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All Articles Tagged 'apnea' (64)

Sleep Apnea Diagnosis in... a Restaurant?!

My sleep certified physician once let me in on his little secret: he can diagnose Sleep Apnea in a person while sitting across a crowded room from that person in a restaurant. Now, he qualified this by saying that he'd only be able to do so with 85% accuracy, but still... it came as quite a shock to me. Especially when he told me how he'd do it. It wasn't by looking at their waistline or gut. It certainly wasn't from hearing them snore. No, he'd do it just by looking at their jaw. If… Continue

Added by Mike on January 4, 2009 at 3:00pm — 6 Comments

Apnea Surgery for Skeptics

"I thought if you have surgery for sleep apnea, it was supposed to stop snoring...not give it more bass." --- posted recently in an internet forum

Of all the people I have ever spoken to about surgery's ability to cure Sleep Apnea, the most confident about the prospect are the surgeons themselves. Others are more skeptical, including those who… Continue

Added by Mike on January 3, 2009 at 4:30pm — 2 Comments

Sleep Apnea Treatment: My ABCD's

Here's a simple way to remember what I wish I had known at the very beginning of my own Sleep Apnea treatment: my ABCD's of Sleep Apnea treatment. The hope is that you will not have to stumble over or run into as many obstacles as I did.

A is for Attitude

The key is that oft-repeated phrase: "whether you think you can, or you think you can't, either way you're right." Sleep Apnea treatment has much to do with attitude. What got me over the hump is realizing that… Continue

Added by Mike on January 1, 2009 at 5:30pm — 11 Comments

Síntomas de la Apnea del Sueño

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 31, 2008 at 6:00pm — 2 Comments

Symptoms of Sleep Apnea

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 31, 2008 at 2:00pm — 17 Comments

CPAP Cleaning: A Lazy Man's Method

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 29, 2008 at 1:30pm — No Comments

PAPer "Bill of Rights" --- Your Feedback Needed

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 28, 2008 at 4:00pm — 9 Comments

Respironics, ResMed and Fisher & Paykel

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 27, 2008 at 4:30pm — 7 Comments

Sleep Apnea Kills Christmas

Unbelievable. Check out this story from the Chicago Sun Times.

Added by The SleepGuide Crew on December 26, 2008 at 4:57pm — 1 Comment

Sleep Apnea Home Testing

If you have no idea what happened on March 13, 2008, you're in good company. What happened on that day rocked the world of absolutely nobody except for the owners of sleep labs across the country: Medicare, for the first time ever, agreed to reimburse for CPAP equipment prescribed pursuant to home tests, rather than under the ordinary in-laboratory sleep… Continue

Added by The SleepGuide Crew on December 25, 2008 at 4:30pm — No Comments

My Sleep Apnea Story

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 23, 2008 at 2:22pm — 3 Comments

This Holiday, Give a True Gift

So often this time of year, we get caught up giving material things as gifts to the people we care about. That has a place, but for someone who snores, or who feels "not themself" or tired all the time, you have the power to give a gift that may turn their life around... forever. And it's absolutely free! Right now, send a friend or loved one a link to… Continue

Added by The SleepGuide Crew on December 22, 2008 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Trouble in Sleep Apnea Paradise

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 20, 2008 at 3:30pm — 2 Comments

Getting the Sleep Apnea Run-Around: Bill's Story

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 19, 2008 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Sleep Apnea and Weight Loss

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 18, 2008 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Sleep Apnea: A Patient-Oriented Agenda

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 17, 2008 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Mr. Sleep Apnea DME: "Tear Down This Wall !"

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 15, 2008 at 2:30pm — 1 Comment

U.S. Medical Professionals to CPAPers: "Do You Know Why You're Being Punished?"

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 14, 2008 at 1:30pm — 7 Comments

Getting the Runaround: Dan's Story

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 13, 2008 at 3:53pm — 29 Comments

CPAP, Surgery, Dental Device or.... "Positional Therapy"?

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… Continue

Added by Mike on December 11, 2008 at 2:36pm — 4 Comments