Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would support look like in this situation? Honest question I simply don't know
At the extreme end of concierge medicine I could see the doctor getting into bed with you.
Date the doctor? :D
Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
161–170 of 188 posts
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
[x] Anxiety [x] Sleep apnea [x] Digestive issues [x] Former psychonaut [x] Highly stressed pretty much always due to work I can only hope that whatever brand of dementia I end up with is something akin to Mr Toad's Wild Ride, or whatever. I'd be happy just to go out either laughing or well-rested.
> something akin to Mr Toad's Wild Ride You know the plot of that ride, right?
Yep.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#163I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.
It seems that given the options of 1) staying awake and active as normal during the night and 2) using the night period to run various maintenance task but without awareness the second option apparently turned out to be the winner as far as evolution is concerned. What's interesting to me is how many animals beyond humans do it - so it's not purely tied to the human cognitive functions like higher order thinking etc.
3) Some animals can sleep with only half their brain at a time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#164Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#165Because it defragments and cleans the brain.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#166Running improved my sleep quality dramatically. Now the problem is, that if I take a day off running, my sleeping suffers. Curious if people that do weight lifting (which I'm considering) get great sleeps? Maybe I can alternate between cardio and weight lifting each day?
Walking. Walk 3 miles a day. It gives you a drastically different set of benefits from running, and you can walk all day without worry of overtraining. Running is great too. But be careful of doing it too much. Overtraining can break down your immune system and make you more susceptible to disease.
I walk over six kilometres (almost) every day and don't sleep well.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#167The generations in my family are full of people who had dementia/Alzheimer's/auto-immune disorders. They all had anxiety, and they all had sleep disorders - I'm certain there is a connection among it all. I joined a Stanford study and had a spinal tap sample submitted for testing - in theory I am "unlikely" to develop anything for the next 20 years - but that only gets me to my late 60's :(
From what I've found, being overweight negatively affects sleep. As far as I can tell, the extra weight simply makes it hard to breathe at night, leading to apnea. This can then cause depression and anxiety, depression because you wake up tired and feeling awful every single day and anxiety because you may wake up with night terrors after suffocating in your sleep. At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test an…
> At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test and an APAP/CPAP these days.
If one wants to rule out sleep apean (being not the best sleeper) but probably doesn't have it (but other causes like stress) but at least want to measure it somewhat, how could one test that oneself with at least some probability?
Lots of things that are called "at home test" seem to involve getting special equipment and sending stuff to a lab anyway, that still involves a physician, some visitations with them etc... anyway.
Is there anything at all that one can do on their own to have at least some idea of the chances of having sleep apnea or not that does not involve a professional? Even if to then consider a professional if there are some indications? E.g. from an all-night audio recording, any indication of sounds that are yes or not sleep apnea indicating? And heartbeat/oxygen etc... measured by a watch?
Or is sleep apnea such a subtle and hard-to-detect issue that it's really impossible to self diagnose, it's such a subtle thing that only specialized equipment and specialists can do it, and trying to measure anything yourself gives no more answer than a 50/50 random chance coin toss?
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've found, being overweight negatively affects sleep. As far as I can tell, the extra weight simply makes it hard to breathe at night, leading to apnea. This can then cause depression and anxiety, depression because you wake up tired and feeling awful every single day and anxiety because you may wake up with night terrors after suffocating in your sleep. At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test an…
> At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test and an APAP/CPAP these days. If one wants to rule out sleep apean (being not the best sleeper) but probably doesn't have it (but other causes like stress) but at least want to measure it somewhat, how could one test that oneself with at least some probability? Lots of things that are called "at home test" seem to involve getting special equipment and sending stuff t…
The at home tests require a quick before and after video call to a physician, and equipment mailed to you and mailed back... It's really not a big deal.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy to get, hard to get used to for many. It’s common for doctors to offer little to no support after prescribing the machine.
How would support look like in this situation? Honest question I simply don't know
In my case:
Showing me how to use the machine
Showing me how to wear the mask
Configuring the machine with anything other than the default settings
A new machine with the default settings is a nightmare. The apap algorithm will spike your pressure up to 16 (which is too high for most people) one minute and drop down to 4 (which is too low for most) the next. At the high end is aerophagia and leaks, at the low end, your apnea events will still happen.
When I called my doctor and explained the machine made my sleep worse, her office said “we gave you a machine. It’s out of our hands. Would you like us to refer you to a psychologist? The problem must be in your head.” This is almost verbatim.
The equipment supplier wasn’t much better. They offered to do a “mask fitting” but it was mid 2021 and the woman didn’t even want to be in the same room as me for fear of covid.
So what should they have done? I dunno. Eventually a friend recommended a mask that worked for me. I learned to analyze the data reported by the machine and changed the settings myself to something that worked for me. It took a year, the worst year of my life. Tired and constantly waking up. Thank god for YouTube and OSCAR. knowing what I know now, I can (and have) help someone else do this process in a week or two, but I had nobody to even ask.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#170Tangentially related, but very important to me and hopefully helpful to others here: I have sleep apnea. So do most of the men in my family. Though I am overweight, I haven't always been, but I have always had the condition, as have they. For those who don't know, sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing in your sleep, wake up slightly to fix that and start breathing again, and then fall back asleep. It so…
Do you think they even want to understand apnea? It seems to me there is a toxic incentive situation here. I'd bet money a full blown set of variable controls will be found to solve this problem and come from outside sleep medicine.
Its not magic, its that modern professionalized science is devoid of inquiry.