161–170 of 334 posts
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I read a book called Breath by James Nestor, it’s all about the benefits of nose breathing. Anecdotally this has completely fixed my sleep apnea/ snoring/ energy levels/ etc. Highly recommended!
Wait, people aren't breathing through noses?
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Me it reminds of that guy who DIY genetically modified a virus to cure his lactose intolerance (for a year).
> reminds of that guy who DIY genetically modified a virus to cure his lactose intolerance (for a year) That's awesome, have a link?
* Mild sleep apnea, ~15 events per hour, undiagnosed until after my severe burnout in the spring of 2019
* Breathe Right strips brought me back to life in just a day or two (no affiliation)
* Lightly taping my mouth at night with 1/4" surgical tape (or 1/2 ripped down the center) about 2" long in an X shape (to prevent stretching the philtrum) basically cured me, be sure to do this with a relaxed expression so that the mouth can be opened easily in an emergency to breathe again
* Problem was due to slippage in jaw joint causing misaligned midline, causing my jaw to fall open and tongue to fall towards throat
* Treatment with an Advanced Lightwire Functional (ALF) dental appliance fixed jaw alignment over the course of 9-18 months
* I believe that pre-2000s orthodontics and the quest to flatten faces with headgear at too young an age is largely responsible for the outbreak of sleep apnea
* Oral appliances for sleep apnea advance the jaw forward (the opposite action of headgear) and I would wager probably often would work better than CPAP
* Invisalign and other aligners (no affiliation) are supposedly working on adding clasps to keep the jaw closed during sleep, and I plan to follow up on this but have been too busy
* Sleep apnea coincided with a breakdown of the gut for me, and I developed food sensitivities to nearly everything I was eating, lingering today with dairy, grains, some legumes and nightshades
* My joint pain went away when I quit eating the foods I was sensitive to, so I wonder if sleep apnea -> food sensitivities -> autoimmune diseases like allergies and even arthritis?
* A thick neck increases the odds of getting sleep apnea, If you work out or are overweight, you probably have it (neck is the same size as biceps)
* Adding a 1-2" piece of foam under my pillow inside the pillowcase also helps by keeping the spine in a neutral alignment, since nearly all pillows are too thin for side sleepers
* I'm hoping to be able to sleep on my back after getting a nighttime appliance to hold my jaw and tongue in place
* Tongue posture exercises are key, find an Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy doctor online (they teach remotely) perhaps best to start with a local Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction (TMJ) doctor and get a referral
* Force feeding water by drinking a glass after using the restroom, upon waking and before bed helps greatly as well, perhaps by thinning the blood so the heart and lungs don't have to work so hard
I also discovered that the anxiety from ADHD symptoms (I'm still undiagnosed but check the boxes) feels the same as quitting smoking, and the prolonged agony of it is greatly exacerbated by the increased cortisol load of sleep apnea and work stress. I think about mental health now the same way as weight training, where there is a period of stimulus, deficit, overcompensation, then long slow decline if the stimulus is continued without rest/recovery. Now I consciously monitor my cognitive load, so rather than redlining for 8 hours straight, I sprint for 20 minutes and take a short rest, which is basically the Pomodoro method. I also try to get 20 minutes of downtime in each day, ideally as meditation, and have told everyone that Saturday is my me-day for active recovery, to do inner-child work for my survival. I have started to explore other realities like the kind that come while playing music, and have begun to experience the sensation of motivation again, which feels like a blessing.
Sleep apnea is strange. Good news! We have a diagnosis, sleep apnea. You're bad at sleeping now, the thing everybody has to do all night long every day since birth. The solution is to wear a modern iron lung whenever you want or need to sleep forever. Many times it's because people are overweight but you aren't. Is that really all there is for treatment? No throat exercises or therapeutic sleeping positions? No diets…
To me, it certainly seems to suggest an environmental cause (or at least significant contributor). Certainly doesn't seem evolutionarily adaptive for such a large proportion of the population to live with profound mental and physical fatigue. Obesity is an obvious confounder, but these seemingly frequent front-page HN sleep apnea posts usually abound with anecdotes of normal / thin individuals with significant issues…
> The morale of the story, you need to sometimes tackle your own health and take matters into your own hands The frustrating thing for me is that doing so is often labeled as being anti-science, when the truth is, this guy was actually doing the science himself. It's not anti-science to take your health into your own hands. It's anti-outdated-underfunded-medical-systems.
Exactly this. I've also dealt with the whole CPAP thing, and the extent to which the whole industry is obviously infantilizing-for-profit is infuriating. Over the years, it's gotten increasingly difficult to just "buy the supplies yourself," (aka easily and/or cheaply) and the extremely condescending "reasoning" we get is "oh, it's medical equipment and therefore dangerous so we get to control it." And here , having…
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Oh, I know that! I'm familar with CPAP's and BiPAPs and ventilators, etc. I was a paramedic before I became an engineer. My point was just that, within the context of ventilators, I learned just how little I actually knew about the field of pulmonology and how many things I didn't think would be an issue are actually quite dangerous. What little I picked up would be enough to give me pause about the confident stateme…
I'm considering the relative/marginal danger (e.g. against actual apnea) and I just don't see it? You set your controls HORRIBLY wrong on an off the shelf CPAP -- and, what? It's not like you're going to explode your lungs. Your own inability to breathe properly will make you take it off. Or you keep it on and you fart more in the morning (true story, by the way, I've never heard anyone mention this side effect of CP…
I’m going through this right now and it feels like everything Americans have complained about socialized healthcare is now true in the US as well: long wait times to see providers, providers that churn through patients like their doing oil changes, providers that just push you along to the next step in a playbook without considering individual needs. I’ve been dealing with fatigue for about two years and had to preem…
A suggestion in case it's unfamiliar: there are doctors who don't take insurance. I can always see mine within a few days, for $80/month. (I set this up after the above experience.) It's absurd that I have to do this and also pay for insurance separately (paying much more than I did before the Affordable Care Act made insurance plans for catastrophic medical costs illegal) -- but that's where we are.
But even though I generally sleep 8 hours a night, I am quite tired during the day and I often have trouble focusing. At night, I fall asleep like a log and I don't wake up during the night.
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It's been like that in the US like forever. Once you actually have medical problems. The main difference is the whole going bankrupt thing.
> The main difference is the whole going bankrupt thing. US healthcare really does seem to want to bankrupt people. As an example, most insurance doesn't cover dental care, which is (in)famously one of the parts of the body that needs the most maintenance. My insurance doesn't cover my ADHD meds because I have to take more than 1 pill a day. $80/mo for the rest of my life if I want to treat a disorder. (My case is pr…
Because dental costs are more reasonable, insurance premiums don't tend to be very high and can be purchased outside of your main health plan. If primary medical costs were more on par with dental costs (as it probably did once upon a time, when the offerings were much more primitive), insurance wouldn't be such a big issue.
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He recognized the signs of sleep apnea and pursued treatment with sleep apnea devices, getting confirmation of the problem with the help of his doctor. The DIY part was largely related to pushing the process forward, not doing novel experimentation. Nobody would call that “anti-science”. Anti-science would be something like ignoring the common treatments and trying to solve the problem with natural supplements or som…
Trying things is science, and any experiment can be retried to see if results replicate. People who aren't scientists or don't have time or equipment to be scientific about a thing have to decide where the balance lies, between how much science they're capable/willing to do vs. how many assumptions they're willing to make based on other people's science. There's no belief system called science and you can't be pro- o…
There are two belief systems called science.
The less common one is the one you outline immediately after denying its existence: it's about asking questions and trying to establish evidence-based models to make predictions and testing/validating the assumptions in those models. It's probably more accurate to call this belief system empiricism.
The more common one is a deferral to expert authority, where experts are designated by certain established scientific institutions. Because many lack the time/will/ability to independently verify claims made by authoritative figures, this deferral requires substantial trust in these institutions to come up with good answers.
This second belief system is what most people mean when they label themselves or others as pro- or anti-science. Paradoxically, even though the authoritative institutions ostensibly produce information empirically, expressing skepticism and asking questions is often perceived as a lack of faith, and therefore anti-science.