The fight is not necessarily over when a Veteran returns home. After a tour of duty leaves a solider with a head or spinal injury, the effects of the damage can often reverberate to other aspects of his or her life. Notably, sleep.
In the previous blog post we examined how sleep relates to Veteran mental health. Many Veterans have incurred head injury, which can lead to or exacerbate sleep problems. This in turn can worsen mental health issues and may put a Veteran at greater risk for crises and suicide attempts.
In addition to the commonly-known effects of poor sleep such cognitive decline and fatigue, sleep disturbances may also play a key role in neuroplasticity. When someone temporarily stops breathing at night, as Nicole Stout explains in this video, the “apneic event” can lead to an endorphin release that interacts with the different areas of the brain.
Stout, VP of Medical Affairs at Zansors, goes into detail discussing the research applications of apneic events with the use of Zansors’ wearable technology. See her interview for further explanation regarding the science behind the matter.
Rather than requiring each at-risk Veteran to set aside the time and money to visit a formal sleep clinic, wearable technology offers a simple and streamlined alternative. The greater population of Veterans will now be able monitor themselves, identifying if and when medical intervention is necessary. Veterans will receive the most personalized treatment possible, their sleep patterns and accompanying symptoms logged in our secure cloud system. The VA health system will be able to turn their attention to the Veterans who need it most, with more complete records for each patient.
In the below video, Stout explains the premise of the Zansors cloud and the exciting implications it brings to the research table.
The Zansors cloud represents a veritable lake of data that will be a great asset to the VA health system. Doctors and researchers will have the unprecedented opportunity to dive into a robust pool of information to make observations. The individual patients that comprise the data points will yield a more comprehensive picture of sleep issues, associated patterns and how best to treat them.
Zansors sleep monitoring technology seeks to bridge the gap between what our Veterans need to be mentally and physically healthy post-service and what the VA health system can feasibly provide. By providing Veterans with the highest quality medical technology, they can know themselves, know their sleep, and contribute to an exciting future of research possibilities.