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| LinkExchange Member | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |
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Could this site be my favorite because I'm on the staff, conducting apnea chats there Monday evenings 9-11 pm EST? Maybe, but this site may well become definitive for both patients and clinicians involved with sleep disorders. It has the unique feature of a chat schedule so active that often more than one chat a day takes place, each with a specific disease focus--so far, sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and restless legs/periodic leg movements of sleep. In its coverage of information on sleep disorders, however, it is comprehensive. This is a multifaceted site, with separate sections for patients and clinicians, a sleep bookstore, bulletin boards, breaking news relevant to sleep, question and answer to medical staff, etc, etc. Don't miss checking it out: this strives and promises to become one of the definitive Internet sites on sleep!
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About Sleep: Sleep Apnea |
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This sleep disorders site, part of the immense About.com site, deserves a visit for several reasons that make it distinctive. It offers not only abundant coverage of sleep apnea, but also of many sleep issues of acute interest not well covered at other sites: for example, sleep and children, sleep and elders, enuresis, bruxism, nocturnal eating, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and on and on. Despite its being clearly geared for general public, the wise and compassionate author puts out a newsletter, "Sleepy Time," which I make a point of reading in entirety every time I receive it.
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A large, professionally designed site which aims ambitiously “to link all the sleep information located on the internet.” It ioffers an unusually well-organized Sleep Forum, something like an edited newsgroup bulletin board, where the monitor and proprietor of the website (“Sandman”) makes frequent answers to the posts, and notifies those posting questions when answers to their questions become available. It also includes a “Guide to Sleep Disorders”—Sleep Apnea, Insomnia, Restless Legs, and Narcolepsy—with brief self-tests to help people determine if they are likely to suffer from these conditions. Other features of note are numerous rated and descriptive links to sleep sites, patient support groups, professional sites, dreaming, research, and sleep in the news. There is also a monthly “SnoozePaper” with timely topics.
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THE NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATION
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| This large website is maintained by the National Sleep Foundation, a non-profit organization started in 1991 to promote public and professional awareness of sleep disorders. Though non-profit, the organization does solicit contributions and the educational materials they offer are not inexpensive.
Nevertheless, the site contains some useful articles on topics of current interest, like melatonin. There is an interesting mini-monograph on sleep and aging. Sleep apnea is covered in a summary fashion. The organization seems committed to increasing awareness of the dangers of drowsy driving. Their orientation is towards the general public rather than individual patients, and even more towards professionals and the news media. |
SHUTEYE ONLINE
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This site, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, Searle, is mostly oriented towards people with insomnia (i.e., which might be treated with sleeping medication), but it does contain a few items of interest to people with sleep apnea.
One is a daily diary of sleep/wake patterns which you can print out and use to present a clearer picture than an oral description might convey to your doctor (and yourself) of how you are doing. Even if it doesn’t make things any clearer, the effort you put into making such a record may well earn some respect from your doctor as to how seriously you take the problem. It may be especially useful to present such a record after you have started treatment, if the results seem unsatisfactory to you. Also, the site includes a sound, straightforward listing of good sleep hygiene practices, as relevant to people with sleep apnea as to people with insomnia. |
SLEEP RESEARCH ONLINE
Unfortunately for sleep disorder patients interested in learning more of personal relevance, the journal seems focused on basic (animal) research. |
The Journal Sleep |
| The monthly medical journal represented by this website is one of very few devoted to clinical research on sleep.
The journal is a rich source of new research on sleep apnea . Subscriptions are expensive ($129/year), so on-line access would be a boon, but that is not what this site offers. The website appears to exist mostly to present guidelines for potential contributors of new articles. Some abstracts from old issues are included. |
NAPSwww.websciences.org/bibliosleep/NAPS
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NAPS resembles a library of abstracts of articlesrelated to sleep, drawn mostly from medical journals. Every week about 30-40 more are added, sorted by various categories (such as Sleep Apnea or Sleep Deprivation) as well as by author and keyword. You can access them directly at the site, or subscribe to an E-Mail list that notifies you of new publications in categories you have identified as of interest to you. NAPS has been a major resource for new articles summarized at my own site. As a library, it has some limitations. It does not incorporate full articles, only abstracts. Sometimes the abstracts contain no information beyond the title, author, and journal. When they do provide information, it is often quite condensed, making the abstract in some ways harder for a layperson to read understandingly than the original article. A substantial minority of the articles are written in foreign languages, signalled by brackets around the title. Sometimes reprints of the original paper can be obtained from the author by an E-Mail request service at the site, but this is frequently unavailable. There is always the option of printing out a pre-formatted letter which can, if you’re dextrous enough, be folded up to make its own envelope, but this has proven cumbersome. Usually I print out the abstracts and use them to go looking in the local medical library. Still, browsing through those abstracts which sound interesting from their titles, or which get sent to you as potentially of interest, takes little time and will give you a general sense of what researchers have been doing in the past few years. Bear in mind, though, that the article you see just published in a journal may represent research done several years ago! |
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| National Heart Lung & Blood Institute: Sleep Information for Patients and the General Public www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/sleep/index.htm
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| This National Institute of Health has been the parent organization for sleep research. Here it provides some unique features, such as topical brochures, which can be downloaded or ordered, to provide patients, students, or teachers with information on subjects like the danger of driving when not alert. Other brochures concern problem sleepiness, insomnia, narcolepsy, restless leg syndrome, and sleep apnea. There is also an interesting test of your knowledge of basic facts about sleep and its disorders. The site offers video public service announcements (requiring QuickTime) ahd HealthBeat Radio News. Note that this URL directs you to the public and patient section of the site, which also includes information for professionals in a separate section.
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| KnowSleep http://www.KnowSleep.com
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| KnowSleep.com has one section for professionals, while another addresses the needs of sleep disorder patients and their family members. Visitors have access to a KnowSleep original - Hear From the ExpertsSM, which are interviews between a prominent medical news correspondent and a sleep specialist on sleep-related topics. Individuals can also find in-depth information about sleep and sleep disorders, current news about sleep, sleep-related product comparisons, etc. A nicely done, major site.
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| Sleep Disorder Centers of America http://www.sleep-sdca.com/home.htm
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| The Sleep Disorder Centers of America maintain sleep laboratories throughout the southern States. Although this is a relatively small, essentially commercial site, it does provide information on the major sleep disorders and an interesting self-comleted questionnaire that helps point to possible diagnoses of not just sleep apnea, but other sleep disorders such as narcolepsy and periodic leg movements of sleep as well.
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| Sleep Home Pages
http://bisleep.medsch.ucla.edu/
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| A huge, complex site, with separate sections for researchers, clinicians, and the general public, this UCLA undertaking offers one of the best portals into the myriad of sleep resources on the Internet. It also offers to the public such unique features as regular reviews of sleep-related books, and a newly updated forum to answer questions. I strongly suggest you give the latter a try. |
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| Phantom Sleep Pages
http://www.newtechpub.com/phantom/index.html
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| This site is the creation of Jerry Halberstadt, author of "Phantom of the Night," one of the best and most practical of books available for sleep apnea patients and their families. His site offers many features of interest, including access links to a myriad of sleep related sites on the Internet, a newsletter, a forum for questions, much practical advice, and the interesting educational section called S.N.O.R.E. (Sleep apNoea/apNea Online}. P.S. Get the book through this site. |
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| Stanford University Center of Excellence for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Sleep Disorders
http://www.med.stanford.edu/school/psychiatry/coe/main.html
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| Stanford University, home to the "father of sleep medicine," Dr. William Dement, has maintained its position as one of the preeminent centers in the world for research and treatment in sleep disorders. When I was to have my (2nd) surgery for sleep apnea, I travelled 3000 miles to get it done there. This new site, still under construction, offers access to some of the cutting-edge research being done at Stanford, as well as the superb clinical resources available there and, sometimes, scarcely anywhere else. Another famous Stanford sleep specialist is Dr. Guilleminault, who originated the concept of "Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome." |
SleepQuest
| http://www.sleepquest.com/
This new site now incorporates Dr. Dement's venerable "The Sleep Well." It includes a colum written by Dr. Dement and the opportunity to chat personally with the "father of sleep medicine." It includes a bulletin board for patient to patient exchanges and, most interestingly, an actual sound recording of a sleep apneic snoring
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| The Sleep Apnea Clearinghouse
http://www.pilgrimvoices.com/apnea/
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| This site aims to present information in clearly understandable language. That it does so in summarizing a variety of news and research articles makes it a site similar to my own (albeit without my effort to educate people in understanding "medicalese" and taking a skeptical attitude to new research). It has the usual forum/bulletin board and chats, plus an especially interesting "Story Page" with vivid and personal accounts. Check it out. |
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| Sleep Apnea Surgery Site
http://www.osasurgery.com/
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| Despite my frequent negative comments about surgeons treating sleep apnea, often with ineffective procedures like the UPPP, without giving sufficient support to a thoroughgoing trial of CPAP first, I believe that it is of vital importance for patients to see the other side of the story. Such surgical sites are not numerous; in fact, this is the only one I have found so far, but it seems to offer a reasonable choice. It is not terribly biassed in a surgical direction, though of course it makes the case for surgery as a good alternative--and everyone with sleep apnea should be familiar with that case. Another aspect of great value is the clear explanation of the different surgical procedures available. The author of this site is a young, Harvard-educated, surgeon who seems very articulate. His brief "curriculum vitae" leaves it unclear whether he has had any research experience in his field, but I consider that sometimes more a detriment than an advantage when one wants a doctor primarily committed to treating patients. You owe it to yourself to visit this modest but attractive site.
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Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine
http://www.thesdds.org
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This is an organization of dentists interesed in appliances used to treat sleep apnea. One function of the site is to enable the public to find such dentists. It also offers a concise description wih pictures of the two general types of devices--tongue retaining and mandibular repositioning.
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