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How I Found a Simple, No-Cost Solution to Sleep Apnea - The Daily Beast

How I Found a Simple, No-Cost Solution to Sleep Apnea - The Daily Beast

How I Found a Simple, No-Cost Solution to Sleep Apnea - The Daily Beast
Oct 02, 2022 2 mins, 9 secs

The lab technician who watched me all night via video feed told me that I had “wicked sleep apnea” and that it was “central sleep apnea”—a type that originates in the brain and fails to tell the muscles to inhale.

Both can mean obstructive sleep apnea.

With obstructive sleep apnea, the mouth and throat relax when a person is unconscious, sometimes blocking or narrowing the airway.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, or AASM, a nonprofit based near Chicago, decides what is sleep apnea and how to treat it.

Working with sleep societies around the world, it publishes the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, relied on by doctors everywhere to diagnose and categorize disease.

health care, sleep medicine turns out to be a thriving industry.

AASM finances its operations in part with payments from CPAP machine manufacturers and other companies that stand to profit from expensive treatments and expansive definitions of apnea and other sleep disorders.

Zoll Itamar, which makes the at-home testing device I used, as well as implantable nerve-stimulation hardware for central sleep apnea, is a $60,000, “platinum” partner in AASM’s Industry Engagement Program.

But recent European studies have shown that standards under the International Classification of Sleep Disorders would doom huge portions of the general population to a sleep apnea diagnosis—whether or not people had complaints of daytime tiredness or other sleep problems.

“Right now, there is no real evidence for the criteria that have been put forward to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea and rate its severity,” he said in an interview.

Likewise, 19 percent of middle-aged subjects in a 2016 Icelandic study appeared to have moderate to severe “apnea” under one definition in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders even though many reported no drowsiness.

Everybody 18 and older should be screened every year for apnea if they have diabetes, obesity, untreated high blood pressure, or heart disease—even if they have never complained about sleep problems, the group says.

Meanwhile, routine screening by primary care doctors “is a simple way” of gauging whether a high-risk patient may have obstructive sleep apnea, the statement said.

My alarming reading in the overnight lab—diagnosed quickly as central sleep apnea—was a byproduct of the testing machinery itself.

Screenshots of Jay Hancock's pulse-oximeter experiment on himself show more breathing interruptions (amber spikes) during a night of sleep on his back (left) than on a night of sleep on his side (right).

But she said there are concerns about whether patients will sleep on their sides long term and whether trying to stay in one position might cause sleep interruptions itself.

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