Specialists belonging to a wide range of medical disciples conducted various programmes to highlight the dangers of sleep deprivation in response to a call given to observe the World Sleep Day (WSD) by the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM) here on Friday.
Posters were released and press conferences conducted to promote awareness about diseases like Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) and all the metabolic diseases that are either caused or aggravated by this type of sleep disorder.
Professor and Head of Pulmonary Medicine and Sleep Disorder, AIIMS, Rajdeep Guleria, in a press release on the ‘Link between sleep disorders and metabolic disorders like obesity, diabetes and heart diseases,’ said that OSA remained largely untreated because it was undiagnosed.
Snoring and Sleep Apnoea ENT specialist and WASM member Vidyasagar Ramakrishnan said that everyone should now know that “loud sleep was not sound sleep” and that 60 per cent of the people who snore suffer from sleep apnoea. Earlier it was thought that the origin of metabolic diseases in 85 per cent of the patients was idiopathic (unknown pathogenesis or apparently spontaneous). But now there was data to show that the metabolic diseases could be reversed in 50 per cent of the cases considered to be of idiopathic origin.
He said the WASM in association with the Indian Association of Surgeons for Sleep Apnoea (IASSA) was conducting screening for OSA at Sagar ENT and Head, Neck Centre Dornakal Road for four days starting from Monday evening. Persons who snore should under go a sleep study and endoscopy to determine what was blocking the airway.
A poster was released by the Vijayawada Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (VIMHANS) to promote awareness about the link between proper sleep and mental health and happiness as the WASM included ‘happiness’ in its WSD theme this year.
