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Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

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Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#221

Post by xlii »

marcosdumay wrote: post #64
xlii wrote: post #43

I find it somewhat odd that modern medicine don't screen for stuff like sleep apnea or ADHD (and similar). They're quite frequent (sleep apnea - 17% from the article, ADHD - 5-20% depending on the study) and impact peoples' lives quite severely both on quality and productivity fronts.

Both are expensive to diagnose. ADHD also has a problem in that a wrong diagnostic can harm people.

Diagnose - sure, but screening - I'd argue about that.

Withings device mentioned in the article costs around 170$ and probably could be shared beyond few times use. Is it that expensive?

ADHD is very visible in certain cases (and still not diagnosed) and probably could be screened on class level with normalized questionnaires. Hand results over to parents and let them decide if they want to pursue diagnosis or not.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#222

Post by ThinkBeat »

> The morale of the story, you need to sometimes tackle your own health and take matters into your own hands

I am not a doctor, nor am I a lawyer.

This is, in general, horrible, and dangerous advice. The problem being how to know if this is one of those times. I am happy it worked for sure. But embracing the idea might well kill people.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#223

Post by whalesalad »

yosito wrote: post #13

> 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 It's anti-outdated-underfunded-medical-systems.

Most people are not good debuggers. Medical. Automotive. You gotta do a lot of things yourself these days.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#224

Post by groby_b »

Levitz wrote: post #196
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. It actually baffled me that it wasn't his doctor who picked this up. A person waking up several times with confirmation from someone sleeping besides him that he has stopped breathing, I'm no doctor and gee maybe it's because there are a few cases in my family but th…

Absolutely no cases in my family, and it's still screaming sleep apnea. I mean, apnea literally means "stops breathing".

A doctor who doesn't recognize that is maybe not the best possible doctor. To put it very mildly.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#225

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Out_of_Characte wrote: post #141
lapetitejort wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share an example of an unproven treatment that works better than standard care?

I can come up with examples but know its ironic to try to proof treatments that are, scientifically or medically, not verified. Theres diet, sleep, exercise. Which require no studies to know that taking better care of yourself will help you regardless of the pathology. Then there's the somewhat strange case of orthodontist John Mew, who advocates for setting your tongue posture to the roof of your mouth in order to c…

I would say that diet, sleep, and exercise have been proven to help many conditions and it would be non-controversial and not anti-scientific to suggest them.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#226

Post by telchior »

mabbo wrote: post #89
agrue wrote: post #27

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…

Diagnosed at 24 with sleep apnea. I tried a bunch of things. What worked for me was regular cardio exercise and daily doses of high absorption magnesium. The magnesium is absolutely unproven pseudoscience nonsense that can't possibly work. But if I stop taking it my sleep suffers massively.

I take magnesium for migraine and vertigo. Very much not a believer in supplements -- before this, I went through years of specialists prescribing various pharmaceuticals with various side effects. These days the problem is under control without any meds; I just take magnesium (specifically, a mix of l-threonate, glycinate and taurate), telling myself every day that it's probably unrelated to my feeling better. Like you said, it couldn't possibly be working as well as it seems to. But if I stop, my condition mysteriously gets worse. If it's a placebo.. eh, who cares?

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#227

Post by oh_sigh »

rolisz wrote: post #168

Anyone got any other experiences with things that cause brain fog? I don't think I have sleep apnea (my wife often falls asleep after I do and she doesn't report any kind of weird breathing issues for me, nor snoring). 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.

Sounds similar to me,and I don't see anyone saying this yet, so I'll throw in my experience: I believe I was sleeping too much. I was generally in bed for 9 hrs and got 8 hrs and felt that way, but after my kids were born and I started getting 5-7 hours, I've felt much perkier quicker(even if I don't need to do anything with the kids in the morning). Before it would literally take me half or more of a day to start feeling awake.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#228

Post by telchior »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #222

> The morale of the story, you need to sometimes tackle your own health and take matters into your own hands I am not a doctor, nor am I a lawyer. This is, in general, horrible, and dangerous advice. The problem being how to know if this is one of those times. I am happy it worked for sure. But embracing the idea might well kill people.

A recent opinion I saw from a doctor that made sense to me was: the reason they tell people to absolutely not do a lot of things is because there is a certain percentage of people who aren't competent to do anything on their own. The example given was Q-tips: we all know the advice that you shouldn't put them in your ears... even though that's literally what they're designed for. The doctor's explanation was that something like 10% of people actually will burst their own eardrums with a Q-tip, so you advise 100% not to use it to avert the harm to that minority. (If anyone knows where I saw this feel free to say; I can't recall.)

In general, if someone's reason for tackling their own health is because doctors (including specialists) have failed to help, I don't see why or how you'd argue against that. Even if you're bursting your own eardrums with cotton swabs, at some point you've got to do something.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#229

Post by drivers99 »

This tracks with what I have. Still waiting to obtain my ASV (the second machine he tried; I also have central and obstructive sleep apnea). I had a home sleep study, then a sleep study with a CPAP, then another sleep study with an ASV the following week. Been waiting 6 weeks since then for a call back from the sleep clinic to actually get the ASV. I tried calling them after 2 weeks and they said I had to wait for them to call me which takes 2 to 4 weeks (it's been 6; I'll call them tomorrow).

I actually had a a disnosis and a CPAP two decades ago but I could never sleep with it. I did exactly what he said he did: throw the mask across the room. Since I made myself stick with it in the sleep study thanks to his breathing tips (and not really having an option), I'm sure I can sleep with it now. Also the ASV and the masks available now seem to work a lot better.

Re: Night of the living brain fog dead or how I hacked myself better via open source

#230

Post by agrue »

elric wrote: post #210
agrue wrote: post #27

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…

Nothing works anywhere near as well as PAP therapy. Certainly not diets (overweight is often an effect of apnea, not a cause). Sleeping positions can help in the case of positional apnea, but certainly not for everyone. Botox injections anywhere will have to be repeated regularly. Fucking with the uvala (like in UPPP surgery) can actually worsen sleep apnea and has all kinds of nasty infection and side effect risks.…

Thanks for your detailed response, but the things I listed were entirely in jest. I don't think the uvula causes sleep apnea and don't believe a pill would be able to obviate breathing while sleeping.
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