Si usted o alguien que usted conoce tiene
una o más de los siguientes síntomas, puede ser Apnea del Sueño:
• Ronquidos
• jadeando por aire o detener la respiración durante el sueño
• quedarse dormido en situaciones inapropiadas, como por ejemplo durante la conducción, en una película, o sentado en una reunión
• Despertar sentimiento unrefreshed
• Gran cuello tamaño (más de 17 "en los hombres es mayor de 16" en la mujer)
• Por la…
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Added by Mike on December 31, 2008 at 6:00pm —
2 Comments
If you or someone you know has
one or more of the following symptoms, it may be Sleep Apnea:
• Snoring
• Gasping for air or stopping breathing during sleep
• Falling asleep in inappropriate situations, such as while driving, at a movie, or sitting in a meeting
• Waking up feeling unrefreshed
• Large neck size (greater than 17” in men; greater than 16” in women)
• Morning headaches
• Getting up during the night to…
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Added by Mike on December 31, 2008 at 2:00pm —
17 Comments
I'm a fairly black and white kind of guy, so when I first got CPAP, I actually read the care and maintenance instructions. I'm also a fairly lazy kind of guy, so half-way through reading them, I stopped and gave up. I never liked puzzles, and assembling and disassembling and caring for a mask, humidifier, CPAP, tubing, etc., all seemed to me like a puzzle from hell, each night for every remaining night of my life.
Then my physician, who is at Stanford Medical Center and is…
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Added by Mike on December 29, 2008 at 1:30pm —
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DRAFT VERSION
Friends,
Today, we face an unacceptable situation with Sleep Apnea. Sleep Apnea is a chronic, serious disease that approximately 30 million Americans have, only 10% of whom have been diagnosed. Although the disease is completely treatable with the “gold standard” of positive airway pressure (“PAP”), of those who…
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Added by Mike on December 28, 2008 at 4:00pm —
9 Comments
Here at SleepGuide, ResMed and Respironics have always loomed large as the big boys of the Sleep Apnea industry. Bad news for us, the patients, because that kind of duopoly can't be good for competition and innovation, the two forces we see as critical to moving these devices forward in terms of ease of use and comfort for patients. So we were delighted to see…
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Added by Mike on December 27, 2008 at 4:30pm —
7 Comments
I have a dream for CPAP use that I announced in a
previous blog posting on this site that has sparked a fair amount of controversy which I did not anticipate. The agenda was as follows:
• Users should use their machines at least 5 hours a night, almost every…
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Added by Mike on December 24, 2008 at 1:30pm —
8 Comments
I might have had Sleep Apnea my entire life, but even when I started to wake up in a panic feeling as if I were suffocating to death, I didn't know it. I chalked it up to stress at work, and the feeling of trudging through each day without any energy to some form of depression. Wrong on both counts. How did I find out? During a casual conversation with a friend…
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Added by Mike on December 23, 2008 at 2:22pm —
3 Comments
As you probably can tell by my other blog entries, I love CPAP. Since using it, I've felt energized when I wake up in the morning, with a zest for being active during the day instead of bumming around and wanting to sleep in. But even I hit speed bumps from time to time, and the other night was one of them. Around 4:30 a.m., I felt as if I were choking, unable…
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Added by Mike on December 20, 2008 at 3:30pm —
2 Comments
Sleep Apnea is hard enough as it is without doctors making our lives even harder. Of course not all doctors are ignorant, stupid and incompetent. But Bill's doctor certainly is.
Bill is a dear friend of the family who has severe sleep apnea, along with a host of other problems such as diabetes and heart disease, probably brought on in part by not…
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Added by Mike on December 19, 2008 at 3:30pm —
No Comments
It sounds too good to be true: lose weight in your sleep! But it is indisputable that an ever-expanding body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence suggests just that: treating sleep apnea can help you shed those unwanted pounds.
The reasons are still not fully understood. Some studies indicate that untreated Sleep Apnea disrupts rapid eye movement…
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Added by Mike on December 18, 2008 at 2:00pm —
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We at SleepGuide will always stand up for the Sleep Apnea population first and foremost, without regard for what's best for the manufacturers, insurance companies, DMEs, doctors and others whose interests may not always be perfectly aligned with our own. This Sleep Apnea population includes anyone with Sleep Apnea, whether using dental devices, CPAP, surgery, or…
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Added by Mike on December 17, 2008 at 2:30pm —
No Comments
My grandmother, quoting Benjamin Franklin, used to tell us kids that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." As Barack Obama and his administration consider their health care priorities, I respectfully remind our President-elect of this old truism. Aggressive diagnosis and treatment of the estimated 30 million Americans with Sleep Apnea is the ounce…
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Added by Mike on December 16, 2008 at 2:00pm —
5 Comments
In past blogs, I have criticized the manufacturers of CPAP devices for not marketing their latest, greatest CPAP data monitoring software to end-users, the people like you and me who actually rely on the results from these machines to breathe every night. The majority of this software is marketed on a restricted basis to doctors, respiratory therapists and…
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Added by Mike on December 15, 2008 at 2:30pm —
1 Comment
The plot thickens. I learned from one of the comments on yesterday's blog that there is "a clash of wills between the medical profession & the rights of US CPAPers to actively get involved in our own monitoring & regulation." Moreover, in the U.S. it is against the law for manufacturers of CPAP devices to explain to people how to change the settings on their machine.
So the powers that be have decided that we CPAPers are too stupid and inept to analyze compliance…
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Added by Mike on December 14, 2008 at 1:30pm —
7 Comments
Entry: to give someone the
run·around
Pronunciation: \ˈrə-nə-raund\
: to act in a way which makes it difficult for someone to do something, for example by refusing to tell them things they need to know.
My friend Dan knows he has obstructive sleep apnea and is trying to use CPAP properly to treat his condition…
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Added by Mike on December 13, 2008 at 3:53pm —
29 Comments
I am often humbled whenever I speak to a "CPAP old-timer" about the "bad old days" of treatment when CPAP machines were large and noisy, without any of the features of today's machines that make them easier to use, such as auto-adjustment, ramp, expiratory relief and so on. Having only been using a CPAP myself for a little over a year, and knowing full well how…
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Added by Mike on December 12, 2008 at 3:52pm —
No Comments
Even if you don't think you know what positional therapy is, you actually do. It's the push or shove to your side you get from your spouse when you snore; it's the fancy $150 pillow at Brookstone which is promoted as a cure for snoring; and it's the old-fashioned snoring remedy of pinning tennis balls to the back of your nightshirt. Nevertheless, the term was an…
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Added by Mike on December 11, 2008 at 2:36pm —
4 Comments
A turf war is afoot in the Sleep Industry for control over the heart, mind and airway of the Sleep Apnea patient. The turf war pits the field of Sleep medicine, very much in its early, formative stages, but showing a lot of promise, against the established specialists like dentists, ENTs, pulmonologists and others. And although some of these specialists do a…
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Added by Mike on December 10, 2008 at 4:00pm —
12 Comments
It didn't have to be this way. When the Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently unveiled its plans to audit the Sleep Industry as part of its Work Plan for fiscal year 2009, it sent a shudder of fear through the sleep community, with doctors, sleep labs and DMEs scrambling to put their best foot forward. With an economic crisis afoot and President-elect Obama…
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Added by Mike on December 9, 2008 at 5:00pm —
11 Comments
Quick: who is the CPAP customer? The one who spends each night hooked up to a hose and a machine to manage a serious health condition, right?
Wrong. Or at least that is what the CEO of Philips Respironics would have us believe. In an email sent to clinicians and other industry insiders, the CEO, Donald Spence, comforted DMEs and clinicians worried that a…
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Added by Mike on December 8, 2008 at 1:21pm —
14 Comments
