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Sleep Center
The Stevens Hospital Sleep Center is certified by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. With a caring and a comfortable environment, the sleep center features the latest in technological innovations including the respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) machine, which detects breathing disturbances much earlier than conventional technology.
The sleep center is staffed by a specially trained team of physicians, sleep specialists and technologists who work together to provide the highest quality of patient care. The medical team leads patients through the process of consultation, sleep studies (if necessary), treatment and care.
"Stevens puts a high emphasis on continuous care and closely follows patients long after a treatment has been prescribed," says Stevens Hospital Sleep Center physician, Robert H. McCoy, MD.
At Stevens Hospital Sleep Center, sleep studies are conducted in private rooms that have sound and light controls to help eliminate outside factors that can artificially influence test results. The rooms were designed with patient comfort in mind and have a homelike appearance. Sleep rooms are painted with soft, calming hues that are conducive to sleep. Each room features a comfortable queen-size bed, a recliner, window treatments, attractive cabinetry, a television, a VCR, and reading material.
Why do we need sleep?
Most people need about eight hours of quality sleep every night, and just about anyone who has missed a night of sleep can tell you how miserable sleep deprivation can feel. Yet despite decades of research, the exact function of sleep remains somewhat mysterious.
While we know quite a bit about different types of brain activity and hormonal changes that occur during sleep, we don't truly understand what function sleep performs. In fact, we have learned the most by discovering what happens to people when they don't get enough sleep.
What happens to our bodies and minds while we are sleeping?
Healthy, restorative sleep consists of five separate stages that occur during 90- to 110-minute sleep cycles throughout the night. Each of these stages is marked by differences in the quality of brainwaves that are generated. Stage 1 consists of light sleep, and stages 2 through 4 involve successively deeper sleep when brainwaves slow down. The final stage in the cycle is known as REM sleep.
REM refers to the "rapid eye movement" that occurs during this portion of the sleep cycle, and this is when most dreaming is thought to occur. In fact, REM sleep is as different from non-REM sleep as sleeping is from being awake. While the brain is very active during this cycle, most muscles are paralyzed.
As the night progresses, the amount of time spent in any one stage varies, thus underscoring the need for a full night of uninterrupted sleep. Hormonal levels change with sleep too. Cortisol, a stress hormone, decreases, while levels of melatonin and growth hormone increase. These hormones appear to play a role in regulating fundamental bodily processes, including childhood growth and adult muscle maintenance and repair.
What happens when we don't get good sleep?
Insufficient sleep appears to play a role in a variety of health issues, including weight control, muscle regeneration and maintenance, and childhood growth. Because hormone levels change during sleep, interfering with sleep throws off basic body chemistry, which can lead to long-term health problems.
Psychological health clearly suffers from either insufficient amounts of sleep or poor-quality sleep. As reflected in the 2002 Sleep in America poll, daytime sleepiness correlates with increased feelings of anger and dissatisfaction with life1. Other studies have shown that sleep deprivation impairs judgment, reaction time, daytime alertness and certain types of memory2.
Inadequate sleep has been linked to serious social costs as well. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that insufficient sleep contributes to 100,000 car accidents each year. One study estimates that sleep deprivation costs Americans at least $92 billion per year3.
References
- 1 www.sleepfoundation.org/2002poll.cfm.
- 2 www.sleepfoundation.org.
- 3 Stoller M.K., "Economic Effects of Insomnia", Clinical Therapy, 1994 16:873-897, discussion 854.
How many people have sleep disorders?
Research shows that approximately one-third of the U.S. population suffers from inadequate sleep at some point in their lives. Some populations with a high prevalence of sleep disorders are well-known. These include people in occupations where regular sleep is impossible, such as pilots and truckers, or people who work night shifts and thus must sleep during the day. Elderly people also experience higher rates of insomnia than the rest of the population.
However, all of these people have the same sleep requirements. According to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders study in 1992, chronic sleep disorders affect 40 million Americans. An additional 20 to 30 million Americans experience intermittent sleep-related problems.
