When people discuss fast-rising health-care costs, few point to...

When people discuss fast-rising health-care costs, few point to the amount of sleep Americans are getting. Maybe they should.

Obesity carries a heavy share of the blame for the cost of chronic illness. It is also easy to spot.

A sleep deficit is tougher. Aside from obvious signs like the sagging eyes or constant yawning of a co-worker, it's harder to pinpoint who around us isn't getting enough sleep. We're not present in our neighbors' homes as they catch the late edition of SportsCenter, nor do many people resolve each Jan. 1 to get more sleep.

Statistics, however, indicate sleeplessness is creeping up on obesity as a national health problem. More than 30 percent of Americans have occasional insomnia, and 10 percent have chronic sleeplessness, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Sleeping pill use among young adults rose 85 percent between 2000 and 2004, according to Medco Health Solutions, and the older the person, the more likely they are to use sleeping pills. Close to 8 percent of those with health insurance used sleeping pills in 2006, Thomson Healthcare reported, compared to 5 percent in 1998.

Michigan sleep doctors have seen a spike in tired patients coming to see them.

"Many of them have not yet been diagnosed, so as awareness grows, more patients will be diagnosed," said R. Bart Sangal, director of the Sleep Disorders Institute at Beaumont Hospital's Troy campus. "It's also a field that has seen a lot of increased capacity in setting up diagnostic centers. When you see that kind of increase in supply, it generates an increase in diagnosis."

Sleep medicine still is a relatively young field. Sangal in 1987 opened the first accredited sleep-disorder center in suburban Detroit and just the second in Michigan. In the early years of operating a two-bed facility, Sangal had to wrestle with insurance companies just to get paid.

"Twenty years ago, I used to have to argue with payers to try to convince them that sleep apnea was really a disease that could be harmful to patients, and could even kill patients," Sangal said. "Today, that argument doesn't even take place anymore."

The increase in reported sleep disorders isn't necessarily the result of more people suffering from them. It might simply be that, until recently, no one considered lack of sleep a serious problem.

"What's happened in the past 10 years, especially the past five, is people have learned the impact (sleeplessness) has on all sorts of systems like the heart, brain, lungs, diet and obesity," said John Herman, one of the nation's first sleep doctors and a training director for the Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Herman also is a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the nation's accrediting body for sleep medicine.

"Physicians in general have become very aware of how important sleep is," Herman said. "Before, if there was some kid in class who couldn't stay awake, it was just that kid. Now, that child would be sent in for evaluation."

As awareness has increased, so has the number of sleep-disorder centers. Sangal's practice now shares the state with more than 40 other accredited centers, many of which have opened within the last five years. Nationwide, the number of sleep-disorder centers has increased from 442 in 1999 to 1,425....

http://www.mlive.com/businessreview/annarbor/index.ssf/2008/09/waking_up_to_the_cost_of_sleep.html