Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 28

C4 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Wednesday, Juno 23, 1982 C3ITS0OS T0U3S0OS The Courant hits the hot spots every Friday in the Weekend section. yy nn tl Want To Stop SMOKING? NEED HELP? Call Today For Free Consultation The Center For Hypnotheraphy Counseling 65 Connecticut Blvd. East Hartford, Ct 528-2252 ey're Awake to Sleep Disorders in Read all of The Courant all of the time. For home delivery call 241-4200, or call loll free I400-842-I6W. Charles Berry could fall asleep anywhere, could snooze over black coffee.

He even could sleep standing up. When he woke up while his tractor-trailer truck was crashing into a steel mill, he finally opened his eyes to a serious medical condition that heJd had for 25 years. 'I 1 fHKmm i By PETER MATTIACE Associated Press PITTSBURGH Charles Berry could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. He could nap twice a day. He could snooze over black coffee.

He even could sleep standing up. But when Berry, 40, woke up while his tractor-trailer truck was crashing into a steel mill, he finally opened his eyes to a serious medical condition that he'd had for 25 years. "I just thought I required a little more sleep than others. Now I know I have a sleep disorder," he says. Berry's condition, narcolepsy, was diagnosed at the University of Pittsburgh's Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, which opened one of the nation's first sleep disorder centers in July 1974.

There are now 32 such centers nationwide. Each year, about 200 patients with chronic sleep problems check into the hospital's six bedrooms where doctors and technicians monitor their slumber for two successive nights. The bedrooms look much like a modern motel with double bed, mirror, torch-lamp, chair and even a cozy quilt bedspread. A bathroom is nearby, as is a lounge offering television and magazines to help patients relax. But there is little privacy in these bedrooms.

Patients wear electrodes taped to their heads to monitor brain waves, eye movement and muscle tension. A microphone above their heads records sounds they make while sleeping and soft red lights on the ceiling allow technicians to look in via closed-circuit television. It's not home, but the $1,500 examination usually uncovers the cause of their sleep problems, acording to Dr. Charles Reynolds, medical director at the clinic. "We can almost always pin down a cause for sleep disorders," Reynolds says.

"Then we can tailor a program to help." About half of those referred to the clinic suffer from severe insomnia. Others, like Berry, suffer from narcolepsy, a constant sleepiness, or sleep apnea, a condition found mostly in older men who are jolted awake frequently each night when they temporarily stop breathing. A smaller number of patients suffer from "disturbed behavior" while sleeping, such as seizures, sleepwalking, bed wetting and night terrors. Some psychiatric patients also are studied at the center. By monitoring sleep patterns doctors can learn if a person is depressed and also can quickly test the effectiveness of anti-depression medications, Reynolds says.

Berry, who lives in rural West Leechburg, says he had trouble staying awake since he was 13, but nevertheless held a job as a long-distance trucker until his steel mill accident two years ago. There were some close calls on the road. "I'd just get sleepy and start running off the road. That would wake me up. I had some small accidents, nothing really major," he says.

"It would scare me, especially at night, coming toward a small community. I'd wake up and the community would be gone and I wouldn't remember going through it. "I never had any thoughts that I was different, but it got embarrassing sometimes," Berry says. "I have fallen asleep during conversations and I have gone over to the neighbors' only to fall asleep drinking coffee." Berry spent two nights and an afternoon at the sleep center, where Reynolds found classic symptoms of narcolepsy. Normally, a person begins "rapid eye movements" after about 90 minutes of sleep.

This is when most people dream and enjoy their deepest sleep. But narcoleptics experience rapid eye movements immediately, making their condition easy to diagnose. In Berry's case, two daily doses of a prescribed stimulant suppresses his body's inclination to slip into sleep and immediate rapid eye movements. The drug, which has no side effects for Berry, helps him stay awake when he wants to. "I live a normal life.

I can do anything I want to do," Berry says. I Although his trucking company laid him off because of his illness, Berry still drives his car and now AP Charles Berry snoozes while wired to monitors that uncovered his sleep disorder. works heavy machinery on a golf course near Pittsburgh. Several hundred-thousand other Americans suffer from narcolepsy, many of whom don't know it or are embarrassed to admit it, according to Reynolds. Sleep doctors report seeing more and more youngsters in their work.

Reynolds believes some young people are nipping disorders like insomnia early because "it's now more acceptable to seek out help in this situation." Youngsters under 10 years old, particularly boys, are notorious sleepwalkers, a specific condition described as a partial arousal from a deep sleep marked by a glassy stare, a tendency to bump into walls and fall down stairways, and a later amnesia. Up to 15 percent of boys walk in their sleep, Reynolds says. Some children also suffer from "night terrors," a kind of super-nightmare marked by screams, mumbling, sweating and disorientation. Experts say night terrors are "normal" for children under 12 and require no drugs. "Don't make a big deal out of it," one Pitt doctor advises.

Reynold says too many people also worry about sleep, especially how much or how getting. The key, he says, is that there is no norm. "It's well established that the need for sleep varies widely from two or three hours a night to 10, 11 or 12 hours," Reynolds says. Snoring, the nightmare of many spouses, may be an early indication of sleep apnea, a disorder confined mostly to men who seem constantly tired from waking up throughout the night. Weight loss, breathing exercises and possibly drugs are normal treatments, according to Reynolds.

Reynolds and Dr. David Kupfer, director of the center, prescribe some simple rules for a good night's sleep. They say the most important is not to worry about sleeping especially when it gets to be 2 a.m., 3 a.m. or later. "Everyone has an occasional sleepless night," Kupfer says.

"Usually it's nothing to be concerned about. If you don't sleep, you may feel irritable and sleepy the next day, but you won't 'go crazy' or suffer a profound physical illness." "Avoid caffeine," Reynolds advises. "Avoid alcohol in the evening, avoid filling foods in the evening, avoid over-heated rooms and get into a regular sleep-wake schedule. "Some people find sex before sleep very relaxing, but some find it too stimulating," he says. How does the sleep doctor sleep? "I sleep very well," Reynolds says.

"I don't know why." NEW GADGETS Coleco Wades Into the Big Boys' League Atari's new super system, tentatively dubbed the 5200 Advanced Video Entertainment System, was the pride of the Atari booth. At least a dozen cartridges compatible with the 5200 were shown, including home versions of arcade games (Taito's and a video spin-off of the movie blockbuster "Raiders of the. Lost Ark." The other big news was new cartridges. Imagic, Coleco, Apollo and Parker Brothers showed game cartridges compatible with the Atari, and Imagic and Coleco showed game cartridges compatible with the Intellivision system. Atari introduced seven new titles, including "Raiders" and updated versions of Atari sports games.

Atari is also developing the official video game of the 1984 Olympics. Coleco, exercising in full its proprietary right to reproduce arcade games in cartridge form, showed 10 Intellivision-compatible games and nine Atari cartridges, all versions of arcade games. Apollo, the Texas-based software company, has expanded its library to six cartridges. Joining "Space Chase" and "Skeet Shoot" are "Loch-jaw," "Space Caverns," "Lost Luggage" and "Racquetball," all of which operate on the Atari. The long-awaited Parker Brothers version of "The Empire Strikes Back" made its official debut, along with "Frogger." Parker Brothers is preparing a series of games based on "Star Wars." Also under development are home versions of Stern's "Amidar" and "Super Cobra" arcade games.

Others Get Credit for Trying By MICHAEL BLANCHET The big news at the recent Consumer Electronics show in Chicago was Coleco's Coleco Vision system. Coleco Vision, which will retail for under $200, has almost 10 times the screen ram of Mattel's Intellivision. (Screen ram regulates the quality EATING THE VIDEO GAMES and movement of the graphics.) Coleco's combination joystick-keyboard controller has a built-in dial that allows players to change the speeds of individual game characters. And the ColecoVision cartridge library reads like a Who's Who of coin-op arcade games: "Donkey Kong" (this cartridge will come packed with each ColecoVision set), "Mousetrap," "Venture" and "Turbo," to name a few. Three other new home video game systems, ranging in price from $130 to $350, were introduced.

The Emerson Arcadia 2001 is at the low end of the price scale. It is the only programmable game system that can be operated on a 12-volt battary and regular house current The initial Emerson library consists of 20 titles. General Consumer Electronics showed a self-contained "Vectrex." The graphics are black and white, but the vector monitor is capable of true depth simulation. For those who like color, plastic overlays (a la the original Odyssey) are available. See the finest roster of jai-alai players in the game today.

Spend an evening with stars from two continents! of the screen. In Apollo's "Lost Luggage," the player attempts to catch luggage as it whirls off one of those airport carousels. If missed, the baggage hits the wall and underwear spills out A catch is good for a point. As proficiency increases, the carousel speeds up. The hitch is that the black bag in each game contains a terrorist bomb which, if it hits the wall, demolishes the airport and everyone in it "Micro Surgeon" from Imagic is based on the premise the player is shrunken to move through the body of a critically ill patient.removing a brain tumor, a blood clot from near the heart, nicotine deposits from the lungs and tape worms from the intestines.

Atari is cleaning up on the Pac- By JOHN TEETS There were several off-the-wall items displayed at the recent Chicago Consumer Electronics Show. Among new video games were three of questionable tase: "Fireman," "Lost Luggage" and "Micro Surgeon." In the hand-held "Fireman," the player manipulates net-carrying firemen to catch babies as they fall SWITCHING ON from a burning building. Every catch elicits a little beep, plus a point. Every missed baby hits the sidewalk and dies, also with a tiny electronic noise and the appearance of a little electronic angel in the upper part Man cartridge, but everybody's getting into the act with spinoff items. There are now Pac-Man table lamps; Pac-Man wrist games, which aren't very challenging but are very, very trendy; and Pac-Man telephones.

Possibly the worst item displayed at the show was a pair, of electrified panties, said to be suitable for both men and women. They are very brief and have a little cord leading cut the side that can be plugged into a stereo amplifier so hat a A tiny speaker in the panties plays music. The Sport Horn, from Calfax, can function as a very loud megaphone or can be made to play a choice of 76 tunes at absolutely ear-splitting volume. The horn is designed for use at sporting events, the beach, on a boat or in a car. BERENSONS HARTFORD (o0(oil(o0 i Major league jai-alai at its best For special discount group arrangements, call 525-8611.

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