CityView Magazine

business Sleepless in Fayetteville I Cape Fear Valley Health helps the community's drowsy By SaraH onken t is the time of year when many become reinvested in their desire to lose weight, get healthy, or have a more successful year at work. However for some, trouble sleeping through the night or excessive daytime tiredness leaves them hardly able to function, let alone able to turn over a new leaf. The Cape Fear Valley Sleep Center has been helping the community's drowsy for over 15 years. It is kind of like a hotel with clean sheets and a comfortable bed, but where every movement, down to eye rotations and muscle spasms, is carefully monitored on a complex charting system by trained sleep technologists. Nationally, the number of sleep centers has doubled in the last five years. Heightened awareness, along with research and science developments, ha s made this relatively new field an important part of today's healthcare. Doctor Samuel Fleishman, founder and physician at Cape Fear Valley Sleep Center explained, "People now realize how important sleep is and the impact it has on your health and well-being," and continued, "And not only from a wellness standpoint, getting your sleep and being able to perform throughout the day, but its impact on medical problems and how it can make a lot of things worse." Cape Fear Valley Sleep Center started in 1995 and has since grown into its own clinic and three separate sleep labs, the largest of which is just a short walk from the clinic in the rehabilitation center at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Every weekday, sleepy Fayettevillians walk through the doors of the sleep center with concerns of daytime tiredness or fatigue, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep at night, excessive snoring or irregular breathing patterns while asleep. In order to make an accurate diagnosis, each patient is evaluated at the clinic, where they go over their medical history, do a physical exam and when appropriate; schedule a sleep test in the lab. In a sleep test, or polysomnogram, each patient comes in the evening and is directed to their room by a sleep technologist. "The rooms are like a relatively nice hotel room, not like a hospital room, but not the nicest hotel room either," Doctor Fleishman explained. In order to monitor the patient's brain waves, rapid eye movements (REM), muscle movements, airflow, respiratory effort, oxygen levels, heart rate and limb movements the sleep technologist places a series of censors on the patient. The whole observation process takes about 7-8 hours—the recommended number of hours the average adult should be sleeping at night. A typical patient might have a disorder called sleep apnea, which is characterized by infrequent or shallow breathing while sleeping, or insomnia, which makes it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep during the night. Less common, a patient might have narcolepsy, which is excessive tiredness, or parasomnia, which is characterized by abnormal sleep behaviors (i.e. sleep walking). Weight can play a big role with obstructive sleep apnea, one of the most common disorders detected and treated in this particular sleep center. The upper airway obstruction, which often results in snoring, is caused by the relaxation of the muscles along the airway that keep it open while awake, but relax and allow it to contract while sleeping. While weight gain tends to make it worse, losing weight can improve or even cure certain types of sleep apnea. Insomnia is also very common, especially among women. Short term and long term insomnia can develop as a reCityViewNC.com | 29

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