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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

#351
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rationalized that this is a combination of getting older, ADHD, and childhood trauma. Will have to look more into apnea.

It could be all of the above. I was diagnosed with "mild" sleep apnea and a CPAP hasn't really made an improvement on my day-to-day. The main difference is that occasionally I used to wake up feeling completely hung over and near death, and now that no longer happens if I'm using my CPAP. Most days, I am still tired - I am learning that is probably due to depression/anxiety (working on treatment now), ADHD (can't tre…

CPAP doesn't always provide adequate treatment. Some reading: https://web.archive.org/web/20211006015015/https://sleepbrea... and a webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1321&v=Syv7YcHbTCI

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

#352

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

> But I think sleep apnea is criminally under-discussed and underdiagnosed. I agree that it’s under-diagnosed in people who have it, but it’s actually discussed very widely across social media and in person. I have some sleep medicine professionals in my extended social circle. It’s common to hear stories of people coming in convinced that they must have sleep apnea after reading about it online, but their sleep stud…

> but their sleep studies are nearly perfect.

That's because most sleep studies are crap, unfortunately. I only got diagnosed with my 3rd PSG, which included the rare Pes because I insisted on it.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did replace my water heater with an electric one. I got this after that so who knows that the baseline used to be but I do have some ideas for more improvements. I may open the window a smidge to see if it makes a difference. A little hesitant since I have a newborn and it being winter and all. I'm trying to get Home Assistant to work with Bluetooth so I can link the two and turn on the bathroom fan.

One thing I came across while looking into c02 and ventilation was the recommendation to sleep with the door closed but window open for fire safety concerns: https://fsri.org/programs/close-before-you-doze . Something else to consider when settling on a setup

Man, last night my levels jumped to 2,200. A major source looks to be the stove top as we made lentil soup. I also heard about windows: opening up the top and bottom to let hot air out and cold air in. Will try it out once we have 60º nights.

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

#354

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

I have narcolepsy and I think sleep disorders as a whole are just generally under-diagnosed. It took me years to finally find a root cause to why I just felt bad all the time.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. But you need continuous sp02 monitoring, whereas fitbits only do it a few times per hour. A take home sleep test is easy and is covered by insurance.

>A take home sleep test is easy and is covered by insurance Do you know of any other alternatives for sleep tests that are not covered by insurance? Because the reality is sleep study in the United States is incredibly expensive. I did a sleep study and the insurance billed my company over $50,000 and a take home test was 2.5 grand.

that seems like inflated pricing. there are solutions from the internet for hsat (lofta and night owl) that used standardized devices. If you want a psg, there's a place in sacramento (axg sleep diagnostics) that will mail you the psg device for a night, for around 600.

My hsat was covered by insurance, but I had to self fund psg and my insurance wouldn't pay for it. My sleep specialist quoted 3k, I went with axg sleep diagnostics.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, skinn…

I have one of these https://www.amazon.com/EMAY-SleepO2-Bluetooth-Overnight-Cont...

I have a similar issue where maybe once or twice a night now my sp02 drops below 90, followed by a spike in my heart rate. From the word of my sleep doctor, that is not normal for a younger person. She used this to try to justify the cost of a psg to my insurance company.

Find a different doctor. Young and fat is not the qualifying criterea. From this entire thread you can get a sense that there are a lot of people suffering out there that have sleep apnea but not fat. Also, a take home sleep study is cheap and easy and covered by insurance.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will start blogging in the open about this stuff because I have enough moat I target language learning but that was just enough to escape wage labor and have irons burning now. My ideas all come from various hobby interests I know well, and focusing on problems that in some way help other people aspire toward making money themselves. I also find strategies where I can scale without costs or high maintenance needs (…

Thank you. Is there an email list I can get on or something else I can check to see when you debut your blog?

only active social is twitter @manabioSRS which I will cross promote later this year into the new project

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

#358
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have severe sleep apnea and made the switch from CPAP to MAD a couple years ago. Expensive but covered. Never looked back. Much simpler on every level, works about the same. My wife confirms I don't have apnea episodes.

When you say "covered" you mean your insurance paid for it? Are you in the USA? I understand it's not covered unless you do a series of sleep studies.

yes, in the USA, yes - covered. and I did have to have a sleep test for the cpap, but not the MAD

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

#359
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a CO2 monitor was eye opening. We had very bad ventilation in our rental bed room and we invested considerably to get a very good ventilation solution when we got our house.

What did you do?

Installed an fairly overprovisioned heat recovery ventilation system. What effectively means a lot of pipes to move the air in and out of the rooms. Nothing fancy: supply in the bedrooms, exhaust in the bathroom, etc, just a little more air volume moving. Heat recovery system (a fancy word for a aluminum heat exchange) recovers the heat going out of the house by warming the incoming air. Keeps mostly the CO2 levels way below 800 ppm, normally around 600 ppm.

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

#360
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you do?

Installed an fairly overprovisioned heat recovery ventilation system. What effectively means a lot of pipes to move the air in and out of the rooms. Nothing fancy: supply in the bedrooms, exhaust in the bathroom, etc, just a little more air volume moving. Heat recovery system (a fancy word for a aluminum heat exchange) recovers the heat going out of the house by warming the incoming air. Keeps mostly the CO2 levels w…

Thank you! I have ventilation problems and don’t really know where to start, so this is helpful.
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