Awakening Health: Dr. Syed Nabi's Journey in Sleep Medicine at Somnium Sleep Physicians

Ever wondered how sleep might be the missing link in tackling major health issues? Our latest episode features Dr. Syed Nabi, a leading expert in sleep medicine and the visionary behind Somnium Sleep Physicians in Hoover. Discover why sleep is more than just a nightly routine—it's a cornerstone of overall health. Dr. Nabi enlightens us on the profound effects of sleep on heart disease, brain function, and autoimmune disorders. He also debunks common misconceptions about insomnia and highlights the necessity of consulting a sleep specialist for effective and personalized treatment.

Journey with us as Dr. Nabi shares his inspiring professional and personal stories, from his impactful residency days to the challenges of establishing his own sleep clinic during the economic downturn of 2008-2009. Hear firsthand how his family's battle with cancer and his experiences across various states shaped his approach to sleep medicine. This episode not only sheds light on the evolving field of sleep medicine but also showcases the blend of scientific rigor and compassionate care required to truly understand and treat sleep disorders. Don't miss this compelling conversation that might just change the way you think about sleep. #GNPBirmingham #SomniumSleepPhysicians #Sleep #Insomnia #SleepApnea #Hypersomnia #RestlessLeg #Birmingham #BirminghamPhysicians #BirminghamDoctors #ICantSleep 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Syed Nabi, and Dr Nabi is the physician and owner at Somnium Sleep Physicians in Hoover. Dr Nabi, how are you today?

Speaker 3: 0:30

Good, good. Thank you for having me on your show.

Speaker 2: 0:33

That's wonderful. So big fan of sleep here, love my sleep. Tell me about Somnium Sleep Physicians.

Speaker 3: 0:52

So Somnium Sleep Physician. We started it a couple of years ago in Hoover. Hoover is one location where there was not a sleep lab. I mean, we have sleep facilities throughout different parts of Birmingham, but Hoover was location where I've been living for at least the last seven years and felt like there was a need and because you could people having to travel all over the place so there was a need. I had an opportunity where I thought I could take it to advantage and open a clinic. So that's how it came into fruition that we started that clinic.

Speaker 2: 1:34

So why would I need a sleep physician?

Speaker 3: 1:40

Yeah, sleep is one of those specialty. It's a relatively new specialty of sleep, of medicine, which I think is still in us, coming out of its infancy and started. I mean sleep research has been going on for years, probably like 50, 60 years, but became mainstream or got started mostly in the last 20, 30 years where, when sleep apnea became the pioneer.

Speaker 2: 2:21

So, dr Nabi, why all of a sudden sleep medicine? It hadn't existed for so many years and then all of a sudden it's a specialty. What made that necessary?

Speaker 3: 2:33

So sleep? I mean a little bit of historical perspective. Sleep has been there for a while and doctors have been aware that sleep is a common complaint in the clinical practice, but we really didn't know much about it. The pioneers of the sleep medicine specialty back in the 60s and 70s were predominantly psychiatrists who would see their patients with depression, anxiety, and these patients commonly have problems of insomnia, trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, fatigue.

Speaker 3: 3:14

These kind of things so these were the pioneers who advanced the field. And then we learned that, hey, there's a disorder called sleep apnea, where people are not breathing normally and these folks also have all those set of symptoms and also um, and then we can treat it. We can treat it with, uh, cpap therapy. Cpap is a continuous positive airway pressure which is a little mask you put on the nose and it keeps that airway open. And a lot of these folks, once they were treated with CPAP, their sleep quality improved and not only their sleep quality improved, their insomnia improved, their fatigue improved, their depression, anxiety and those other things improved. So when, as the field progressed and you had these layers of research, insomnia and fatigue and breathing and oxygen and heart it started becoming more and more mainstream.

Speaker 3: 4:19

And especially in the last 10 to 15, 20 years, this field has exploded in a sense that now we are finding that sleep has a hand in almost every other disorder. So if, like you, take from the top to the bottom, either it be a heart disease, brain disease, lung disease, intestinal disease, autoimmune disease, cancers, endocrine disorders, pretty much sleep has an impact on most disorders out there, if not all. Most disorders out there, if not all. And again, it's. The simplest explanation traditionally has been that, hey, sleep is where the body goes to heal and recover and get ready for the next day. So if your healing and recovery process is impaired for whatever reason X, y, z it's going to affect the other things that you have to deal with and the body has to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And maybe a night, two nights, three nights, few months especially, you can handle it, but uh, but. Once it becomes an ongoing issue for extended periods of time, months and years eventually it starts taking a toll and it starts showing itself up in different ways.

Speaker 2: 5:52

Well, so why wouldn't I just go to my physician you know like I'm accustomed to, and mention to him that I'm having trouble sleeping and have him just give me an Ambien? What is the benefit of going to see someone who specializes in sleep medicine to take care of that?

Speaker 3: 6:09

So insomnia is usually the common after pain. Insomnia is usually the second most common symptom that people go and seek help for. People go and seek help for Traditionally because the field is still relatively new and just expanded in the last 10, 20, 30 years. There has been, first of all, lack of training. A lot of physicians I know myself, when I went through my medical training and residency, I mean sleep was. We didn't have any lecture on sleep. I mean that was. I mean it was noted in this list of symptoms or as a list of things to ask patients, but you didn't know what to do after that. If somebody has patients, if patient is coming and then asking, hey, saying that, what the way you described it? That hey, probably, yes, let's try and uh, ambient. If you have, if, or first of all, you try over the counter stuff melatonin and those kind of things and if that's not working, so and again, you trust the patient, you you try ambient.

Speaker 3: 7:28

But insomnia is just an underlying symptom, just like pain is. So the analogy I commonly use is is like migraines if you're having headaches, and headache can mean a lot of different things. A A headache can mean you're stressed out, or a headache can mean that you're having a bad tooth or you are having a sinus problem, or maybe you are having high blood pressure, or maybe it's the traditional migraine, that is, the classic migraine. So there's a list of things that a headache can be from. So similar to that is insomnia. So it's not, is not just one thing, or once diagnosis that you're, that's what it is.

Speaker 3: 8:18

And and simple fixes you take Tylenol, so so amine or any sleeping it comes becomes is like a taking a Tylenol, for yes, it will help and it may help you sleep, but maybe that's not the problem. To get it investigated. And and general practitioners, because there are several things. First, the level of training time in the appointment. I mean, obviously, when you're seeing your doctor, you're, you're talking about other things too. They have other things on their mind too, like they want to make sure your blood pressure is controlled, cholesterol, your diabetes, your whatever other issues are there.

Speaker 3: 9:04

So sometimes, in some cases, it's best to to refer to a specialist. Just like heart, like primary care would check out your heart, maybe, do an EKG check for enzymes, make sure your heart is functioning. But after a certain point it needs to go to a specialist who can then manage it and especially find out if they have, what kind of other diagnosis they have. Especially they feel like, hey, this marker is not good, ekg, something's not good on EKG or lab work is not good. You need to get that cardiologist involved because they will take that person's diagnosis, do further evaluation, investigate it and come up with a plan that is best for that patient. So similar thing goes along with sleep, that primary care. Once they refer patients to the sleep doctors, typically sleep doctors get a detailed history and we want to know everything.

Speaker 3: 10:16

When did it start? What has happened? How has it progressed? Things that have made it worse, Things that have made it better, what have you tried? Because, again, a lot of times sleep problems are not straightforward. Uh, presentation, it's not like. Uh, like you hurt your elbow or your knee and you know it happened last week and I couldn't. It didn't got better and now, now I need to get it fixed. Uh, sleep problems have been going on for commonly for months, if not years, and it becomes complex and, like one of my attending used to while training gave the example, like it's like an onion, layers after layers after layers, so you have to try to figure out which layer is the one that's causing that problem and go after that dr Navi, tell us about your journey.

Speaker 2: 11:18

That's so interesting. How did you end up being not just a physician but a sleep physician?

Speaker 3: 11:24

so my sleep physician journey started when I was studying for my boards exam after med school, when I wanted to get into internal medicine and an opportunity presented. My brother, who was also physician, his friend and him. They were working on a project to start a sleep facility and they picked me up because I was a pseudo student and they're like hey, you need to do studies. And at that time the sleep was still in its infancy. This is, I think, back in 2002. So that's when I learned. So my first exposure to sleep was when the the reps who sell the sleep testing equipment did a mock sleep study and then I learned to do sleep studies. At that time there was no training school for sleep technicians, so you had to learn it on yourself, talking to the doctors or getting to the library finding books. But then I went into the residency. I did my internal medicine residency Right around that time. Sleep was becoming a standalone specialty. Until that point it was not a specialty and people doctors were typically or psychiatrists or pulmonologists, neurologists, they were just who were interested in sleep would spend some time in a sleep facility. And again, the sleep facilities at the time were predominantly in research hospitals, hospitals which had research and and there would be a lab set up there, so, um.

Speaker 3: 13:24

So when I finished my residency training, and by that time it was becoming a standalone specialty, so I applied for fellowship and got accepted and then did an extra year of training just sleep, so patients all day. We would just start the day with reading studies in the sleep lab and then in the daytime after that seeing patients at the clinic. And in the beginning that, seeing patients in the clinic. And since then and in the beginning I was also skeptical I did my year fellowship and because I had that internal medicine background, so I was like, hey, I want to do a little bit of both so that if, if in the future, sleep goes away, turns out it's just a fad again, you don't know what, the how it will play out.

Speaker 3: 14:13

And that was also the time when I think 2008-9 and the economy was not doing very well and labs were closing down, so so. But again, after doing for a couple of years, you realize that, hey, sleep is not going anywhere. If anything, the need is just going to grow and there's going to be, or and still is, a huge need of trained doctors, trained professionals who are aware of what the disorders of sleep are and are able to help people out, because, again, it's not going anywhere and we're learning more and more that it needs to be a top priority, right Beside diabetes, right Besides cholesterol, smoking, all these other health issues that affect people.

Speaker 2: 15:12

Absolutely, Dr Nabi. You obviously had a full and very busy life. It's no picnic going through medical school, getting board certified, doing your fellowship and then opening up your own sleep clinic. Do you ever have time to have fun? And when you do have time, what do you do?

Speaker 3: 15:34

yeah, that's one of the fortunate things about sleep medicine is is that generally there's no special, there's no emergency, unlike cardiology or or neurology, where patients are having heart attacks and strokes. So that is fortunately. Sleep gives you some quality of life too, because your clinics are usually in the daytime and things can wait. So insomnia is is again a chronic issue. If it's an acute issue, generally it's not something that is people go to the ER for. So if they're going to the ER for inability, ability to fall asleep, uh, again, it's not something that is can be fixed in the er or can be fixed by admitting them to the hospital.

Speaker 2: 16:40

There's there's there's a lot of psychological factors can you imagine going to the ER because you can't sleep? I could call my sleep physician and say hey, dr Nabi, I can't sleep.

Speaker 3: 16:56

Yeah, your doctor is probably going to just tell you that, hey, please go home and worry about it tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 17:06

Take a Benadryl and worry about it tomorrow. Yeah, take a Benadryl and worry about it tomorrow. Yeah, what do you? Has there been anything that you've had to go through that has sort of just been a hurdle that has made you a different person, a better, maybe a better doctor, maybe a better business person?

Speaker 3: 17:26

yeah, life is full of those experiences. Where do you want me to start?

Speaker 2: 17:31

I know right Every day.

Speaker 3: 17:34

No, I think if I had done this 10 years ago it probably would not be the same. I was involved with nonprofits. I've been involved with different clinics and hospitals. Involved with different clinics and hospitals. Family struggles too. My brother passed away. The brother I mentioned earlier was a physician. He went, was diagnosed at a very young age with colon cancer. My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. So they we lost, so we had the family had to go through that.

Speaker 3: 18:10

Um, then I moved from utah to tennessee around that time when the economy was not doing good because all the sleep labs was shutting down in utah so we had to move to tennessee and because, again, there was a shortage of jobs and especially with sleep. So fortunately in Tennessee there was a opening in a hospital. So I saw the from how it's working of the business, from hospital side of things. And then I came to Alabama and joined the hospital and the thought so probably did like a, like a full spectrum of things and experiences that. So when this opportunity came uh to to start uh in four, I was like, hey, I think I'm ready now because I've seen and experienced a whole lot of things that that not only makes I'm ready to take on the challenges of a business but also have more experience. And and like this I sometimes say, is wisdom that you, you have that, that hate.

Speaker 3: 19:35

Um, like, medicine is not just science and and sometimes we focus on the science aspect of it, like, especially when, in your traditional sense, that hey, cholesterol, it has to be below this high blood pressure, blood pressure has to be below this. So it's, it's science, absolutely no question about it. But there's also an art to it and that art skill develops over a period of time. So when I try to look for a physician for myself and I may be biased I try to see that at least they've been out of residency for a good 5, 10 years, that at least they've been out of residency for a good five, ten years. So that way you've reached that level of maturity.

Speaker 2: 20:31

Again, it's just my personal thing that's like being a master chef, right, you come out of culinary school. You know that salt and acid and and sweetness that all has to be part of a recipe. You understand everything, yeah, but you don't really understand the art of it until you have used it long enough to make those tools part of who you are. To make those tools part of who you are.

Speaker 3: 20:59

Right. And then you have to see a lot of different patients, pathologies, different disorders and how different people are responding to that same disorder differently. So let's say, if you have again coming back to the elbow pain or knee pain, if you take five people, put them in the room with knee arthritis, all five of them will have a different approach to it and they will be expecting a different level or a different treatment response. So you have to kind of understand not only the disorder but you also have to try to understand the person. Hey, where does this person is coming from and bring the solution that they can. It's going to work for them. It's not just a cut and dry sometimes that, hey, yeah, you take this anti-inflammatory and do physical therapy and call it a day, but you have to kind of tailor it somewhat to to that person.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Yeah, we're all very unique and, um, that must be a real challenge for you. What, uh? And and obviously a welcome one, you see.

Speaker 3: 22:24

I enjoy that.

Speaker 2: 22:25

I know you seem to really embrace it.

Speaker 3: 22:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:30

So what's what would you like our listeners to take away about Somnium sleep positions?

Speaker 3: 22:35

So I would like them to a couple of things. If they are, it doesn't matter if you are in Hoover or not. Pay folks. Pay attention to your sleep. Try to get good six, seven, eight hours of sleep, and again, it's different for different people. I mean, sleep is important. Our body needs it, Our health needs it. We need it for better quality of life and a long life.

Speaker 3: 23:05

So pay attention to that. If somebody is prompting that, hey, there's something not right about your sleep, pay heed to that. The need for sleep is different for different people. It's not the same. Some people, six and a half hours of sleep is enough for them. For some, they may need eight, nine hours of sleep. If, through your forum, I can communicate to your audience, especially with kids who are listening, or parents with kids that pay attention, their kids sleep things I mean kids of all age groups the probably the most critical is is are the younglings, the young ones that that need good sleep. They need good quality sleep. School systems are are are typically in the way of kids getting a good sleep and we have seen that just the initial years of poor sleep can or not. Enough sleep or poor sleep goes all the way through their lives. It reflects in their attendance, reflects in their grades, reflects in their job opportunities, college education and all the way. So it's like you're basically setting the kid up for failure by choosing to ignore sleep in kids.

Speaker 2: 24:35

I think, I saw a paper that referenced sleep difficulties or sleep problems with adhd, and that doesn't mean not being able to sleep maybe sleeping too much yeah, so sleep is uh again.

Speaker 3: 24:48

Insomnia is uh loaded. It's a broad symptom, um, but you can break it down into is it falling asleep or staying asleep? Is it to falling asleep? To staying asleep? Um, but there's usually more stuff that is associated, so you have to try to figure that out. And people who live around in the area of, who were, you're welcome to call us and set up an appointment, um, um, again, this is my goal. Is that long-term goal is that some kind of uh educational platform that we can, so it's not just about seeing a doctor and having a clinic and all that. The long-term goal is that we need to get this education out in the community. The community talks or presentations.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Let's spread the word about sleep medicine. Yeah, absolutely. How do listeners contact you if they have questions about some sleep positions?

Speaker 3: 25:52

Yeah, they can call. Our phone number is 205-440-3450. 440-3450 and our website is SomniumSleepcom. Somnium is S-O-M-N-I-U-M-S-L-E-E-Pcom. The website is not active yet. We'll get that up and running soon. Not active yet. Um now, we'll get that up and running soon, but the phone numbers is a good place to wait to call, or, or send a text.

Speaker 2: 26:29

Wonderful, dr nabi, great speaking to you. Thank you so much for coming by. I learned a lot today and um, I appreciate you all righty.

Speaker 3: 26:38

Thank you, ma'am.

Speaker 1: 26:39

Thank you for having me thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPBirminghamcom. That's GNPBirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148.