Book Report: Sleep Interrupted by Dr. Steven Park

I have been working in the field of orofacial pain and TMJ dysfunction from trauma for the past 20+ years. I have seen over 4000 patients in that period of time and emphasize a non-drug, non-invasive, removeable, reversible multi-disciplinary methodology to resolve the issues (not just manage them). I have had a 90+% success rate.

But that means 10% did not resolve. Always looking in the mirror and asking if I have done everything I could correctly, I realized that those who are unstable or just-plain-not-getting-better, likely have a co-morbid sleep disordered breathing issue too.

And along came Dr. Steven Park. He wrote this book in 2008 and I have finally taken to the time to read it.

The medical world is slow to change but Dr. Park (a renowned ENT specialist) outlines his Sleep Disordered Breathing paradigm, as a way to illustrate how serious an issue this really is.

25% of the population in North America are suspected of having a sleep disordered breathing problem. An additional 40% are suspected of having (the more difficult to diagnose) Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS). And 80% of these cases have not been diagnosed. If there are 400 Million people living in North America, that means more than 150 Million people have some form of sleep disordered breathing.

Imagine if you stopped breathing during your daytime hours due to an obstruction (choking). How would your body respond? Well that is how it responds when there is an obstruction when you sleep too. Except the obstruction is reversible...the tongue falls back against the throat, your sinuses clog up, etc. You are aroused from your sleep and the issue resolves and you go back to sleep and the process (blockage, arousal, etc) continues all night long.

The result has an affect on your nervous, cardiovascular, hormonal and psychological systems.

Dr. Park outlines all of this in easy to understand language. Along with Dr. Kaplan's Better Brain book and Dr. John Ratey's Spark, I think this book is a must-have personal library for every person who works in Health care and for anyone else who knows someone who has snoring or sleep breathing issues.