye, researchers say. Anything less than seven hours of sleep per night is considered sleep deprivation.

The connection between sleeplessness and myriad other medical problems – heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, hyperactivity in children and erectile dysfunction in men – is finally being recognized.

Times have changed since Eastern Virginia Medical School opened its pioneering sleep center in 1980, becoming the first in Virginia and only the second on the East Coast to be AASM-certified.

Dr. J. Catesby Ware, center director, said studying sleep was seen as a rogue science by many health care professionals back then.

“Not only do they teach it in medical schools now, but the American Medical Association recognized sleep disorders as a sub-speciality in medicine this year,” he said.

The AMA created a board certification for physicians who do their residency or an equivalent program in sleep disorders.

“The reason why it fits so well is we now have data that suggests that a number of medical problems are related to sleep that we did not realize earlier,” Ware said.

At any given time, the EVMS Sentara sleep center is doing half a dozen or more studies on sleeping pills, normal and problem sleepers and the impact sleepy drivers have on highway safety. In 2007, researchers looked at whether socioeconomic level affects sleep.

Blaisdell didn’t stop breathing enough times during the test to be diagnosed with sleep apnea. He had lost enough weight, about 10 pounds, between his physical and the test to avoid that diagnosis.

But Dr. Vandana Dhawan, the Chesapeake center’s director, considered him a borderline risk for the potentially deadly disorder that puts sufferers at higher risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

Blaisdell’s circadian rhythm , or sleep clock, seemed to be out of whack possibly because of back pain waking him up. Dhawan suggested he use the tennis ball technique to prevent him from rolling around when asleep. A tennis ball is put in a sock and pinned to the back of a T-shirt to prevent him from sleeping on his back.

Blaisdell used some of Dhawan’s advice, and he lost more weight. He stopped watching TV in bed. When insomnia strikes, he doesn’t look at the clock or TV. He tries to “free up” his mind.

“I think things are getting a little better,” Blaisdell said recently.

Janette Rodrigues, (757) 222-5208, janette.rodrigues@pilotonline.com