Team Cooperation

The Sleep Center combines the professional knowledge of the physicians from various specialties such as Neurology, Thoracic Medicine, Otolaryngology (ENT), Psychiatry, Dentistry, Clinical Psychologist. These physicians work with Sleep Technicians, and by using the latest sleeping inspection instrument, they jointly find the causes of the sleeping disturbances for the individuals who come to the clinic for treatment and tailor a customized and the most suitable treatment plan for the individuals who have sleep disorders.

--Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia

Taking sleeping pills is the only way to improve insomnia. If you believe this sentence 100%, then you are not keeping the trend of the current sleep medical field for treating insomnia. Until now, the field has accumulated over one hundred scientific empirical studies that confirmed the significant treatment effect of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on insomnia. The results of the studies indicate that the symptoms effectively improved in the course of the treatment or during the period that was several months after the end of the treatment when patients received CBT only or for the combination treatment of medication and CBT. Under the conditions described above, the improvement greatly exceeds taking the medication alone. For CBT for insomnia, the clinical psychologist is to assess the patient’s current sleeping condition to tailor a customized treatment plan that is suitable for the individual patient. By changing the feeling and the thinking of anxiety and fear toward sleeping, the clinical psychologist is to teach appropriate techniques that will help with sleeping. The clinical psychologist is to use the most scientific, most natural, and safest way to improve insomnia. Currently, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has recommended CBT for insomnia as the first choice of treatment type for treating chronic insomnia. If you expect to sleep healthier, you are welcome to the sleep center for consultation and being cared by our experienced clinical psychologists.

--Light Therapy

Have you had difficulties making adjustment to jet lag when traveling abroad or sleep disturbances related to work shift? Or maybe you are a night owl that it is difficult for you to fall asleep at night but you get very sleepy during the day? You get so sleepy that you cannot get up to go to work or to attend school. If you have the above conditions, maybe your biological clock phase has shifted so that your brain does not know when it should work or rest. Sleep medicine related literature indicates that light therapy for the patients who have abnormal biological sleep disorders described in the previous paragraph is very effective. The light therapy can help by adjusting the sleep time to the time that meet the person’s current life style so the person can sleep at the right time and efficiently. If you want to go through the adjustment of light therapy, you must first know the characteristics of your own biological clock because projecting light at different times has different effects on the adjustment of the biological clock. Selecting the appropriate time and intensity for the projecting light are essential to achieve the effect of enhanced sleep quality. Currently, professionals believe that general indoor lighting is insufficient to effectively adjust the biological clock. To conduct light therapy, we recommend two options: adopting the sunlight or use the light machine. Individuals can choose the appropriate light projecting method depending on the personal situation or the light projecting time. If you have questions regarding adjusting your own biological clock, the time for projecting the light, and the type of light projection to use, the psychologist at the sleep center can provide you with consultation and treatment recommendations.

--Biofeedback Training

Patients suffering from long-term insomnia very often associate the cause of insomnia with the autonomic nervous system disorder. The autonomic nervous system disorder also usually associates with symptoms such as depression, anxiety, chest tightness, and heart palpitations. However, a lot of people have given a lot of thought but still have no idea on how to stabilize the autonomic nervous system. Biofeedback training can allow you to understand the characteristics of your autonomic nervous system and to learn how to control and stabilize the system. The equipment that is used for biofeedback is a set of machines that can measure the current autonomic nervous system response. The measurement includes recording the heart rate, breathing patterns, body temperature, galvanic skin resistance response, the specific areas of muscle tension, and peripheral vasoconstriction state. A manual report with professional interpretation can allow you to understand if your autonomic nervous system has any abnormally active features. In general, when the sympathetic nerve in the body’s autonomic nervous system is extremely active, it makes the person feels an increase in heart rate and breathing, muscle tension, coldness in hands and feet, faster gastrointestinal motility, and other discomfort physical conditions. In the psychology aspect, the person can feel anxious, or that his or her excited thoughts cannot be quieted down. If you want to improve the above symptoms, biofeedback training can help you gain more control over the stability of the autonomic nervous system. In addition, past literature indicates that biofeedback training effectively improves symptoms including chronic pain (such as headache and muscle pain), insomnia, anxiety, and others. If you want to obtain more related information on biofeedback training, welcome to the sleep center for consultation.

--Positive Pressure Ventilation

Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) is a very important treatment method for obstructive sleep apnea. For patients who have sleep disorders, positive pressure ventilation treatment can be extremely effective because the treatment allows the patients to restore their normal sleep and breathing patterns, especially for patients who have moderate and severe obstructive apnea or shallow breathing. Also, at present, many medical study reports confirm that positive pressure ventilation greatly helps with the treatment for many patients who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure, and a variety of neuromuscular disorders.
The types of noninvasive positive pressure ventilators currently in use include:
    （1）Nasal Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (nCPAP) ventilator
    （2）Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP) ventilator
    （3）Automatic Nasal Continuous Positive Pressure (Auto-CPAP) ventilator
Approximately 60% of the people have been continuously and successfully using the Positive Airway Pressure ventilator. However, few people stopped using it because they feel the mask uncomfortable. Actually, the sequelae of the Positive Airway Pressure ventilator are very uncommon. The mostly seen discomfort and complications include nasal congestion, nasal swelling, dry mouth, mask leak, dry or red eyes, abdominal distension, chest pain, increased intraocular pressure, corneal injury caused by gas leakage. A majority of the patients cannot use the Positive Airway Pressure ventilator mainly because the feeling of inconvenience, psychological barriers, and economic factor. The studies indicate that the sustained use of the Positive Airway Pressure ventilator is related largely to the attitude of the medical staff, the patient’s symptoms, the degree of improvement of the disorder, and family support. Thus, a person’s health requires the coordination of many aspects and the family’s encouragement and thoughtfulness. An ideal positive pressure ventilation test normally requires a sleeping physical exam with many items that would take all night long. Thus, a patient needs to obtain a confirmed diagnosis of a sleep disorder before he or she can make an appointment for the test. A good nasal positive pressure ventilation therapy can assess the most appropriate airway pressure so the patient can obtain comfortable improvement. After obtaining the most appropriate pressure, ventilation therapy can resolve the apparent obstructive sleep apnea. The ventilation therapy can also eliminate snoring and airway obstruction from the upper respiratory tract in order to restore normal sleep and breathing patterns.

--Oral Appliance

The occlusal pad is a small template that is made of polymer resin materials and has many applications in dental treatment. It can be used to move teeth during an orthodontic treatment or to hold the teeth in place after the end of an orthodontic treatment to maintain the effectiveness of the treatment. Also, a temporomandibular joint dentist uses the occlusal pad to treat inflammation, pain, and dysfunction of the teamporomandibular joint. In the treatment approaches for sleep problems, an occlusal pad can be used for treating nighttime teeth grinding to prevent teeth from wearing off and to absorb the noisy grinding noise. As for the patients who have sleep apnea syndrome, if it is because of the short and small chin, the tongue is pushed backward oppressing the throat, which causes airway obstruction, then the occlusal pad can be used during sleep. The occlusal pad provides mechanical support that makes the lower jaw and the tongue move forward together to eliminate the oppression of the airway at the throat and improve the apnea phenomenon. Because of the treatment needs, the occlusion pads that serve different treatment purposes will have different designs, with different shapes and different accessories. Regarding the cleverness of the design and the degree of comfort when wearing the occlusal pad, they depend on the dentist’s, the maker’s personal experience, techniques, and skills.

--Surgical Treatment

For the Department of Ear, Nose, Throat, the purpose of the surgeries that focus on the different obstruction parts of the upper respiratory tract is to reduce the chance of the patient’s respiratory obstruction during sleep at night by removing the soft tissue that obstruct the respiratory tract. Related surgical treatments include:
     1. To improve the nasal congestion by performing the nasal septum surgery, the inferior turbinate reduction surgery,and endoscopic nasal polypectomy.
     2. To perform adenoidectomy to improve the obstruction of the nasopharynx, pharyngoplasty, and laser-assisted uvulopalatopharyngoplasty,
     3. To improve the oropharyngeal obstruction by performing tonsillectomy and tongue tonsillectomy.