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Watching the way they handled this recall so poorly got me to do whatever it took to reduce my snoring and mild sleep apnea down to almost nothing (mouth/throat
by lepus 3y ago
Watching the way they handled this recall so poorly got me to do whatever it took to reduce my snoring and mild sleep apnea down to almost nothing (mouth/throat/tongue exercises did the most followed by head positioning). The stories of people who relied on their CPAP caught up in it were heartbreaking and nerve wracking.
Edit: I used a combination of the Snore Gym app and Vik Veer's videos on Youtube. After a couple months my snoring became barely audible, but it doesn't always work for everyone. I was tilting my head down at night which blocked off my throat somewhat, so I lifted my head up higher with a bigger pillow.
- jcims 3y agoAny good references for the exercises?
- vorador 3y agoCould you detail a bit what exercises you did and how you changed head position? Thanks!
- nurettin 3y agoI did none of that. Instead, what worked for me was to change my lifestyle. Paced walk half an hour and lift for ten minutes everyday. Reduce smoking to rare occasions. Eat less, lose weight, and finally get those teeth done.
- dperrin 3y agoWith the exception of losing weight (already a 22 BMI) I tried pretty all of this to no avail. Turns out I had a deviated septum and surgery fixed the problem. As a bonus, I can easily breathe through my nose now.
- kortex 3y agoSeptoplasty and tubinate reduction surgery was one of the best choices of my life. Lifelong allergy sufferer, being able to truly breathe was profound.
- vthallam 3y agoI have a deviated septum, but the doctors in the US doesn't think its medically necessary to do Septoplasty and I also have a sleep apnea, come to think I should get this done.
- dperrin 3y agoNot sure on the accuracy or if it applies to you, but prior to getting the septoplasty my ENT did mention it might not make a big difference if overweight or obese and so often doesn’t recommend it in those cases. For comparison, I used some of those nasal strips before surgery and the post-surgery were very comparable, so that might be an inexpensive option to try? I also recall someone mentioning some sort of nose plug thing from Amazon you could get that does the same thing.
- lm28469 3y ago> tubinate reduction surgery I've read horror stories about that. Apparently a lot of the problems could be solved by teaching kids how to breathe (no mouth breathing), having a proper diet (chewing), &c. of course once you're fucked you're fucked and you have to go to these extremes to get your life back. It's like our lifestyle is slowly evolving us out of this planet
- lepus 3y ago
- petesergeant 3y agoI cured mine using tirzepatide once a week and fluticasone propionate nightly. Could never really get used to the CPAP.
- clumsysmurf 3y agoThere is the possibility TENS may be of use as well https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230803/TENS-machine-may-offer-new-treatment-option-for-patients-with-sleep-apnea.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230803/TENS-machine-may-...
- loceng 3y agoI recently found a line of knowledge-practice relating to holistic dentistry specifically that acknowledges and addresses biomechanical-physiological aspects of the bite. E.g. occlusion issues with the teeth, where the jaw is unable to land and find a comfortable-relaxed position - and so jaw/head muscles continue to engage, spasm, or guard completely - causing a potential systematic cascading failure that has a "ridiculous" amount of severe symptoms possible, and why it's ridiculous - is that you'd think this would be part of mainstream dentistry practices because of how foundational the bite position is, yet it's not mainstream; the first diagnostic is using a device called BioPak, hooked up to the head/face at different position with electrodes, it monitors muscle activity - and can tell which specific muscles are firing-resting and at what rate. They also use TENS as part of their protocol. It took me 8 years to stumble upon finding the practice-protocol for a problem I figured I had but couldn't find dentists to solve for it.
- _yb2s 3y agoAny links? What is it called?
- yareally 3y agoMight be this: https://www.digitaldental.com.au/products/biopak/ https://www.digitaldental.com.au/products/biopak/
- loceng 3y agoYes, that's one of the tools they use. The training for dentists and full protocol-processes followed, and has been evolving, is from Las Vegas Institute - https://www.lviglobal.com https://www.lviglobal.com
- diob 3y agoAs someone with apnea due to my anatomy (and AHI of 79 at that), I'm jealous. When I first got diagnosed more than 10 years ago the doctor thought I was obese seeing that. Nope, just bad luck. I'm fit, would hate to see how bad it would be otherwise.
- TylerE 3y agoHey someone finally beat my high score of 58. I am obese, but I’ve been down as much as 50 pounds and up as much as 40 over my current, and it’s never really made a bit of difference. I have a very “tight” neck and throat and probably a deviated septum as well (on top of chronic nasal allergies/congestion), so yeah, I mouth breath a lot. I’m due for a new machine soonish and I’m probably going to push for a bipap. I’m on an autos range of 17-20, and I will max that out sometimes. My scores are usually real good (like, sub 1.0), but the lack of headroom is concerning. 20 is as high as my machine (Resmed, luckily) goes, but my understanding is most bipaps go to 25, and the actual bilevel feature will likely be useful as well.
- diob 3y agoThe resmed auto I have now is my favorite so far. Unfortunately did look up my old machine and it was one of the philips recalled ones, so that's not great to hear. I think I used it for roughly 6 years. I did the deviated septum surgery which did help a lot but not for the reason most here say (since mine is anatomy related). It helped because I can now use a nose only mask which I find way more comfortable. I'd recommend it if you end up with headaches or pain due to the mask fit. Just don't ever do the surgeries around the mouth (where they cut the Palate or stuff like that). Blows my mind they allow those given the terrible long term outcomes with scar tissue. It ends up making your apnea worse.
- tired_star_nrg 3y agoInvisalign actually helped my OSA a ton, that and nasal surgery for deviated septum brought my AHI from 40 down to 8.
- tommica 3y agoI had a coworker that himself is getting a jaw surgery because his bone structure would sometimes make him stop breathing while sleeping for short moments. His brother apparently was a horrible snorer, but that was due to his nose, that the "skin" would collapse inwards when he took a sharp breath through his nose, instead of expanding. Apparently just having some kind of tape on his nose to stop that from happening while sleeping made a huge difference.
- baq 3y agoholy shit I'm the brother except I'm an only child. need to try out the tape
- dkbrk 3y agoYou may also want to check out "Max-Air Nose Cones".
- joncrocks 3y agoThere's also `nasal strips` - plastic strips with adhesive (like a plaster) to open up the upper-nose.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoHey, cool, Amazon link to "Max-Air Nose Cones" instead lists AIRMAX Nose Cones. Gotta love that site.
- whyhat 3y agoHi, Mr. Calhoun! I’m sorry this is such an unorthodox way of reaching out to you, and I know this is probably off topic for the original thread, but I couldn’t really find another way to contact you. I’m trying to get in touch with you about your raspberry pi TV project. I’m a 16 year old high school student, and my best friend loves retro tv and custom gifts, so I figured a great going away to college gift would be a project like this, loaded with all his favorite old (legally obtained) tv shows, and the videos of various musicals we’ve done together. I’ve been looking for a project very similar to yours for a few months now, and the closest thing I’ve found is a video describing a portable version of the project by a YouTube channel called Irish Craig Party. Unfortunately, it was the only video on the channel, the comments were turned off, and they had zero social media/github attached to the channel. I had to keep looking around for similar projects. I was totally willing to do some of the coding myself, but some fundamental challenges like the scheduling or the real time playback were a bit too intense for my admittedly barebones coding skills. Now I humbly come to you. You had mentioned that you were planning to open source it in a thread from a while ago, but you were debugging. Is there any way to get the code for this? I already have the vast majority of the parts, I’m willing to debug and modify it in any way, I just need the foundations. Thank you for hearing me out, I’m sorry for not finding a better way to reach out, and thank you for your time.
- alliao 3y agoI've always wondered whether strong singer would snore... they got to have pretty decent control as well as well exercised muscles in that area
- dbt00 3y agoI recently saw this study, but it's almost 20 years old, I don't know if there's more recent data available. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1360393/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1360393/ "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial"
- exo-pla-net 3y agoResults: significantly less snoring and sleep apnea. N=25
- swsieber 3y agoThis deserves its own submission I think.
- fnordlord 3y agoWhen my band toured and we could afford two hotel rooms, the singer would get one room and the rest of us would take the other. He was by far the loudest snorer of the 5 of us. Obviously just a funny anecdote but definitely not always the case that singers are the quiet sleepers. Or maybe he just needed more singing lessons.
- alliao 3y agothis is hilarious, I cracked up at the loud part. Talented singer for sure with amplification down to boot!
- addicted 3y agoI hope you’ve done an actual sleep test to confirm your sleep apnea has improved. Snoring is a useful but not 100% correlated marker for sleep apnea. It’s very possible to improve snoring without reducing the sleep apnea itself.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoPresumably they also can sense how they feel when they wake up. An unencumbered night feels completely different than a night hindered by sleep apnea, snoring or otherwise.
- UseStrict 3y agoNot for me, no change before or after the CPAP machine, but I had an over 100 AHI during 2 separate sleep lab assessments.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoWait are you claiming your still wake up feeling like shit even though you are objectively getting better sleep? Or just that you haven't been able to improve your sleep apnea symptoms (AHI count) despite treatment so you still wake up feeling like shit? Because even if there are some outliers like yourself, I can confidently claim that most people can correlate improvements in sleep apnea symptoms and sleep quality more generally with the way the feel in the morning.
- Shadowmist 3y agoI don’t feel a difference, and in some ways I feel worse, such as when there is a slight leak which leads to my tank running dry. If I don’t use the machine then sometimes in the middle of the afternoon I think about just laying down on the floor wherever I am. I never feel great after using the machine though, and I’ve looked at the log data and it is working. The only reason I keep using the machine is that my spouse gets better sleep.
- eek2121 3y agoThey should be required to replace all machines. They offered to give me $50 at one point because my machine is old. I require a bipap with ASV machine due to having complex sleep apnea, and it costs at least a couple grand. I ended up scrambling to get a replacement. The old one works perfectly fine, but I can’t safely use it due to the recall. Even after insurance I had to pay a grand out of pocket because they make you rent it at first.
- TurkishPoptart 3y agoIf I'm waking up in the middle of the night choking / gasping for air (happens 1x or 2x a week at this point) is that a symptom of sleep apnea? I'll try to talk to a doc about it but I want to make sure I'm on the same page as some of you.
- jtdressel 3y agoYes, you should get that checked out.