Empowered Sleep Apnea

"Empowered Sleep Apnea" is a curriculum designed by a Sleep Medicine master-clinician to help patients understand their condition, find agency and feel empowered to assist in the data-gathering, hypothesis-generation, and decision-making, during their personal journey within the diagnosis of Sleep Apnea.

Make no mistake: THIS IS NO TEXTBOOK! This book is an ADVENTURE! Using CARTOONS, POETRY, FICTION, FANTASY, and FUN, this book manages to teach you the HARD SCIENCE about Sleep Apnea while you are too busy having a good time to notice that you've learned something.

Do you have Sleep Apnea? Does someone you love have it? Does it ever make you feel LOST? Sort of feels like being whisked away to a strange ISLAND sometimes, doesn't it? 

Well, if this is how you've been feeling, FEAR NOT! Dr. David McCarty and Dr. Ellen Stothard have made you a MAP! 

Welcome to the ISLE OF SLEEP APNEA ("I love Sleep Apnea"--tee hee!)--a magical island full of mystery and wonder. As the saying goes: It doesn't matter how you got here, sugar; You can't swim home!" Guess we'd better start exploring!

Your first stop will be an educational loading-zone of sorts--The Bay of Narrative. Here's where you'll learn that it really IS all about YOU! You'll learn the language of your own Sleep-Wake Complaints, and piece together how these malfeasances fit in with your Sleep Apnea diagnosis. 

From there, we'll visit the FIVE REASONS TO TREAT MONUMENT (and Coffee Hut!), to take a deep dive into the WHY of Sleep Apnea. Why should you treat it? What reasons are important to YOU? Over Pie and Coffee, you'll parse out these REASONS carefully, thoughtfully, mindfully. 

After you're clear on the REASONS TO TREAT, you'll have to decide HOW you'll seek transit over to TREATED TERRITORY, crossing the deep and turbulent RIVER OF DECISION. Positive airway pressure therapy, oral appliance therapy, surgery, hypoglossal nerve stimulation therapy, airway retraining exercises, position therapy, Airway Centered Dentistry...so many choices! Whew! This book gives you boots-on-the-ground wisdom so that you can feel comfortable with your decisions!

In PART THREE, you'll then journey into some of the most mysterious parts of the ISLE as you tour common COMPLICATIONS and COMPETING DIAGNOSES. You'll gasp at the many forms of positive airway PRESSURE TOXICITY! You'll swoon as you learn about the terrors of the Willis Ekbom Wilderness (Willis Ekbom Disease is the fancy name for Restless Legs Syndrome!). You'll master the landscape of INSOMNIA BADLANDS, and you'll trek through the lonely terrain of the MIRE OF PERSISTENT SLEEPINESS. You;ll even get to look under the hood about how SLEEP-WAKE actually WORK, learning about the TWO PROCESS MODEL OF SLEEP-WAKE REGULATION. This will include learning to use Empowered Sleep Apnea's exclusive neato CrackerJack-Box decoder-ring Gizmo The Circadian Rhythmo-Wheel, which will help you understand your OWN circadian rhythm!

Finally, you'll get a tour of a truly professional-grade problem-solving tool called THE FIVE FINGER APPROACH, as you tour the orienteering geologic miracle of FIVE FINGER APPROACH MOUNTAIN.

Wouldn't you like to have an ENTIRE CAREER OF WISDOM, from one of America's MOST EXPERIENCED PATIENT-CENTERED SLEEP CLINICIANS, all packed into one amazing, beautiful adventure book?

Isn't it time you felt EMPOWERED?

Come to the ISLE. Change your LIFE!

“…an invaluable resource for healthcare professionals starting their journey in sleep medicine.”

—Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine

Shah SB, Stahl S. Media review: Empowered Sleep Apnea: A Handbook for Patients and the People Who Care About Them. J Clin Sleep Med. 2024;20(4):669–670

"...a masterpiece in the landscape of patient-centered education."

--Pat McBride PhD; Executive Board of Directors, American Academy of Dental and Physiological Medicine; Executive Director for The Foundation for Airway Health; Advisory Board for The Endeavour: A think tank of multidisciplinary practitioners created to develop messaging, education and treatment protocols to address the multiple issues facing airway, health and development issues in  0-71 month old children around the world   

"Empowered Sleep Apnea is an absolute must-read, for providers and patients alike. It’s a wonderful reminder of what it means to be a healer.”

--William Lester, MD, MS; Massachusetts General Hospital-trained board-certified internist; Primary Care Internist, Massachusetts General Hospital; Medical Informatacist, Harvard Medical School 

David E McCarty MD FAASM attended medical school at Duke University, and completed my internship and residency in Internal Medicine in Boston, at Massachusetts General Hospital. He began his career practicing primary care, but after a handful of  years in practice, he followed my own white rabbit into a whole new world called Sleep Medicine.

Dr. McCarty learned the art from the great Dr. Andrew Chesson (world-class physician, and past president of the AASM). After two years studying with Dr. Chesson at LSU Shreveport as a part-time, unpaid fellow. he joined the program as faculty to help him turn his apprenticeship-style training program into a fully-fledged and ACGME-accredited fellowship. Dr. McCarty became the program’s second director when Dr. Chesson retired.

While at LSU, Dr. McCarty won some teaching awards, published a few papers, and it’s also where he developed the Five Finger Approach, which has remained the cornerstone of his teaching about patient-centered problem-solving, to this day, and is featured as the pinnacle for orienteering around the Isle.

In 2015, Dr. McCarty moved to Boulder to join the new Colorado Sleep Institute as its first medical director. CSI was founded as an innovative clinical model, developed to bring a comprehensive philosophy to the practice of Sleep Medicine, placing clinical care, diagnostics and treatment options (including PAP therapy and oral appliance therapy) all under the same roof.

Dr. McCarty says that this environment was better than any textbook ever written.

It was precisely this access he had—access to long-term follow up within this comprehensive structure—that allowed him to develop the patient-centered teaching curriculum that would ultimately become Empowered Sleep Apnea.

In addition to patient care and academic endeavors, Dr. McCarty has had plenty of experience as a public speaker at regional and national meetings throughout my career.

He retired from the practice of clinical medicine in 2021, to devote his energy to patient education.

For his efforts in cartooning, he says only this "I have only myself to blame."

Ellen Stothard, PhD earned her doctorate in Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience from University of Colorado Boulder. Working in the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory with her mentor, Dr. Kenneth P Wright, Jr., Dr. Stothard worked on the now-famous “Camping Studies” project. This important work on circadian biology has the unusual yet glorious distinction of garnering mention on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update!” HUZZAH!

After the Camping Studies hullaballoo made her famous, Dr. Stothard’s experience fielding interviews with news organizations, local and worldwide, sparked an ongoing interest in science communication, making her a natural Podcast host!

Prior to this, her many lives have included teaching High School English in France, and administering research grants at University of Colorado, Boulder.

Passionate about bringing research out of the laboratory and into the real world, Dr. Stothard is an engaging and prolific public speaker, speaking regularly in the community on issues pertinent to Sleep Health.

Dr. Stothard is currently the Research and Development Director at Colorado Sleep Institute.