by decodebytes on 4/10/23, 11:10 AM with 319 comments
by yosito on 4/10/23, 12:55 PM
The frustrating thing for me is that doing so is often labeled as being anti-science, when the truth is, this guy was actually doing the science himself. It's not anti-science to take your health into your own hands. It's anti-outdated-underfunded-medical-systems.
by elric on 4/10/23, 8:02 PM
1. Sleeprider deserves to be raised to knighthood or some kind of medal or something. The man is a hero and a living legend, who has helped untold number of people with their apnea. I'm not kidding. Thank you, Sleeprider, for all that you do.
2. OP really should pursue the NHS route. Maybe it'll take a while, but once the gears are in motion he'll at least get access to a steady supply of ASV machines, for free. There will also be a paper trail of effective treatment, which might be important for insurance purposes further down the line (mortgages or life insurance or whatever which might require a medical checkup).
3. If you have a bed partner who tells you that you're not breathing, or that you snore loudly: get tested and get treated. Don't shrug it off. Deal with it. The sooner, the better.
4. CPAP doesn't have to be unsexy. I really don't understand why virtually all CPAP pictures include full-face masks with bulky headgear. The vast majority of CPAP users can get by with nasal pillows with minimalist headgear. Using those pictures instead would reduce the anxiety people feel about getting on CPAP. [1]
5. AHI is a largely meaningless number. "Mild" apnea can be just as devastating as "severe" apnea. AHI only looks at events/hour, it doesn't look at when the events occur (e.g. during REM), how many are back-to-back, and how much your sleep is actually disrupted. You can have a "normal" AHI of 5 and still get absolutely trash sleep because of un(der)treated sleep apnea.
[1] Nasal pillow mask: https://www.resmed.com.au/healthcare-professionals/products/...
by agrue on 4/10/23, 1:38 PM
Good news! We have a diagnosis, sleep apnea. You're bad at sleeping now, the thing everybody has to do all night long every day since birth. The solution is to wear a modern iron lung whenever you want or need to sleep forever. Many times it's because people are overweight but you aren't.
Is that really all there is for treatment? No throat exercises or therapeutic sleeping positions? No diets? No botox injections for your uvula or a daily pill to obviate breathing while sleeping?
by rolisz on 4/10/23, 6:05 PM
But even though I generally sleep 8 hours a night, I am quite tired during the day and I often have trouble focusing. At night, I fall asleep like a log and I don't wake up during the night.
by lunderdog on 4/10/23, 4:41 PM
If somebody is struggling with obstructive sleep apnea, I would suggest consulting with an oral maxillofacial surgeon or otolaryngologist (ENT) to have your jaw and nasal airway examined to see if there's another option besides using a CPAP.
by fxtentacle on 4/10/23, 1:05 PM
That's the crucial point here. Health care failed him, but luckily he was rich enough to privately purchase multiple medical devices just to try it they might help.
by netman21 on 4/10/23, 8:53 PM
I changed my diet and began exercising. Lost 50 pounds. My sleep apnea went away and I no longer even snore.
The downside of getting diagnosed is my life insurance company dropped me.
by sinuhe69 on 4/10/23, 12:25 PM
by mordae on 4/10/23, 1:54 PM
We lived in a "commie block" and we could hear our neighbor snoring super loudly during summer when we all had our windows open for the night.
One night, we heard him repeatedly stop breathing and then gasp for breath. So when I've seen him the next day by the elevator I told him: "Sorry to bother you, but we can hear you snoring" and he has gotten super apologetic. But I continued, "yeah, we are used to it so don't sweat it. The trouble is, you are stopping breathing recently. You may have sleep apnea. Go see a doctor, STAT. You don't want your brain to die off due to a lack of oxygen."
He told me in a couple of weeks he's got a CPAP and is working to shed some weight off. In a year he went back to a more normal weight.
He also started dating our neighbor. Curse those open windows... :-)
by elkos on 4/10/23, 4:43 PM
by xlii on 4/10/23, 2:09 PM
They're quite frequent (sleep apnea - 17% from the article, ADHD - 5-20% depending on the study) and impact peoples' lives quite severely both on quality and productivity fronts.
by 55555 on 4/10/23, 12:49 PM
What's the cheapest wearable or device that can probably tell you if you have apnea?
by jimnotgym on 4/10/23, 3:11 PM
The link between sleep apnea and weight is a vicious circle. Stop up every night and see if you fancy exercising after a couple of weeks!
by pengaru on 4/10/23, 10:04 PM
Listen to the people you actually share a home with if they inform you you're not sleeping well (and are probably interfering with their sleep too).
- Someone who grew up in an utterly dysfunctional household in the sleep quality department. Denial so deep, unreliable "science" would be abused as "proof" of there not being a problem.
** hearing loss is another one; if your hearing has become so bad you mishear much of what your family is saying to you... esp. with a bias for the negative/combativeness, often promoted by consistent lack of sleep (surprise!), get an effing hearing aid already. You're destroying your relationships with your family.
by jnwatson on 4/10/23, 1:05 PM
by JoeAltmaier on 4/10/23, 10:32 PM
by jonhohle on 4/10/23, 3:51 PM
I’ve been dealing with fatigue for about two years and had to preempt a yearly physical to be able to talk to my GP about it in December. That gave me the referral I needed to get a sleep study, which identified moderate apnea. It’s the middle of April and I would have just been getting a provider prescribed auto PAP had it not been for a friend who had an unused one.
Like the author, CPAP is doing nothing for me, so next month the specialist will probably recommend another sleep study, followed by several more months of waiting for appointments and DME providers.
Meanwhile, my wife found that one of the medicines I had been taking had recent studies indicating effects on sleep. I went from 10-20mins of REM a night to 2-2.5 hours by cutting it out prior to any PAP therapy. It should have been done under Dr. supervision, but I can’t ever see my Dr., so I said screw it, found a typical tapering protocol and did it myself.
For shorter term things - sick visits, etc., it is impossible for my wife or me to see anyone at the network of our GP (one of the largest in the state) and have to go to urgent care. The last time my wife wanted an appointment she asked if she could go to another location to get in sooner. They denied the request because of continuity of care. So she went to a minute clinic that is completely unrelated to the network - how does that provide continuity?
by s5300 on 4/10/23, 2:17 PM
Breathing properly through your nose when awake & asleep turns out to be really important. I’m incredibly curious on how previous generations knew & the term mouth-breather became a thing, as they were obviously (well, if you’ve never experienced long-term inability to breathe through your nose, maybe it would be hard to understand the severity of the cognitive impact this has) quite right.
by khazhoux on 4/10/23, 7:46 PM
I get what feels like twice the amount of air, with zero effort.
It was very uncomfortable the first couple of nights, but now I don’t even feel it, and I now always use them to sleep.
by drivers99 on 4/10/23, 8:39 PM
I actually had a a disnosis and a CPAP two decades ago but I could never sleep with it. I did exactly what he said he did: throw the mask across the room. Since I made myself stick with it in the sleep study thanks to his breathing tips (and not really having an option), I'm sure I can sleep with it now. Also the ASV and the masks available now seem to work a lot better.
by aszantu on 4/10/23, 5:23 PM
Been on an elimination diet and trying around for 5 years now, there seem to be some pointers towards SIBO, but I haven't managed to fast long enough to do the test yet.
When I eat the wrong thing, it usually takes 3-4 days for any effects to show. Would make sense if it's fermentation or rot in the intestines that's triggering this. Hope you'll get well soon!
by maxehmookau on 4/10/23, 1:48 PM
by theonething on 4/10/23, 7:34 PM
I think I would have just paid the money (at least for a few months to see if I'm getting my money's worth) rather than going through all that trouble of trying out different machines, etc.
That's just me though. I realize some people are more comfortable with taking matters into their own hands and enjoy getting into the nitty gritty.
I'm also the kind of person who would much rather hire a trusted plumber, mechanic, etc to just get it done than muck about it myself.
by bitL on 4/10/23, 1:48 PM
https://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t176555/Found-a-vitamin-t...
Given B1 seems to be working similarly to acetazolamide but appears to be much safer, I am wondering if anyone is using it for altitude sickness? Doping up a few grams of thiamine just before climbing?
by hellohihello135 on 4/10/23, 6:43 PM
by Jonovono on 4/10/23, 4:38 PM
This line had me laughing out loud. Amazing article, glad you found what worked for you!
by ropable on 4/11/23, 12:21 AM
by b1c1jones on 4/10/23, 3:21 PM
by henearkr on 4/10/23, 9:06 PM
Maybe that's the only risk of short-circuiting the medical establishment, that now the author is satisfied with the solution he found for the central apnea which is one symptom, without being concerned with solving its cause (that could have other consequences)?
by ericmcer on 4/10/23, 7:23 PM
by tablespoon on 4/10/23, 1:39 PM
The use of "hacking" in the title is unfortunate, since it strongly brings to mind software engineers confidently loading up on weird supplements to do stuff like "boost intelligence" without much understanding of what they're doing.
This article is very much not that, and is very sensible.
by orangepurple on 4/10/23, 12:36 PM
by graffix on 4/10/23, 11:23 PM
by tiku on 4/10/23, 8:06 PM
by mattgreenrocks on 4/10/23, 3:29 PM
by zackmorris on 4/10/23, 5:58 PM
* Mild sleep apnea, ~15 events per hour, undiagnosed until after my severe burnout in the spring of 2019
* Breathe Right strips brought me back to life in just a day or two (no affiliation)
* Lightly taping my mouth at night with 1/4" surgical tape (or 1/2 ripped down the center) about 2" long in an X shape (to prevent stretching the philtrum) basically cured me, be sure to do this with a relaxed expression so that the mouth can be opened easily in an emergency to breathe again
* Problem was due to slippage in jaw joint causing misaligned midline, causing my jaw to fall open and tongue to fall towards throat
* Treatment with an Advanced Lightwire Functional (ALF) dental appliance fixed jaw alignment over the course of 9-18 months
* I believe that pre-2000s orthodontics and the quest to flatten faces with headgear at too young an age is largely responsible for the outbreak of sleep apnea
* Oral appliances for sleep apnea advance the jaw forward (the opposite action of headgear) and I would wager probably often would work better than CPAP
* Invisalign and other aligners (no affiliation) are supposedly working on adding clasps to keep the jaw closed during sleep, and I plan to follow up on this but have been too busy
* Sleep apnea coincided with a breakdown of the gut for me, and I developed food sensitivities to nearly everything I was eating, lingering today with dairy, grains, some legumes and nightshades
* My joint pain went away when I quit eating the foods I was sensitive to, so I wonder if sleep apnea -> food sensitivities -> autoimmune diseases like allergies and even arthritis?
* A thick neck increases the odds of getting sleep apnea, If you work out or are overweight, you probably have it (neck is the same size as biceps)
* Adding a 1-2" piece of foam under my pillow inside the pillowcase also helps by keeping the spine in a neutral alignment, since nearly all pillows are too thin for side sleepers
* I'm hoping to be able to sleep on my back after getting a nighttime appliance to hold my jaw and tongue in place
* Tongue posture exercises are key, find an Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy doctor online (they teach remotely) perhaps best to start with a local Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction (TMJ) doctor and get a referral
* Force feeding water by drinking a glass after using the restroom, upon waking and before bed helps greatly as well, perhaps by thinning the blood so the heart and lungs don't have to work so hard
I also discovered that the anxiety from ADHD symptoms (I'm still undiagnosed but check the boxes) feels the same as quitting smoking, and the prolonged agony of it is greatly exacerbated by the increased cortisol load of sleep apnea and work stress. I think about mental health now the same way as weight training, where there is a period of stimulus, deficit, overcompensation, then long slow decline if the stimulus is continued without rest/recovery. Now I consciously monitor my cognitive load, so rather than redlining for 8 hours straight, I sprint for 20 minutes and take a short rest, which is basically the Pomodoro method. I also try to get 20 minutes of downtime in each day, ideally as meditation, and have told everyone that Saturday is my me-day for active recovery, to do inner-child work for my survival. I have started to explore other realities like the kind that come while playing music, and have begun to experience the sensation of motivation again, which feels like a blessing.
by tru3_power on 4/10/23, 4:20 PM
by mancerayder on 4/10/23, 2:27 PM
by pbourke on 4/10/23, 3:10 PM
by ThinkBeat on 4/10/23, 8:14 PM
I am not a doctor, nor am I a lawyer.
This is, in general, horrible, and dangerous advice. The problem being how to know if this is one of those times. I am happy it worked for sure. But embracing the idea might well kill people.
by musha68k on 4/10/23, 7:42 PM
by acyou on 4/10/23, 3:22 PM
What technology and advancement has open source really given us, that isn't just piracy when it comes right down to it? I realize I am asking a selection of would-be pirates. Genuine question.
We skim the cream off the top and tend to take all the credit.
by znpy on 4/10/23, 3:27 PM
[long list of mumbo-jumbo tik-tok-style “lifehacks”]
Anything but seeing a doctor?