Suffolk doctor counts NBA execs, players and coaches among the clients he treats for sleep apnea

Alvin Gentry was always tired, but couldn’t understand why. He would get eight hours of sleep, but still feel fatigued the next morning.

Was he burned out after the stress of being an NBA coach for more than 30 years?

“I blamed it on my work. I was an NBA coach and I thought that was just part of it,” said Gentry, who has been in the league since 1988 with head coaching stints for the Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons, Los Angeles Clippers, Phoenix Suns, New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings.

“But it had gotten to the point, I’m telling you, where I was just exhausted. I’d wake up in the morning and I was just exhausted.”

Gentry, 68, dealt with it for years. But one summer he met Dr. I. A. “Dimi” Barot at a wellness event during the NBA Summer League.

Barot, a Nansemond-Suffolk Academy grad, is a sleep specialist.

“While I was there, I started talking to him, and he told me he was pretty sure I had sleep apnea,” said Gentry, now the vice president of basketball engagement for the Kings.

Barot urged Gentry to fly to Hampton Roads for a sleep evaluation. Barot conducted various tests, including sleeping with a continuous positive airway pressure device, commonly known as a CPAP machine.

“They had me sleep without it and then with a sleep machine. It made a world of difference. I mean, a world of difference,” Gentry said. “It was crazy. I was like, ‘This is how normal people sleep?’ It had been years — since I never really got good sleep.”

Barot, a Suffolk resident, now counts Gentry among the many clients he has helped with sleep and wellness. Barot, 48, has consulted with the NBA, its athletes, coaches and executives to treat the disorder.

He has become an expert in the field after he was accepted to a seven-year Honors Program in Medicine at Old Dominion University and Eastern Virginia Medical School, graduating in 2001. Barot also completed neurology training at the University of Miami and did a dedicated sleep medicine fellowship via Yale.

Gentry has been sleeping with his CPAP machine for more than six years and can’t imagine life without it.

“Every now and then, I’ll forget it on a trip, and it’s just not the same,” he said. “What it does is make you much more efficient in your job, whatever it is. It makes you more attentive, it’s less stressful, and you have more energy. For me, it was great. I was much more efficient in doing what I needed to do in my coaching situation than I was beforehand.”

Sleep apnea is a potentially serious disorder in which breathing is interrupted throughout the night. A person can wake up still feeling tired even after a full night’s sleep.

Symptoms can include snoring, episodes in which you stop breathing during sleep, gasping for air, awakening with a dry mouth or coughing and headaches. Insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness, or hypersomnia, mood changes, irritability and memory loss also are common.

According to the American Medical Association, about 30 million Americans have sleep apnea, and at least 80% of those with the disorder haven’t been diagnosed. According to the American Sleep Apnea Association, roughly 30% of Americans experience some symptoms of sleep apnea. The Library of Medicine estimates 26% of Americans between the ages of 30 and 70 have it.

“Sleep apnea is so prevalent across the world because we just don’t think about it,” Barot said. “We have this mentality of ‘I’ll sleep when I die.’ The irony is if you don’t get good sleep, you’re probably going to die a lot sooner than you thought.”

Sleep apnea, particularly when the disorder goes undiagnosed or untreated, has been linked to a wide array of health problems.

“What we know, from the data that we have is that sleep disorders like sleep apnea cause or worsen every single chronic medical condition treated in our healthcare system,” said Barot, who has the disorder. “These disorders include high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, including coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, stroke, depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction and memory loss.”

A healthy, regular and restful sleep can provide a more “meaningful and productive longer life,” Barot said.

“It’s actually going through repeated cycles of trauma,” he added. “Every time your breathing is interrupted, it affects your brain’s ability to get rest. It’s almost like a panic button goes off in your brain, then it affects your heart rate, your blood pressure, everything.”

Barot’s expertise has helped more than Gentry and his fellow NBA coaches and athletes. Plenty of others visit his practice.

Chesapeake’s Julie Kelly works in the healthcare industry and came to know about sleep apnea through her husband, Josh. When they were dating, Josh broke the news that he had a sleeping disorder.

“He didn’t tell me for six months that he wore a CPAP machine,” Julie said. “So when he finally told me he had something to tell me, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, here it comes, something is wrong with him.’ He finally said, ‘I wear a CPAP.’ And I was like, ‘Is that it?’ I asked him where it was and he told me, ‘At home.’ I told him, ‘Well, it’s not doing you any good there now, is it?'”

Soon, Josh suggested Julie had a sleeping disorder because of her snoring. She didn’t believe him.

“I got tested and I got it worse than he does,” Julie, 47, said with a chuckle. “I just thought I had Mom brain. I thought I was just tired because I was tired. And I don’t sleep good because I always have a ton of work and I have kids. I just thought that was it, until the test said what it was.”

Julie has been using her CPAP machine for a year and half, and she sleeps through the night and credits losing 30 pounds to having more energy to work out. She and Josh have seven kids, ages 9 to 24.

“If you have sleep apnea, it can lead to more health complications. I want to be healthy as long I can for my children,” said Julie, who wears a mask that covers her nose, while her husband has a mask that covers his whole face. “So it’s beneficial to get tested. Then, if you have it, you can definitely improve your life. It was a night and day difference for me. It took me about a week to get used to it, but now I won’t go to sleep without it.”

Kevin Akridge, who lives in Ivor — 23 miles northwest of Suffolk — denied he had a sleeping disorder for several years. Some alarming signs convinced him otherwise.

“A friend told me, “You stopped breathing for a little bit,'” Akridge recounted. “I was like, ‘That’s not good.'”

But it got worse.

“I didn’t know if it was due to my age, because I’m getting up there now, but I literally would start falling asleep anytime,” said Akridge, 34. “I could be in a conversation with one of my bosses and they would just see me drop. I could be in the middle of rush-hour traffic and I would start drooping. That’s when I realized that I needed to go see somebody.”

After four years, he finally got tested. He’ll never forget how the doctors told him.

“When the doctors stops, looks at your tests and then looks back at you and goes, ‘You’re lucky,’ that’s not good,” Akridge said. “They were very forward with how bad I was. They were trying to be gentle about it, but they told me that I was lucky I hadn’t had a heart attack yet because of the amount of stress I was putting on my body.”

Akridge started using his machine in January.

“I noticed an immediate difference. I was no longer walking through a haze anymore, which is what I was doing day to day,” he said. “I have so much more energy. I’m now able to actually hold a conversation without falling asleep on somebody.”

Barot’s mission is to make more people aware of sleeping disorders.

His father, Dr. A.J. Barot, and brother, Dr. N.A. Barot, run the Virginia Neurology & Sleep Centers in Chesapeake and Suffolk.

Dimi doesn’t practice in the office with them anymore, but is still very involved. He now owns and operates a sleep disorder medical practice in the Richmond area and may expand to other states.

His father served in the Navy, so Barot is particularly passionate about veterans with sleep apnea and health-related issues.

“The fact is so many people have it and very few people know it,” he said. “It may be the simplest way to help a human being live a better life.”

Technology has made evaluation and treatment much easier, and Barot pushes for more testing, especially people of color.

“Certain races have a higher risk of sleep apnea, including of black and brown skin color,” Barot said. “We believe it has to do with the anatomy of the airway. In certain races, for reasons that we don’t completely understand, it could be anthropological. In one sleep journal, normal weight Chinese men have more severe sleep apnea than obese Caucasian men.”

Barot has taken a special interest in athletes and occasionally watches basketball or football games with his sons, Arya and Adi. They can point out athletes who they think have sleep apnea.

“You kind of study faces for a living when you’re a trained sleep physician,” he said, smiling. “We can tell if a person is mild, moderate or severe, which are the grades of sleep apnea.”

One of the athletes he predicted had sleep apnea was Percy Harvin, a former Landstown High School and NFL star. In 2010, Harvin was diagnosed after collapsing at practice. He talked to reporters during an interview about how CPAP therapy made him feel “a 100% difference.”

Other athletes who have been diagnosed with sleep apnea include former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, former NFL star Warren Sapp and two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Reggie White, who died in 2004 due to health issues brought on by sleep apnea. He was only 43. His widow, Sara, created the Reggie White Foundation, which helps to raise awareness of the condition.

Barot said athletes with sleep apnea are affected in many different ways.

“It affects physical and mental health,” he said. “It affects alertness, vigilance, attitude, mood. And from a physical perspective, it affects endurance and stamina. And it affects eye-hand coordination.”

Gentry is thankful for Barot’s diligence on the subject. He is excited that Barot has begun to spread the word about sleep apnea to others, including to players, coaches and executives in the NBA.

“(Sacramento coach) Mike Brown, (Golden State assistant) Ron Adams and even some of the players, he’s looked at them and said, ‘I’m telling you right now, they are suffering from sleep apnea. I can just tell,'” Gentry said. “I’m telling you, it’s amazing. I think it’s really important, especially for people of color. And I think the more we’re made aware of it, the better we’ll be. We’ve got to understand that this is something serious.”

Gentry said he’s grateful for Barot and how he’s changed his life.

“Dimi is a guy who cares. He’s not in this for anything except trying to help people,” he said. “I know that, I realize that and I’ve seen that at work. Dr. Barot is a guy who thinks this is important and he continues to make it important.”

Larry Rubama, 757-575-6449, larry.rubama@pilotonline.com. Twitter @LHRubama.