(The following story by Steven Andrews appeared on the Connecticut Post website on March 30.)
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — It’s not only in Seattle that Americans are going sleepless.
Three-quarters of the nation’s adults regularly fail to get either enough sleep or quality sleep, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Sleep Foundation.
Most people ignore the difficulties, which include insomnia, snoring and sleep apnea, the study found, and few people actually report they think sleeplessness is a significant problem.
Yet only half of those polled were able to say they sleep well most nights. Most adults sleep an average of 6.9 hours, the foundation says, although many experts recommend from seven to nine hours. And one-quarter of those surveyed admit that sleep problems have some impact on their lives.
Mary Dibattista of Milford is one of the sleep-deprived, and Tuesday she went looking for help.
“My sleep is very erratic,” Dibattista said. “Sometimes I wake up at 1:30 a.m. and just can’t get back to sleep.”
Dibattista’s search for sleep took her to Griffin Hospital in Derby, which was hosting an open house Tuesday at its new Sleep Wellness Center.
Each of the center’s four rooms is furnished with chairs, a bed, an entertainment center complete with a television, large paintings on the wall and a private full bathroom. Patients even get breakfast and a newspaper in the morning.
The state-of-the-art equipment is used to monitor and evaluate patients with possible sleep disorders.
Kevin Rush, who oversees the sleep lab, said that one
of the most common — and potentially dangerous — disorders is sleep apnea, a condition in which a person’s breathing stops completely while sleeping. “There are 20 million Americans with sleep apnea, and only about 5 percent are treated,” Rush said. In addition to leaving people fatigued and unproductive during the day, people who fail to treat sleep apnea are at a greater risk for heart problems like hypertension and heart failure, Rush said.
He urged people who snore, are tired during the day or have been told they stop breathing at night to seek medical attention.
At the Griffin center, patients undergo testing in which 23 wires are attached to their bodies for monitoring overnight. The sleep specialists, who see about 20 patients a week, try to identify and treat the problems. They often find the most effective treatments involve changes in lifestyle and diet, not simply medicine.
“I’d rather find out why I’m not sleeping than take a pill to fix it,” said Dibattista. Rush said most of the sleep center’s referrals come from a spouse or bed partner of the patient.
“The spouse is kicking and snoring and then that disrupts their sleep,” he said.
In fact, when awakened by a bed partner’s problems, the other loses an average of 49 minutes of sleep a night, or 300 hours a year, according to the foundation’s study.
That’s how Victor and Corinne DeLisil of Shelton found their way to the Derby open house.
“I can see at night that he definitely stops breathing,” Corinne DeLisil said of her husband. Based on information he gathered Tuesday, especially about potential heart problems, Victor concluded that he should probably contact his doctor about his sleep problem.
Though apnea usually cannot be cured, it can be treated. The most common solution is the application of a continuous positive airway pressure device, or CPAP. The CPAP is a nasal or facemask that allows people uninterrupted breathing through the night. Despite a varying acclimation period, the CPAP can help save a person’s life, said Rush.
Frank Stuban of Seymour, who admits he snores, was impressed with the sleep center.
“This looks like an excellent program, if you really have a problem,” he said. “Of course, it doesn’t hurt [that] these rooms look better than the Waldorf Astoria.”
The sleep wellness program is located within Griffin Hospital on the first floor. To schedule an appointment, call the office at 732-7571 Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., or have your physician arrange for you to be evaluated. For more information, visit www.griffinhospital.org
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)