The popularity of routine Health reviews or Executive Health Check as they are called in the subcontinent is growing by the day. Each hospital and Diagnostic center is using innovative ways to market their programs bundling together different tests and packaging them as platinum or gold health package etc etc. The employers are encouraging and very often paying for their employees to get these tests done regularly. Even the government is offering tax deductions for the money spent on the same.

To our surprise none of these checks include any degree of Evaluation of Sleep. By omitting this they miss out on easy opportunity to peep into the “window of someone’s health”. Just by including simple questions like’ how are you sleeping’ or ‘are you waking up refreshed’ or do you ‘feel drowsy during the day’ so many parameters around sleep can be mapped and further evaluation carried out. In our study at a large private hospital in Delhi 1000 consecutive patients were evaluated by STOP BANG questionnaire about Risk of Sleep Apnea and31% had high risk of the same. What a missed opportunity ! to help out the patients (should I say subjects) coming to us for evaluation of their health status and a real chance to impact the ongoing epidemic of Cardiovascular Diseases and the Metabolic Disorders.

Time to WAKE UP TO SLEEP!!