Let's continue talking about obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). We already discussed some of the symptoms and signs, as well as the significance of untreated OSA and the related diseases such as stroke, heart attack, and diabetes. Today we will focus on the polysomnogram (PSG), the test used to diagnose OSA, as well as most other sleep... Read more
I'd like to devote some time to a very interesting article from the November 18th New York Times Magazine titled "The Sleep Industrial Complex". Firstly, the article notes a recent boom in the "sleep economy". As we have discussed in the past, chronic sleep deprivation can lead to a vast amount of medically... Read more
Today we're going to talk some more about nightmares, particularly Night Terrors and REM Behavior Disorder. Nightmares are common in patients with psychiatric disorders, but in general, nightmares can simply be caused by stressful or traumatic experiences. There is a common myth that frequent nightmares, especially in children, are a... Read more
On November 5-11, 2007 the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) is launching the first annual Drowsy Driving Prevention Week, a national campaign to educate young drivers (and everyone else on the road) about the dangers of driving while sleepy, as well as other unsafe driving practices. I don't need to tell everyone that our society... Read more
I wanted to take a short break from our regularly scheduled blog on nightmares to talk about a recently published article, by Dr. John Chia in The Journal of Clinical Pathology. It concerned a well-known but very difficult disease to describe and diagnose called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). First, some important background: While many... Read more