Books about apnea & CPAP, revisited: a consolidated list this time

[Fats Drywaller]

Books for a general readership, that is; not medical literature. Additions to this list are solicited.

... there are heaps of books out there, one I liked it by a NY ENT Dr Steven Park, it's called Sleep Interrupted.

Dr Park also has a website and has webinars on SA although they have dropped off lately as he is extremely busy with his patients.

The best books written about OSA for patients that I've run across are:

Sleep Interrupted by Dr. Steven Y. Park
Sound Sleep, Sound Mind by Dr. Barry Krakow

Park's book is a thorough introduction to OSA and what it does and how CPAP addresses.   The first half of Krakow's book focuses more on insomnia than OSA or CPAP, but one of Krakow's hypotheses is that undiagnosed OSA is the root cause for a lot of people's chronic insomnia.   And so the second half of his book is a pretty sound and thorough treatment of OSA and CPAP written with an eye towards persuading an insomnia who doesn't quite want to accept that they may have a sleep disordered breathing problem to accept the possibility by explaining just how untreated OSA can affect the body in multiple ways, including (in some people) chronic problems with poor sleep that is mistaken for insomnia.

Best two books I've read that discuss sleep apnea in language a patient can understand are:

Sleep Interrupted by Dr. Steven Y. Park
Sound Sleep, Sound Mind by Dr. Barry Krakow

Park's book is a detailed analysis of what goes wrong, why it goes wrong, and how PAP fixes things for OSA.  It is not, however, a guide on how to fix CPAP-adjustment problems.

Krakow's book is technically a self-help book for insomniacs, and the first half of the book is pretty heavy on CBT-for Insomnia to try at home.   However, undiagnosed OSA is a major cause of insomnia in Krakow's opinion, and the second half of the book gives some pretty good, detailed information about what OSA is, how PAP treats it, and the connections between insomnia and OSA.

Both are written with an interested and reasonably intelligent patient in mind.   They're not afraid of using a bit of jargon here and there when appropriate, but they do know that patients don't read medical journals and the writing is patient oriented and informal.  But neither author dumbs things down either, the way a lot of mass market stuff about OSA is dumbed down.   Both authors give the reader a nice amount of specifics about OSA in language an interested patient should be able to follow.

Dr Parks book Sleep Interrupted is quite good in that it explains what sleep apnea is about, he also has a website with information about it.
http://doctorstevenpark.com/
He used to have webinars ever two weeks with guest speakers, but he is building a new super clinic for sleep apnea patients, I think in New York and is writing another book so hasn't had time to conduct the websites.
He has almost completed it and Emailed me the other day asking for suggestions for titles, it is a more comprehensive book i.e. the A-Z of sleep apnea.

Just into the first 100 pages of Gayle Greene's "Insomniac" Really enjoying it so far, so much to learn about sleep and lack of it...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19960/
on the right hand side are options to view as a PDF or in the PubReader format.
Note that this was published in 2006.

Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation
An Unmet Public Health Problem

Editors: Harvey R Colten and Bruce M Altevogt. Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research.

Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2006.
ISBN-10: 0-309-10111-5

I go to Amazon, look under books, and type what I want to find.
[link to Amazon website removed, instead search Amazon's site for phrase "sleep disorders"]

I also check what course offerings a college might have on the subject of interest.

Found this site which might be helpful:  [link to commercial book store removed, instead, go to the American Sleep Apnea Association's website and click on their bookstore link]

... I did come away with one that is useful despite being 15 years old.  It is Sleep Apnea: The Phantom of the Night by T. Scott Johnson, B. Gail Demko, Jerry Halberstadt, and William Broughton, third edition, 2003, published by New Technology in Onset, Massachusetts (gotta love the name of that town).

One of the first things that anyone will notice about that book now, and one of the big objections that people here might have to it, is that all of the information about CPAP hardware is out of date.  But that's OK; it's not a big deal.  Simply ignore it.  ...  So that book does provide a useful start.

[Sleeprider]

Interesting project you have here Fats! I hope you get some additional suggestions. I think it might make a good wiki article and could be organized by topic, i.e. Insomnia, Anatomy, Behavioral, Sleep Hygiene and Sleep Disorders, Sleep Apnea Treatment, etc.

[nightshift]

I just ordered the Oxford Textbook of Sleep Disorders, which is an academic textbook with a hefty price to match. It was only published in Sep 2017, so at least it should be current. I'll write a review when I've read it.

[DreamBreather]

The Sleep Solution, Why your sleep is broken and how to fix it (2017) Chris W. Winter, neurologist and sleep expert

Good book, great for beginners in any sleep disordered category... most if not all are covered. (i.e. OSA, RLS, Insomnia, etc.)
General understanding of why/how you should be getting 'quality' sleep  (i.e. sleep hygiene, sleep aids, CPAP, etc.)