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

writing.samsonhu.com

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

#281

Post by Wagthesam »

anonymousnotme wrote: post #232
Wagthesam wrote: post #3

This is quite raw and I'm actually somewhat afraid to share this. But I think sleep apnea is criminally under-discussed and underdiagnosed. It can f your life up sideways and can take years to diagnose. So sharing my story and hope I can advocate for it. If you have sleep apnea, no amount of sleep gadgets, good habits, exercise, will help you. You must fix the root cause

Agree. Some of the problems can start from childhood. Like mouth breathing and being tongue tied can leed to abnormal growth and supposedly cause the face to be taller and more narrow, which supposedly is a sign of narrow air ways. I am also looking at some of this. What have your found in terms of good resources? I am paricularily interested in allergy and the turbinates and finding a good ENT because looks septopla…

Just saw one post by someone that did EASE, but nasal breathing regressed as allergies got worse. Treating allergies and inflamation comes first I feel

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

#282

Post by Wagthesam »

zamnos wrote: post #251
Wagthesam wrote: post #3

This is quite raw and I'm actually somewhat afraid to share this. But I think sleep apnea is criminally under-discussed and underdiagnosed. It can f your life up sideways and can take years to diagnose. So sharing my story and hope I can advocate for it. If you have sleep apnea, no amount of sleep gadgets, good habits, exercise, will help you. You must fix the root cause

How do you alleviate sleep apnea, if not a sleep gadget (commonly known as a CPAP machine)?

sorry, I was not clear. I did not mean medical devices when I said sleep gadget

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

#283

Post by monroewalker »

monroewalker wrote: post #42

Thank you for sharing! Skimmed for now, but saving this to read later. I've had a history as well of never getting good sleep so I'm curious to see what your experience was and the steps you've taken. A few things I've done that have helped a bunch: - Using BreatheRight nasal strips every night - Latex earplugs ("Mack's Pillow Soft Silicone Earplugs"). I could never sleep with foam earplugs in my ears but these are g…

I can't edit the initial comment anymore, but another big thing for me was having an eye mask that was comfortable enough to sleep in. The MZOO brand on Amazon has been perfect for me: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KC5DWCC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

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

#284

Post by Wagthesam »

iForgotMyPW wrote: post #162
Wagthesam wrote: post #3

This is quite raw and I'm actually somewhat afraid to share this. But I think sleep apnea is criminally under-discussed and underdiagnosed. It can f your life up sideways and can take years to diagnose. So sharing my story and hope I can advocate for it. If you have sleep apnea, no amount of sleep gadgets, good habits, exercise, will help you. You must fix the root cause

do you think the under-diagnosing is because of work schedules? dont you have to do a sleep study to get diagnosed?

I have some ideas for under-diagnosis:

1) Reluctance to seek treatment for something that can be still tolerated

2) Incorrect assumption that sleep apnea only affects overweight people that snore by a large portion of the medical community

3) Lack of connection between poor sleep and symptoms. By the time you experience symptoms, you've probably had years of progressively poor sleep so its hard to connect A=>B

4) Doctors through their training are ground to the bone and have to sleep 2-3 hours during their residency. I think there is some innate resistance to the idea that sleep is important in the general medical field

5) Lack of communication between specialties. See a therapist / psych person and they won't know sleep. See a allergist and they won't know sleep. See a sleep doctor and they won't give ENT or allergy advice. Etc.

Yes you need medical care to get diagnosis and treat. But its a multifaceted illness, you need a team of specialists and doctors treating you in the different aspects.

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

#285

Post by Wagthesam »

tinyhouse wrote: post #225
Wagthesam wrote: post #3

This is quite raw and I'm actually somewhat afraid to share this. But I think sleep apnea is criminally under-discussed and underdiagnosed. It can f your life up sideways and can take years to diagnose. So sharing my story and hope I can advocate for it. If you have sleep apnea, no amount of sleep gadgets, good habits, exercise, will help you. You must fix the root cause

Thanks for sharing. Are you still taking any meds for nasal issues on a daily basis?

yes. I hope one day allergy shots will cure my allergies. But until then I take daily meds. If I stop I will within days start waking up like i've been punched in the head

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

#286

Post by Wagthesam »

gwbas1c wrote: post #175

I found out I had sleep apnea mostly due to coincidence. Eventually I got jaw surgery to fix it, but there is a surprising anecdote: 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.…

Late stage untreated UARS is similar to a catatonic existence. I think Christian Guilleminault described this population in his research. Thankfully even my experience did not get to this point

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

#287

Post by joveian »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #148

Hello WagTheSam, thanks for a good write up. Can I just ask, what air cleanser did you get? I am thinking of trying this, I don't trust my apartment buildings air vents. What is the gain compared to just opening a window - if you live in a not too toxic environment?

AirPura is one of the good ones: https://www.airpura.com/

I have one and it felt nice, unfortunately because people smoke in the building I live I can't use it since the smell collects in the filter very quickly and they are expensive (but last a long time if not for the smell). A bunch of carbon could help with that but a) I try to avoid stuff from low wage countries as the carbon is (but not the rest of that particular air purifier as far as I could tell) and b) hopefully I can just move in the not extremely distant future.

There are a few others as well, look for the better quality filters ("SuperHEPA" as AirPura calls them). As I understand it, the small particles are the ones that aggrivate allergies the most and that is exactly what the higher quality filters are better at. Only a relatively few companies have those better filters, IQAir is another one. It turns out the name HEPA doesn't mean anything for consumer filters, you need to look at the specs.

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

#288

Post by Wagthesam »

radu_floricica wrote: post #53

This makes me really happy, and will probably make me try again to fix my own sleep issues. They're eerily similar, except I haven't found a clear cause yet. Decade old maintenance insomnia, I wake up a 1-2 hours earlier than needed. I did all the obvious testing and keep hitting hit a brick wall. Polysomnography, SSRIs, MRIs, therapy, drugs, every supplement on the market... I was clearly told not 6 months ago that…

Polysomnography is definitive for UARS. If you had a negative result, either do it again. But if its consistently negative then you do not have UARS as you do not have microarousals

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

#289

Post by Wagthesam »

legojoey17 wrote: post #68
culebron21 wrote: post #63

Very useful read. My friend, an osteopath, says neck issues also can create breathing obstructions, and it makes a good deal of people wake up in the middle of the night and stay awake, even though they don't even think it's a problem. Symptom to watch for: you wake up and your nose is stuffy, can't breathe through it, but there's no snot. And in 5-15 minutes it gets clear. If you have it, it means lymph flow out of…

Thanks for sharing, this seems like what happens to me except only partially (1 nostril fully congested and the other partially). I've only recently self-educated myself on nasal and sinus obstruction issues after particularly bad congestion from a cold. I used Afrin for one night and realized that my typical night was far from breathable compared to that.

My ENT gave me afrin and used it as a diagnostic tool

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

#290

Post by Wagthesam »

tayo42 wrote: post #230
culebron21 wrote: post #63

Very useful read. My friend, an osteopath, says neck issues also can create breathing obstructions, and it makes a good deal of people wake up in the middle of the night and stay awake, even though they don't even think it's a problem. Symptom to watch for: you wake up and your nose is stuffy, can't breathe through it, but there's no snot. And in 5-15 minutes it gets clear. If you have it, it means lymph flow out of…

Does this have a name, I wake up to sometimes with a clogged nose, can't breathe until it drains out. I started sleeping with more pillows to keep my head higher and it stopped, but I think it's a weird angle and makes my throat collapse.

You have congestion. Could be allergic, or non allergic. See an allergist and an ENT and get it checked out
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