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

writing.samsonhu.com

321–330 of 370 posts

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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can do immunotherapy--allergy shots. i have a friend at work with the same issues, loves his dog but it wrecks his sleep. allergy shots desensitize you to animal dander, but its a long process with weekly injections. Results in 1 year+

I think parent implies they wake up because of the sounds their cat makes. This is what happens for me btw and it's pretty frustrating.

Yeah that was it. The cat jumps on me if I let him in. Meows like crazy if I don't. Maybe I should stimulate him more during the day though.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agree on treating allergies first, no reason for turbinate reduction if it is caused by allergy. I have not had luck find someone good at treating allergies. Do you have suggestions? (SF bay area)

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

#323

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

One detail to add that I think was missing. My message is you need to own your diagnosis and treatment. But much of the work has to be done by doctors in partnership. These doctors do not have time to direct your treatment outside their specialities, so you need to own the entire process. I had a team of specialists: - Sleep: Dr Sinha (primary), AXG Sleep Diagnostics (for psg), Lofta, and Night Owl - ENT: Dr. Gerald…

I think that this is the real problem is that one needs to do one's own diagnoses and treatment; this will probably take a year or two to learn the ins and outs. I would pay good money for somebody that can be a good guide to finding the real root cause or causes.

I see your 2 allergist here. Had consult Dr. Choy, did not result in finding anything useful. I wonder if turbinate inflamation can be caused by something that would not show in those skins tests. Do you feel that Dr. Gupta is better than Dr. Choy?

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This gene change might mean you have higher cholesterol as well. I have C/C in 23andme like gp and experience same caffeine effects. I have high cholesterol despite being active, fit and good diet. Would you know of any literature that might explain this in more layman terms. I had hard time reading the link you mentioned.

Did this help? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/202502 CYP1A2 also metabolizes cholesterol so caffeine will increase your heart attack risk. And this is why genetics are crucial in understanding your dietary risks.

So for those that slowly metabolize caffeine, would it be prudent to take a statin?

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with almost all of this. The worst bouts of insomnia I had were caused by going without sleep for a day or two and then starting to fixate on all the issues it might cause if I did not sleep. The anxiety surrounding the problems I would have the next day with little sleep was the biggest culprit. You stick yourself in a programmatic loop by trying so hard to make yourself sleep. As you said, sleep just…

Thank you. This and GP's comment are refreshing to hear. All I see on the news about lack of sleep is doom and gloom. According to them, I'm totally fucked in a myriad of ways and it's too late for me since I've held a sleep deficit for so long now. Yeah, I understand lack of adequate sleep is bad for me, no shit. I'm doing the best I can and you're not helping. (addressing those sleep gloom and doom people)

I just had a kid. I came to the conclusion that if sleep deprivation was a detrimental as some of these people say then our species would have become extinct long ago. Our bodies are able to cope just fine on lack of sleep and recover down the road. Is it ideal? No, but I've surprised myself with how functional I can actually be with lack of sleep. I just say, hey that sucks, and then move on with my day.

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also curious as to the conclusions drawn -- it seems like there were a lot of relevant potentially confounding variables changed. Was there a followup sleep study? Or something to confirm the suspicion of an alternative form of OSA (upper airway something something)? I don't think I have OSA, and I've always had poor sleep (ongoing), but going on allergy immunotherapy shots has tremendously improved my quality of…

I did not put strict detail in the medical interventions as this is not meant to replace medical advise and its not as engaging in story form to list things rigorously But I did followup home tests after treating it, and have done polysomnography which is the gold standard of diagnostic test. I also wear continuous spo2 monitoring on a monthly basis to see where I am from my own device bought on amazon To treat, I ne…

What kind of spo2 monitoring device are you using? What percentages point to an actual problem? I recently got a Garmin watch and turned on spo2 monitoring during the night. Most of the time I have >90%, but it sometimes drops to as low as 83% for around 15 minutes. I'm unsure how reliable the measurements are and if 83% is a problem or not. (My current situation is the same as many others in the thread: Young, skinny, sleep problems, but the doctor is sure I don't have sleep apnoe, because I'm not fat...)

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

#327
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news is, if you're snoring, you're still breathing. You might not be breathing well, but you are still breathing. The bad news is, long term snoring will damage your airway, which could even cause sleep apnea in the long run. You can (usually) treat snoring with CPAP, which is reasonably easy to do and low pressure settings will probably do the trick (compared to full blown apnea where more pressure might be…

A sleep test diagnoses sleep apnea. DISE can give clues, but Dr Kasey Li is against it saying it gives a lot of false positives from his experience. Home test + polysomnography is his standard, along with using his experience to review your CBCT scans

False positives? If you snore, you snore. All DISE is going to do is help figure out what's causing the snoring. I don't know this Dr Li, but you're making them sound like they're part of a cult.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One detail to add that I think was missing. My message is you need to own your diagnosis and treatment. But much of the work has to be done by doctors in partnership. These doctors do not have time to direct your treatment outside their specialities, so you need to own the entire process. I had a team of specialists: - Sleep: Dr Sinha (primary), AXG Sleep Diagnostics (for psg), Lofta, and Night Owl - ENT: Dr. Gerald…

I think that this is the real problem is that one needs to do one's own diagnoses and treatment; this will probably take a year or two to learn the ins and outs. I would pay good money for somebody that can be a good guide to finding the real root cause or causes. I see your 2 allergist here. Had consult Dr. Choy, did not result in finding anything useful. I wonder if turbinate inflamation can be caused by something…

Dr choy is great and spent more time with me than expected. But I could not commute to Palo Alto every week for shots, so I used someone local. Both docs are top notch but Dr choy sent the extra mile

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agree on treating allergies first, no reason for turbinate reduction if it is caused by allergy. I have not had luck find someone good at treating allergies. Do you have suggestions? (SF bay area)

Dr choy in Palo Alto is amazing. But for shots you want someone near you as it’s a huge multi year commitment. Dr opal gupta is great as well

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it costs you an arm and a leg in the US if you don’t have a good insurance

My sleep study cost roughly $2300 with insurance (US). I purchased my own machine and supplies because going through insurance requires you to rent the machine. It phones home and if you don’t use it every night it impacts your coverage! No thanks. You need a script to purchase the machine too which you need a sleep study to get. Then billed periodically for supplies. Also, the initial settings they configured for th…

I was quoted 3k for a psg by my sleep specialist. I went and got one from axg sleep diagnostics out in Sacramento, for around 600
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