Carefree family pushes for education on sleep apnea

MARC BUCKHOUT ~ MANAGING EDITOR ~ 7/20/2011

Instead of relegating a snoring spouse to the couch Carefree resident Michael J. Krahe said sending them to their doctor or dentist could save their life.
Sleep apnea isn’t a new health issue, but is a growing one, which Krahe has taken on as his latest project.
After a career as an insurance executive, Krahe and his wife Valerie retired and moved to Carefree in 2008.
Through the couple’s daughter, Jennifer, who worked in the dental field, Michael would stumble into his latest project. For the last two years he has done his best to bring together minds, not only from the dentistry world, but also the medical profession, through his organization, the Academy of Clinical Sleep Disorders Disciples.
The 57-year-old from Carefree said he has big aspirations.
“I want us to kill this thing,” he said. “This is a global issue that is getting bigger.”
Sleep apnea is a common disorder in which a person has one or more pauses in breathing or shallow breaths while they sleep. The problem is caused by the relaxing of muscles during REM sleep, specifically in the jaw and the tongue. Breathing pauses can last from a few seconds up to two or three minutes and can occur five to 30 times in an hour.
“When these stoppages happen the heart beats harder, your blood pressure goes up and this eventually can lead to cardiac disease,” Krahe said. “The brain measures a dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the body and a chemical sends a message from the brain to the body that you’re going to die if you don’t wakeup.”
As a result people wake up to a gasp of breath only to fall back asleep and have the process occur all over again.
The problem has grown as the population has grown more and more obese. While people with weight issues are more susceptible to the disease it can strike any portion of the population.
With sleep apnea comes a series of issues from fatigue to depression to anxiety to a variety of coronary ailments.
Krahe said the estimation is that approximately one in four or at least one in five people are afflicted with sleep apnea.
Most people experiencing the issues are alerted by a concerned bedmate. For single people there are questionnaires that people can take that can give them an indication of whether they might have the problem.
Whether a person goes to a doctor or a dentist Krahe said they’ll most often be recommended to take a sleep study test.
Both Michael and Valerie have been diagnosed with sleep apnea. Michael said he feels
as though the diagnosis of his wife, years ago, bought him time with her that he might not otherwise have had.
Krahe said that the night in and night out stress of sleep apnea can end with a fatal heart attack that could have been prevented.
The results of a sleep test gives patients a score classifying them as having mild, moderate or severe sleep apnea.
Krahe said that the vast majority of doctors prescribe CPAP, a machine that provides continuous positive airway pressure, for patients regardless of their classification.
“Many patients find the CPAP machines cumbersome, because you have to wear a mask when you sleep and it can get altered when you move during the night,” he said. “Plus it makes noise. If you have mild to moderate sleep apnea a specially designed mouth piece can be all a person needs.”
The education of health care professionals in how to treat the problem is what the Academy of Clinical Sleep Disorders Disciplines is aiming to accomplish.
Through two years Krahe’s group has grown to more than 150 members, doctors and dentists from across the United States with international members in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
With experts from the medical field and the dental field Krahe said he believes he has a
top knotch advisory board, which he stresses isn’t a board of directors.
“There’s no politics with what we’re doing,” he said. “We’re not selling a product. This is all about learning. Patients need to ask their dentists if they’re trained in sleep dentistry.”
Physicians and doctors interested in becoming members are given literature to read over the course of two months leading up to eight hours of training. After being given time to study what they’ve learned they have a test. Although Krahe has an office in Carefree instruction is carried out online.
The group also has conferences twice a year, with the next one coming up Oct. 21 - 22 in Phoenix, with pediatric dentistry being the focus.
As more and more studies are done about the disease Krahe said issues leading to sleep apnea could be occurring as early as the infant stage.
Krahe said that some studies suggest that babies that are breast fed develop a wider airway than those that are bottle fed, making the bottle fed babies, with a less developed airway, more susceptible to sleep apnea.
“There are things that can be done with pediatric dentistry that would be a short term cost, but could save insurance companies millions on the backend when all these heart issues develop as a result of sleep apnea,” he said. “You think of all the people that take medicine for high blood pressure and you figure conservatively 20 percent have sleep apnea issues. You could wipe out a huge cost by being proactive. ”
Along with creating a setting for learning among health care professionals Krahe said simply educating the public about the issue is one of his chief pursuits.
According to the American College of Physicians, 80-90 percent of people with sleep apnea remain undiagnosed.
“Maybe the problem is a mountain and I’m just an ant scurrying about at the base, but we can’t have people that simply think sleep apnea is people snoring,” he said. “Snoring is a symptom of a bigger issue that might be slowly killing them. We have to get the public to understand that.”
To view video of a patient diagnosed with sleep apnea go to http://files.me.com/jaekrahe/4eor0a
For information on the Academy of Clinical Sleep Disorders Disciples go to acsdd.org.