Dr. Qanta Ahmed MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM

Sleep Medicine

Dr. Qanta Ahmed, MD, a board certified sleep disorders specialist and Attending Physician at the Winthrop-University Hospital Sleep Disorders Center in Mineola, New York, comes on the show to discuss her POV regarding: The absence of response from the professional sleep medicine community and the abuse of Propofol as a sleep aid. She will also discuss why drugs are too frequently prescribed to those suffering from insomnia without looking at why these individuals,victims like Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger, may have resorted to drug dependency in the first place. Additionally, Dr. Qanta Ahmed will provide tips for lifestyle changes that may improve can quality of sleep without resorting to prescription sleep aids.

Dr. Qanta Ahmed is the author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom. She is a board certified sleep disorders specialist at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York. She is Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York (Stony Brook). Dr. Ahmed is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. She practices sleep medicine exclusively in Garden City, Long Island. Previously, she has practiced pulmonary and critical care medicine in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and in the National Guard Health Affairs in Riyadh, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and also at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. Dr. Ahmed holds an Honorary Professorship at the School of Public Health at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. She is the first Muslim woman and the first physician to be selected to be a 2010 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge, England. The fellowship seeks to ignite public discourse on the nexus of matters scientific and religious, a dialogue she brings here to Huffington Post. This dialogue was recently recognized by NY MOVES Magazine in honoring Dr. Qanta Ahmed as a 2010 Power Woman in November 2010. In her limited time, Dr. Ahmed serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Women's Voices Now Non Profit Foundation sponsoring Voices from the Muslim World, a Short Film Festival. She is published in World Policy Journal, The Guardian (London), The Friday Times (Lahore, Pakistan), Trouw (in The Netherlands) as well as peer reviewed medical journals.

Melanie Cole, M.S.

2011-02-09