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Now the other leg of the interpretation is SOREMP, sleep onset REM period. That’s abnormal. Unless you are in your first year of life. The reason we do this is because two SOREMP’s – that means if it happens twice or more out of your four or five nights of MSLT – it is said to be highly specific and suggestive of narcolepsy. You as a neurologist, and a taker of neurology Boards, needs to know that. It is totally specific? Of course not. You know by now that you will never say something is 100% specific and 100% sensitive. They don’t have to tell you that. But it’s pretty good, 80%, 70%, whatever. The point is, if you get severely sleep deprived – you stay up all night because you are on call – you do a MSLT tomorrow, you may have sleep onset REM period. Again, it has to be interpreted in the context of the previous night, which is measured objectively by a polysomnogram. So severe obstructive sleep apnea, severe sleep deprivation, will cause sleep onset REM period.

Finally, I’m going to tell you this because it is important and we’ll go back to it, drugs, very very important. Because drugs alter sleep. What’s the strongest and most common REM-suppressing drug? You will be asked that question. Tricyclics. For that reason if you withdraw from tricyclics or another REM-suppression medication, you get a REM rebound. You will tend to get more REM and earlier and you get a false positive MSLT.
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Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Friday, November 16th, 2007

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Clinically, these are the three studies that we do. This is all you need to know about. The current thinking is that the majority of impotence is not psychogenic, so this is an important thing to do when people are making a diagnosis of psychogenic impotence. Now let’s talk about the other two, which you are more likely to be asked about I think. Polysomnogram occurs all night, records sleep architecture and makes the diagnosis of the major sleep disorders, intrinsic sleep disorders, which are sleep apnea and nocturnal myoclonus. Narcolepsy is a major sleep disorder but the polysomnogram is usually normal during narcolepsy. First night effect: when we put somebody in the lab with leads all over the place and sometimes in unpleasant places, they don’t sleep very well. So there is an artifact finding in every sleep study, which is: it is not a typical night’s sleep. We know that. How do we measure it? It’s called the first night effect. What happens if tomorrow you go to sleep in a lab with leads everywhere, it will take you longer to fall asleep. You’ll have an increased sleep latency. You will spend less time in REM sleep and slow wave sleep. You’ll have a less than optimal night’s sleep, and we know that. Usually it’s not significant.
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As a neurologist, and for neurology Boards therefore, you need to be familiar with the MSLT. This is the multiple sleep latency test. What it does is, we give the patients four or five opportunities to take a nap at 10, 12, 2, 4 and 6. And we measure how long it takes for them to fall asleep. By sleep staging criteria, how long it takes to go from awake to stage I sleep, to the beginning of sleep. And that’s called the sleep latency. The trial duration is 15 to 20 minutes. You have 15 to 20 minutes to fall asleep. If you don’t fall asleep after that time, it’s normal. We monitor sleep stages. In addition to how long it takes you to fall asleep, which stages do you go into? So the two things we measure are sleep latency – how long does it take you to go from awake to stage I – and do you go into REM sleep. If you do, it’s called sleep onset REM period. Abbreviated, SOREMP. That’s abnormal unless you are a newborn. It’s normal for a newborn – or actually almost the first year of life – to go into REM sleep very quickly. After that it’s not normal. First leg of interpretation is mean sleep latency. You need to know these. These are numbers, these are agreed upon, these are guidelines. You will be asked. Normal mean sleep latency for a human is greater than 10 minutes. That means, the average of four or five naps where you’ve tried to fall asleep should be greater than 10 minutes. Less than 10 is abnormal. Less than five is definitely abnormal and evidence of severe sleepiness. Between 5-10 is a gray zone, but nevertheless for purposes of the Boards, it’s abnormal. Now that means that the person is sleepy. It doesn’t tell you why, it could be any reason. The MSLT is not perfect but it is the only reliable measure we have to assess objectively sleepiness. But it has to be interpreted in the context of the previous night’s sleep, and for that reason, MSLT’s should be done after a polysomnogram of the previous night. Because if the previous night shows terrible sleep architecture – for example, the person doesn’t go into REM sleep, the person has severe sleep apnea, or the person was up most of the night – then in that context it means nothing. It has to be interpreted with caution. Your friends that you think fall asleep quickly will admit to you that if you do a MSLT they will have a sleep latency greater than 10 minutes. Is it a perfect test? No, of course not. Want to know what you need to say for the Boards? Mean sleep latency has to be more than 10 minutes.

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Friday, November 16th, 2007

Filed under Disorders

Functions of sleep? The easy answer is we don’t know. We do know, like with most physiologic functions, how do we know what it does? We take it away and see what happens. When you take sleep away experimentally you do have impaired performance and you do have sleep cravings. If you stop sleep, you will crave it more and more, just like hunger. And eventually you will sleep. You are more likely to fall asleep in an inappropriate setting, as we will discuss. Selective REM deprivation, the classic question and the old teaching was if you deprive somebody of REM sleep selectively you cause psychosis. That is not true. No, no, no. This is an artifact of a poorly-done study in the 1950’s. Not true. The same thing you get with non-REM sleep you get REM fresher, you get REM rebound, you get more and more craving of REM sleep and eventually, whether you like it or not, you go in REM sleep. That’s what people with narcolepsy do.

Sleep studies. Let me give you what you need to know about those. How do we sleep? How do we stage sleep? You need three things; EEG, EOG, EMG. The non-REM sleep stages is determined by EEG only. The reason we need those two is for REM sleep. Because REM sleep is defined by rapid eye movements and muscle atonia. So in order to make a comprehensive sleep staging you need all three. Technically you can do it with one EEG channel, in practice we like to have more. And especially central leads and occipital leads, which makes perfect sense. Central leads because the hallmark of non-REM sleep always, or often, predominates at the vertex. Vertex, sharp waves, spindles, K-complexes and occipital leads because the hallmark of wakefulness is in the occipital region. Then EMG, technically one channel is enough. I’ll show you pictures of all that. You might be shown a few pictures. With a polysomnogram, which is a comprehensive recording of a whole night. What we do in addition to sleep staging, we measure what we are likely to find abnormal and since sleep apnea is so important, we measure respiration, airflow, respiratory effort, oxygen saturation, EKG, this is obviously to look for periodic leg movements of sleep or nocturnal myoclonus. And this is to look for penile tumescence or erection when we evaluate erectile function, which is a totally different study. This isn’t done in a routine polysomnogram. It’s done when the indication is the assessment of impotence. They are usually referred by the urologist or the internist or the endocrinologist and we evaluate impotence. All they are asking me is, evaluate the erectile function at night. While we are on this topic, the only thing you need to know about this – which is common sense, I think – what we do is we do a polysomnogram and we look for penile tumescence, which is measured quantitatively, and if you have normal erection during REM sleep the erectile dysfunction or impotence is more likely to be psychogenic. If it’s organic, you lose the REM-associated erection. You do a full polysomnogram because you want to make sure that there is REM sleep, because if somebody has severe sleep apnea and no REM sleep, then you cannot say the erectile dysfunction is psychogenic because they did not go into REM sleep and you are not expected to have erections outside of REM sleep. Canadian pharmacy news

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Thursday, November 15th, 2007

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Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg per m2 or more. Overweight is defined as a BMI of 25 to 29.9 kg per m2. About 35 percent of American adults (aged 20 years of age or older) are overweight. In addition, 14 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11, and 12 percent of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 are overweight.

Weight loss medications at Canadian Online Pharmacy.

Pathophysiology. The adipocyte has endocrine capabilities and secretes leptin — a protein product of the ob gene — in response to increased stores of energy. Leptin limits food intake by acting upon the OB receptor in the hypothalamus. In many obese adults, leptin levels are increased, whereas leptin uptake into the central nervous system is low.

Diagnosis of obesity begins with the determination of BMI. The BMI can be ascertained by measuring the patient’s height and weight and then using a BMI table to find the BMI value.

Nutrition therapy
A meal plan that creates an energy deficit of 500 to 1,000 kcal per day less than the individual’s average daily intake will usually be suitable for weight reduction. Along with caloric reduction, a reduction in total fat consumption should be recommended. Caloric restrictions for the treatment of overweight and obesity can be classified as follows:
Moderate deficit diet (all health risk groups). Women: 1200+ kcal per day; men: 1400+ kcal per day
Low-calorie diet (moderate to extremely high health risk groups). Women: 800 to 1200 kcal per day; men: 800 to 1400+ kcal per day.
Very low-calorie diet (high to extremely high-health risk groups). Less than 800 kcal per day.
Among patients treated with a moderate deficit diet, weight losses average about 1 lb (0.45 kg) per week. Because even moderate deficit diets may pose nutritional concerns, such as deficiencies in calcium, iron, and folic acid, vitamin and mineral supplementation may be recommended.

Physical activity
Although most weight loss is achieved through decreased caloric intake, physical activity is the primary factor responsible for increased caloric expenditure. Exercise may reduce the desire for foods that are high in fat and also may help to promote dietary compliance.
The long-term physical activity goal of most adults should be to perform 30 or more minutes of moderately intensive physical activity such as walking each day.

Pharmacologic treatment

Pharmacotherapy should be considered only for individuals with high, very high, or extremely high BMI-based health risks:

Patients with a BMI of 30 kg per m2 or more and no attendant risk factors.

Patients with a BMI of 27 kg per m2 or more and one or more obesity-related comorbidities or other diseases.

Contraindications to pharmacotherapy include uncontrolled cardiovascular disease, pregnancy, lactation, history of psychiatric disease, and age below 18 years, and concomitant use of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs).

Responders may exhibit preliminary weight losses of up to 1 lb (0.45 kg) per week; however, weight loss often plateaus or ceases after six to eight months of therapy. Most patients tend to regain weight after discontinuing pharmacotherapy, successful weight maintenance being contingent on significant improvements in dietary habits, physical activity, and behavior.

Drugs & medications
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Xenical – Xenical blocks some of the fat that you eat from being absorbed by your organism. Xenical is used in the management of obesity including weight loss and weight maintenance when used with a reduced-calorie diet.

Hoodia Patch – A new era weight loss medicine intended specially for external use. Hoodia patch is intended to work by putting it on patient’s skin, then going through skin and passing into patient’s bloodstream, Hoodia will decrease appetite. As a patient takes less food he loses his weight at same time.
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Comments (1) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

Filed under Disorders

The DSM-IV identifies the principle characteristic of generalized anxiety disorder as excessive anxiety and worry, usually, over a period of greater than 6 months. The concerns are considered to be far out of proportion to reality. The anxiety is accompanied by at least three of the following symptoms: restlessness, easy fatiguability, difficulty concentrating, muscle tension, irritability, and sleep disturbance. The symptoms are sufficiently severe to interfere with the person’s life style, and are not attributable to another mental disorder or drugs.

In primary care, patients with GAD often present to their physicians with a cluster of autonomic symptoms, such as:
Cardiac (chest pains, palpitations, tachycardia, tachypnea)
Pulmonary (hyperventilation, smothering sensations, dyspnea)
Gastrointestinal (globus hystericus, indigestion, abdominal pains, flatulance, diarrhea, constipation)
Genitourinary (frequency, menstrual irregularities, sexual dysfunction)
Dermatologic (paresthesias, sweating, hot flashes, chills, pruritis)
Treatment

As in most other forms of anxiety disease, the treatment of GAD requires pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy and patient education. In GAD more than any other, however, therapeutic success absolutely depends on effective patient education. It is much easier for people to recognize panic disorder as a disease, with its dramatic symptoms, or a obsessive compulsive disorder or phobias, with their obviously irrational components. In GAD, the symptoms are primarily those of other well known diseases: cardiac, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and dermatologic. Indeed, they are most often comorbid. Patients are often convinced that their suffering is caused entirely by one of these diseases, and that their anxiety actually is their own fault.

The first step in treatment is the diagnostic process itself. The alert physician, after a thorough history and physical examination, but before ordering any studies, will share with the patient the real possibility that the basic problem may be an anxiety disease. When the studies prove negative, the physician can then use this information as a confirmation of the original impression. A diagnosis made totally by exclusion is not convincing to patients and adds immeasurably to the therapeutic difficulties.

Pharmacotherapy

There are three groups of medications that have proven effective in the management of GAD: BZDs, azipirones, and Antidepressants. On a short term basis, the BZDs, especially short-acting BZDs (alprazolam, loreazepam, and clonazepam) may be the drugs of choice. They work promptly and predictably and have a minimum of side-effects if started at a low dose.

The only available azipirone at this time, buspirone, is recommended in patients when there is a concern about mental alertness, possible addictive tendency, or combination use with alcohol, and where there is concern about physical dependence and withdrawal. Buspirone has been proven quite effective, but usually requires 2 to 4 weeks to exert its full effects (although some mild effects may be noticed after only 1 week.)

Antidepressants, especially imipramine, also have proven effective for some patients. These drugs are well suited for long term therapy.
Psychotherapy

CBT may also be effective for patients with GAD, and there is some evidence to indicate that positive results may be more enduring than with medication. The relatively high costs, the almost certain comorbidity, and the variable nature of GAD, however, may make this option less acceptable.

Even with all of the effective therapy that is available, GAD remains a difficult challenge for both patients and their physicians. Patients need to understand and believe the chronic or recurring and protean nature of this disease. They need to be able to put each new symptom in context, but they also need to realize that no persistent symptom should be ignored. Physicians need to recognize the chronicity and variability also, but always remember that these patients have the same risk of other physical diseases as other patents. One very successful management technique is to schedule these patients for regular visits every 1 to 2 months. Many patients who are undergoing multiple symptoms are able to feel comfortable with saving up their complaints for the next visit, rather than making frantic telephone calls or emergency visits.

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Friday, October 19th, 2007