Science-Based Medicine

Please note: the following refers to routine physicals and screening tests in healthy, asymptomatic adults. It does not apply to people who have been diagnosed with diseases, who have any kind of symptoms or signs, or who are at particularly high risk of certain specific diseases.

Throughout most of human history, people have consulted doctors (or shamans or other supposed providers of medical care) only when they were sick.  Not too long ago, the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset changed. It became customary for everyone to have a yearly checkup with a doctor even if they were feeling perfectly well. The doctor would look in your eyes, ears and mouth, listen to your heart and lungs with a stethoscope and poke and prod other parts of your anatomy. He would do several routine tests, perhaps a blood count, urinalysis, EKG, chest-x-ray and TB tine test. There was even an “executive physical” based on the concept that more is better if you can afford it. Perhaps the need for maintenance of cars had an influence: the annual physical was analogous to the 30,000 mile checkup on your vehicle. The assumption was that this process would find and fix any problems and insure that any disease process would be detected at an early stage where earlier treatment would improve final outcomes. It would keep your body running like a well-tuned engine and possibly save your life.

We have gradually come to realize that the routine physical did little or nothing to improve health outcomes and was largely a waste of time and money. Today the emphasis is on identifying factors that can be altered to improve outcomes. We are even seeing articles in the popular press telling the public that no medical group advises annual checkups for healthy adults. If patients see their doctor only when they have symptoms, the doctor can take advantage of those visits to update vaccinations and any indicated screening tests.

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 Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.    -William Shakespeare, Macbeth

The company that makes the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach  kindly sent me one of their devices to try out. It’s a nifty little gadget, and if you are a techno geek, you would probably love it. It’s a fascinating toy; but for insomnia, there’s no evidence that it provides any benefit over standard treatment with sleep logs and sleep hygiene advice.

Polysomnography is done overnight in a sleep lab and costs around $1000. It records multiple parameters: EEG, EKG, EMG, breathing, O2, CO2, and limb movements. It is most commonly used to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a serious condition that is linked to hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke, and increased mortality. OSA can be effectively treated with CPAP and other measures. About 50% of snorers have sleep apnea. We typically think of it as a disease of obese, loudly snoring older men, but even young children can have it: snoring is probably never normal in children and should be investigated.

The Zeo is the first sleep monitor available for consumers to use at home. It doesn’t pretend to do what polysomnography does. It can’t diagnose sleep apnea. It is billed as an educational and motivational tool, not intended for the diagnosis or treatment of sleep disorders. A unit that looks sort of like an alarm clock sits on your bedside table and communicates wirelessly with a comfortable soft elastic headband that positions embedded sensors over your forehead to pick up your brain waves. Continue Reading »