Are You Sleeping With the Enemy [Final Version]

Alisha · Post by **Alisha** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:32 pm

This article from Prevention.com entitled "How to Catch a Sleep Thief" suggests that 80 to 90% of people with Sleep Apnea remain undiagnosed because they list their main symptom as fatigue/low energy and don't mention daytime sleepiness to their doctors.

http://www.prevention.com/article/0,577 ... -0,00.html

I sent them a link to: http://www.pur-sleep.com./uploads/SleepingEnemy.pdf.

drbandage · Post by **drbandage** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:02 pm

Alisha wrote:This article from Prevention.com entitled "How to Catch a Sleep Thief" suggests that 80 to 90% of people with Sleep Apnea remain undiagnosed because they list their main symptom as fatigue/low energy and don't mention daytime sleepiness to their doctors.

http://www.prevention.com/article/0,577 ... -0,00.html

I sent them a link to: http://www.pur-sleep.com./uploads/SleepingEnemy.pdf.

Alisha -
This is absolutely critical for people to understand. I have made this point here on several occasions, and I again reiterate: doctors will respond VERY differently to the patient who complains of excessive sleepiness than they will to a fatigue/low energy complaint. There are many reason, some probably obvious, why the latter elicits an entirely different response (even subconsciously) than the former, but the bottom line is that they DO!

For a variety of reasons, fatigue and low energy complaints are depression or metabolic problems "until proven otherwise" as we say in doctorSpeak.

There are many of these often useful expression in medicine (e.g. an elderly patient with new confusion has a urinary tract infection 'until proven otherwise', pain that increases at night is tumor related 'until proven otherwise', etc.). It is obviously a two-edged sword, however.

Until we get each and every doc to say to themselves "I wonder if they really mean 'sleepy'," there will be many patients who will slip through the cracks. In the meantime, patients and the general public need to know that if they mean 'sleepy', it is very important to say 'sleepy'.

Because sleepy can be creepy!