Poor sleep drove me insane, and my long path to recovery

Also would like a source on the 2X cardiac event risk, couldn't find that in the linked article. Big if true!

The mainstream knowledge is still slow to catch up, but things are better than when I was researching at the outset. All you had from online searches was boilerplate inconsistent "sleep hygiene" advice and nothing else. I took a methodological approach and cracked open some books, and spent a lot of time on google scholar / pubmed. Self-adminstered CBT-i was an important intervention, despite its flaws - you can gripe that there are blind spots (e.g. it's possible to have automatic negative thoughts through conditioning despite knowing and understanding that they are distortions, 3rd-wave approaches like MCT make it a point to handle this), but in the main, a better mental game is absolutely key. Other interventions included eliminating pornography consumption, exposure to more sunlight in the morning and daytime, limiting total time in bed, experimenting with bedding, and even dietary changes. There were others as well I can't think of right now. Basically threw the kitchen sink at it. The mistake I often see is that those afflicted will rationalize that trying interventions "will lead to anxiety". There's no reason they have to. The anxiety comes from you.

Shortly after I started using a CPAP, at a networking event I met someone who worked at a mental health clinic, and he told me that many of their patients with schizophrenia had a pressure setting of 18 or 19 bars. Apparently disturbed sleep can cause some rather severe mental illness.

I was at 16 bars at the time. (I no longer use a CPAP post surgery.) About a year prior, there were a few times that I wondered if something actually happened, or if I was misremembering a dream.

It makes me wonder if some severe forms of sleep apnea can make dream context confusing enough that it's hard to bucket memories between dreams and actual events?

My doc told me once you're better off rinsing your noise with salt water and then positioning your head in a certain way to let gravity do its thing and it works wonders even without rinsing the nose. Avoid OTC nose sprays at all cost!

Osteopaths gave me nothing but witchcraft over a period of 15 years: "your lower back pain is due to the EM rays coming out of your computer screen. Spend more time outside. And let me work on your energy points. That will be $150 please. Oh and PS - don't even try running, it will destroy you even more".

In the end all it took was advice from a good physio (strengthen your core). And I can now run a half marathon with no problems, despite one leg being 15mm longer than the other which was the reason for my lower back pain. My hips weren't straight, putting stress on my core muscles.

I recently had it done and it illuminated an entire class of anti-depressant that has very little efficacy for me.