If your doctor tells you to do a sleep study, do it.
If, as a result, they tell you to get a CPAP, get it. Those things are life-changing.
I felt like an old man at 50 years old. My back was so stiff I couldn't put on my socks. When I got out of bed in the morning I felt so fragile, like my joints were all inflamed - especially my Achilles' tendons. I was too tired to do anything beyond 6 pm.
Now, 51, I feel totally normal again. And that change was pretty much overnight once I started using that wretched machine.
This may sound crazy, but for those who can't tolerate a CPAP, an effective alternative is playing the didgeridoo.[1]
Anecdotally my wife and kids were complaining about my snoring, and I bought one for $40 off Amazon. Not only has my snoring improved, but my lung capacity has improved. Plus it's just fun to play.
I asked a doctor about it and he said that since I'm not obese nor overweight, and I don't regularly wake up gasping, then I'm not a candidate.
I've had fitful sleep as far as I can remember. I wake up (and remember it) probably 4-5 times a night and I've been told I toss and turn all the time. I find if I take a calmant or a substance I can sleep through the night.
I have chronic inflammation includes Achilles' pain just as you describe. I'm in my lower 40's. I'm also a weightlifter and I do calisthenics - both of these activities 4-5 times a week. Oh, but I sit in front of a PC 12+ hours a day!
Agreed. But a CPAP is only as a good as your usage, too many people "have" one but don't use it.
A lot of it is comfort. So try switching from a full-face to nose pillow-style mask. Or alternative headgear. Or even talk to your doctor about lowering the pressure if it is the noise (better to have less effective treatment, than none at all).
PS - A lot of, frankly, older doctors are still not prescribing Auto-CPAPs for people who may be suitable. If you're currently set on a fixed pressure, and your machine is a common Auto-CPAP (variable pressure) maybe seek a second opinion from a different (younger?) doctor. Auto-CPAPs are medically certified for many Sleep Apnea suffers, doctors just haven't adapted or haven't been re-trained, so they're chronically under-prescribed. Auto-CPAP improves your comfort, not your treatment, which improves adherence.
When I say the same thing about Prozac, people react with anger. It's strange.
A sleep study is definitely one of the best things I ever did. It helped uncover some undiagnosed narcolepsy, and I've been able to manage it since then. Even knowing that it existed was helpful. (For example, lots of stress was caused by getting jobs that expect you to have your butt in the seat from 9am to 5pm. Other jobs exist.)
Getting an APAP (auto-adjusting machine) was automated to the point that the barrier to entry is pretty darn low.
An at-home study required me to sit through dead obvious instruction on how to equip and use the machine. Once I was prescribed a machine as a result of the study, the most time-consuming part was picking up a machine and sitting with a nurse to try on various masks.
Since the machine itself is set to what the CPAP community calls "lazy doctor mode" meaning it's just set to auto-adjust itself in a range and the newer machines use cell data to automatically upload usage data, once you take it home you're done. My only follow up visit was over the phone. And there is an open source project for reading the data which will appeal to the HN crowd: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/
I got a CPAP for obstructive sleep apnea and it resulted in absolutely zero benefits after several months. It did cost quite a bit and take time to clean, though. I'm very skeptical about the positive effects of CPAP for all but the most severely affected individuals.
You're all going to think I am a crazy, but I instead elected to tape my mouth closed with 3m tape right when I go to bed. This to me is superior and should be your first port. Not only did it fix my apnoea and huge lack of energy during the day, but also my chronic sinus issues that had plagued me for years. Its also a lot cheaper, much easier to use / travel with and gets me into a good habit of nose breathing during the day. A CPAP machine is still reinforcing the poor habit that may well have contributed to your sleep abnormalities in the first place. Mouth Breathing. It costs $2 for a roll of 3m tape, so it's not like it costs a lot if its really not working for you.
Mouth breathing is horrendous for your health and well being. There is a good reason why it was ostracized in the past ("mouth breather" was an insult). It was a clear sign of poor health in an individual.
It's one of the best unknown health hacks out there.
And even if you're young, if you find yourself waking up at night with your heart racing, excessive snoring, etc, get it checked out. I got a CPAP machine at 20, and it's hard to overstate the impact. You can even just straight up buy them these days and adjust the settings yourself, sometimes the insurance premium on the sleep study is as high as the cost of the machine.
I got a cpap after a sleep study found I had 80+ breathing interruptions in the short overnight test window.
It easily brought them down to <10, but I feel no better in the morning, and it makes the occasional nap much more of a hassle.
The value is absolutely there in the greatly reduced likelihood of death in my sleep, and the white noise is better than snoring when sleeping around others. But I wouldn't want to get people's hopes up about it providing them the bad sleep panacea they desire.
I suspect I might have some sleep disturbance. It's really hard for me to sleep on my back, I wake up constantly and snoor so I just sleep on my stomach instead.
I remember getting a sleep study where they titrated for my cpap pressure. I woke up leaving that morning feeling like superman. It was as though a long fog was lifted from my brain.
I've been using CPAP for 9 years now and I can't imagine my life without it.
I wonder if it would be helpful to allow people who experience sleep issues to just get a CPAP machine and try it out, instead of having to go through a sleep study.
Not a native speaker, I think I sleep well (feel rested, not tired during the day) but lightly (with typically a few bathroom breaks), should I be concerned?
There was a period in my life (almost a decade ago) when I was sleeping poorly due to unhealthy work habits and excess caffeine. I was in my 20s and early 30s during this time and felt invincible, but the effects on my body were profound. The damage became so tangible I had no choice but to make a change, and have for the last 5+ years been sleeping normally. I miss those days of nonstop work, I was more productive then, but it would have killed me if I had continued.
> UC Berkeley sleep scientists have begun to reveal what it is about fragmented nightly sleep that leads to the fatty arterial plaque buildup known as atherosclerosis that can result in fatal heart disease.
This is a causal claim, emphasis mine, which contradicts:
> “To the best of our knowledge, these data are the first to associate sleep fragmentation, inflammation and atherosclerosis in humans,” said study lead author Raphael Vallat
which is a correlative claim, emphasis also mine, and they use "linked" throughout the article, which is also correlative.
So does fitful sleep "lead to" chronic inflammation and arterial plaque, or are chronic inflammation and arterial plaque simply typical of people in poorer health and/or overweight, which can itself potentially cause sleep disorders, ie. a correlation? I'm not sure we know the actual root causes here.
> “Indeed, these associational results in humans mirror recent data in which experimentally manipulated sleep disruption in mice led to higher levels of circulating inflammation that caused atherosclerotic lesions in the rodents,” added Vallat.
The causal claim is itself a (stronger form of) correlation,
so how is that a contradiction? They claim:
1. To demonstrate a causal pathway
2. There was not a previous correlative claim that this merely strengthened
Also, given it's in an open access journal, you can trivially verify from the source rather than rely on a press release.
"we describe a pathway wherein sleep fragmentation raises inflammatory-related white blood cell counts (neutrophils and monocytes), thereby increasing atherosclerosis severity" [https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...]
I've improved my sleep quality (as measured by FitBit), by eating smaller dinners earlier, and not snacking at night. Avoiding alcohol entirely most nights. Avoiding drinking water before bed so I don't have to get up to pee
I take Webber Super Sleep (available at Costco). Has Melatonin, 5-HTP (serotonin precursor), and L-Theanine. Seems to help
We were more of a cat family and I was too young to remember when we got our dogs. I did not understand that romcom trope of buying a man a puppy to see how he'd fare as a father.
Then we got a puppy. Ho. Lee. Shit.
New puppies make it about half again as long as a baby before they wake you up, and take much less time to settle down to 6+ hours of peace and quiet (where you can go to bed early and your partner can do the late shift), but man are you a zombie for a while.
I didnt sleep enough for all my teens and student years, and ended up with an autoimmune disease. Taking sleep and other health seriously has been a big part of getting myself back in working shape.
Anybody have “clinical grade” sleep tracker recommendations as recommended by the article? I have a smart watch sleep tracker but my doctor says it is inaccurate (withings watch), and it always says my deep sleep number is too low even though google says the range is within normal.
It's not clinical grade but I got the Mi Band 3 and it seems to work surprisingly well for only $30. The account of rest I feel in the morning generally matches the account of deep sleep it says I got.
Radical dietary change can lead to huge differences in experiential quality of life and sleep as well.
Chronic dietary inflammation (which just means foods that your body doesn't like) can have a whole host of subtle effects you would never notice until they are absent.
I have heart issues (had a stent 2 years ago - early for my age) and have always slept poorly (mostly bad habits + diet).
Sleep routine is the most essential thing to fix if you have resolved all your basic needs. It creates a feedback loop that helps to reduce stress and improve health.
I've learned this the hard way - you shouldn't have to.
Is there a Dr in the house? Am I reading this correctly as if you improve your sleep you could possibly (I don't know the correct word to use here) improve? reduce? the plaque buildup in your arteries?
I had terrible sleeping problems: snoring, waking up choking with a dry mouth, very restless, etc. I saw these[1] nasal dilators for $9 on Amazaon and bought them on a whim. It took a couple of weeks to build a habit of sleeping with my mouth closed and breathing through my nose, but once I did, my sleep (and therefore life) improved dramatically. So simple. I wish I would have figured this out ten years earlier. These probably won't work for most people with sleep disorders, but if the issue is sleeping with an open mouth due to restricted nasal passages, I would definitely give these things a try before settling on more elaborate treatment.
Also, as mentioned here and everywhere, alcohol destroys sleep. I've (mostly) stopped drinking for sleep reasons, and drink nothing at all 1.5 hours before bed.
I've been having major sleep issues recently (waking up every 60-90s minutes, trouble staying asleep, averaging 2-4 hours of sleep a night total).
I recorded myself overnight and heard quite a bit of snoring, so I picked up a at-home sleep study kit, convinced that I had sleep apnea. The results were that I didn't, classified my O2 intake as normal, and my snoring threshold as low.
I'm at a loss as to what do now. I have been practicing good sleep hygiene and exercising, but now I'm at the point where I'm asking my doctor for a prescription because I'm just so desperate for a night of sleep.
Can anyone more familiar with this field elaborate on exactly what "chronic circulating inflammation throughout the blood stream" is? Inflammation I understand, but how does it circulate throughout the bloodstream? Does this refer to inflammation of the blood vessels, the heart, or somehow your blood itself?
And is there a reason to suspect causality goes in the direction implied in the article (i.e. bad sleep -> plaque) and not (i.e. X -> plaque and X-> bad sleep, where X could be stress or emotional state, etc.)?
Here's what I wonder, and this is somewhat tangential to the issue-- the effects of cannabis are thought to be disruptive to some of the various stages of the sleep cycle, but at the same time, it can sure help you to achieve a full night of uninterrupted sleep. So in the context of these inflammation problems, I wonder what exactly it is about fitful sleep that leads to these inflammation responses and whether taking a toke before bed could be beneficial to your arteries.
Wishful thinking. You shouldn’t start with the substance you want to take and work backward to rationalize it.
There are plenty of milder, better-researched solutions suitable for longer term use without associated cognitive problems of cannabis. An extremely low dose of Trazodone, for example.
James Nestor’s new book ‘Breath’ may be useful to you if you suffer from fitful sleep. His research into and experiments with breathing may give you some easy fixes to help improve your sleep.
The single best thing that improved my quality of sleep was a ten-minute meditation before bed. I have anxiety (albeit officially undiagnosed) and meditation helps me stay calm. It also helps me stay asleep. Without it, I wake up in the middle of the night.
[+] [-] SaintGhurka|5 years ago|reply
If, as a result, they tell you to get a CPAP, get it. Those things are life-changing.
I felt like an old man at 50 years old. My back was so stiff I couldn't put on my socks. When I got out of bed in the morning I felt so fragile, like my joints were all inflamed - especially my Achilles' tendons. I was too tired to do anything beyond 6 pm.
Now, 51, I feel totally normal again. And that change was pretty much overnight once I started using that wretched machine.
[+] [-] dcolkitt|5 years ago|reply
Anecdotally my wife and kids were complaining about my snoring, and I bought one for $40 off Amazon. Not only has my snoring improved, but my lung capacity has improved. Plus it's just fun to play.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1360393/
[+] [-] mancerayder|5 years ago|reply
I've had fitful sleep as far as I can remember. I wake up (and remember it) probably 4-5 times a night and I've been told I toss and turn all the time. I find if I take a calmant or a substance I can sleep through the night.
I have chronic inflammation includes Achilles' pain just as you describe. I'm in my lower 40's. I'm also a weightlifter and I do calisthenics - both of these activities 4-5 times a week. Oh, but I sit in front of a PC 12+ hours a day!
[+] [-] Someone1234|5 years ago|reply
A lot of it is comfort. So try switching from a full-face to nose pillow-style mask. Or alternative headgear. Or even talk to your doctor about lowering the pressure if it is the noise (better to have less effective treatment, than none at all).
PS - A lot of, frankly, older doctors are still not prescribing Auto-CPAPs for people who may be suitable. If you're currently set on a fixed pressure, and your machine is a common Auto-CPAP (variable pressure) maybe seek a second opinion from a different (younger?) doctor. Auto-CPAPs are medically certified for many Sleep Apnea suffers, doctors just haven't adapted or haven't been re-trained, so they're chronically under-prescribed. Auto-CPAP improves your comfort, not your treatment, which improves adherence.
[+] [-] sillysaurusx|5 years ago|reply
A sleep study is definitely one of the best things I ever did. It helped uncover some undiagnosed narcolepsy, and I've been able to manage it since then. Even knowing that it existed was helpful. (For example, lots of stress was caused by getting jobs that expect you to have your butt in the seat from 9am to 5pm. Other jobs exist.)
So yes. Sleep study good! Go do one!
[+] [-] technofiend|5 years ago|reply
An at-home study required me to sit through dead obvious instruction on how to equip and use the machine. Once I was prescribed a machine as a result of the study, the most time-consuming part was picking up a machine and sitting with a nurse to try on various masks.
Since the machine itself is set to what the CPAP community calls "lazy doctor mode" meaning it's just set to auto-adjust itself in a range and the newer machines use cell data to automatically upload usage data, once you take it home you're done. My only follow up visit was over the phone. And there is an open source project for reading the data which will appeal to the HN crowd: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/
[+] [-] oarabbus_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cachestash|5 years ago|reply
Mouth breathing is horrendous for your health and well being. There is a good reason why it was ostracized in the past ("mouth breather" was an insult). It was a clear sign of poor health in an individual.
It's one of the best unknown health hacks out there.
https://askthedentist.com/mouth-tape-better-sleep/
[+] [-] benwilson-512|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tstrimple|5 years ago|reply
All I got in return is a $500 inconclusive.
[+] [-] anonymousab|5 years ago|reply
I got a cpap after a sleep study found I had 80+ breathing interruptions in the short overnight test window.
It easily brought them down to <10, but I feel no better in the morning, and it makes the occasional nap much more of a hassle.
The value is absolutely there in the greatly reduced likelihood of death in my sleep, and the white noise is better than snoring when sleeping around others. But I wouldn't want to get people's hopes up about it providing them the bad sleep panacea they desire.
[+] [-] Phenomenit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goldenkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] odiroot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lee|5 years ago|reply
I've been using CPAP for 9 years now and I can't imagine my life without it.
[+] [-] balfirevic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julianeon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the-dude|5 years ago|reply
https://www.wordnik.com/words/fitful
I am not a native speaker and had to look it up.
[+] [-] pretendscholar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmorrow|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tarsinge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barney54|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bagacrap|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quercus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selestify|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naasking|5 years ago|reply
> UC Berkeley sleep scientists have begun to reveal what it is about fragmented nightly sleep that leads to the fatty arterial plaque buildup known as atherosclerosis that can result in fatal heart disease.
This is a causal claim, emphasis mine, which contradicts:
> “To the best of our knowledge, these data are the first to associate sleep fragmentation, inflammation and atherosclerosis in humans,” said study lead author Raphael Vallat
which is a correlative claim, emphasis also mine, and they use "linked" throughout the article, which is also correlative.
So does fitful sleep "lead to" chronic inflammation and arterial plaque, or are chronic inflammation and arterial plaque simply typical of people in poorer health and/or overweight, which can itself potentially cause sleep disorders, ie. a correlation? I'm not sure we know the actual root causes here.
[+] [-] eschutte2|5 years ago|reply
> “Indeed, these associational results in humans mirror recent data in which experimentally manipulated sleep disruption in mice led to higher levels of circulating inflammation that caused atherosclerotic lesions in the rodents,” added Vallat.
...which sounds like the real research.
[+] [-] abeyer|5 years ago|reply
1. To demonstrate a causal pathway
2. There was not a previous correlative claim that this merely strengthened
Also, given it's in an open access journal, you can trivially verify from the source rather than rely on a press release. "we describe a pathway wherein sleep fragmentation raises inflammatory-related white blood cell counts (neutrophils and monocytes), thereby increasing atherosclerosis severity" [https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...]
[+] [-] elchief|5 years ago|reply
I take Webber Super Sleep (available at Costco). Has Melatonin, 5-HTP (serotonin precursor), and L-Theanine. Seems to help
[+] [-] trentnix|5 years ago|reply
Now I just need to get my diet under control and exercise regularly...
[+] [-] oarabbus_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyporkbites|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fideloper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|5 years ago|reply
We were more of a cat family and I was too young to remember when we got our dogs. I did not understand that romcom trope of buying a man a puppy to see how he'd fare as a father.
Then we got a puppy. Ho. Lee. Shit.
New puppies make it about half again as long as a baby before they wake you up, and take much less time to settle down to 6+ hours of peace and quiet (where you can go to bed early and your partner can do the late shift), but man are you a zombie for a while.
[+] [-] kzrdude|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bamboozled|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrischen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dota_fanatic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] istorical|5 years ago|reply
Chronic dietary inflammation (which just means foods that your body doesn't like) can have a whole host of subtle effects you would never notice until they are absent.
[+] [-] r00fus|5 years ago|reply
Sleep routine is the most essential thing to fix if you have resolved all your basic needs. It creates a feedback loop that helps to reduce stress and improve health.
I've learned this the hard way - you shouldn't have to.
[+] [-] chooseaname|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaiwen1|5 years ago|reply
Also, as mentioned here and everywhere, alcohol destroys sleep. I've (mostly) stopped drinking for sleep reasons, and drink nothing at all 1.5 hours before bed.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DSTZ4KM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
[+] [-] lenova|5 years ago|reply
I recorded myself overnight and heard quite a bit of snoring, so I picked up a at-home sleep study kit, convinced that I had sleep apnea. The results were that I didn't, classified my O2 intake as normal, and my snoring threshold as low.
I'm at a loss as to what do now. I have been practicing good sleep hygiene and exercising, but now I'm at the point where I'm asking my doctor for a prescription because I'm just so desperate for a night of sleep.
[+] [-] TallGuyShort|5 years ago|reply
And is there a reason to suspect causality goes in the direction implied in the article (i.e. bad sleep -> plaque) and not (i.e. X -> plaque and X-> bad sleep, where X could be stress or emotional state, etc.)?
[+] [-] nyhc99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|5 years ago|reply
There are plenty of milder, better-researched solutions suitable for longer term use without associated cognitive problems of cannabis. An extremely low dose of Trazodone, for example.
[+] [-] victor106|5 years ago|reply
Any recommendations for a good sleep tracker?
edit:- already answered https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23431549
tl;dr dreem is the best sleep tracker you can buy currently. Review at reedit https://www.reddit.com/r/ouraring/comments/e3l1jl/30_nights_...
You can use the promo code to get a 20% off NOOEONDVV
[+] [-] blaufast|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkereako|5 years ago|reply
https://peterattiamd.com/matthewwalker1/
The single best thing that improved my quality of sleep was a ten-minute meditation before bed. I have anxiety (albeit officially undiagnosed) and meditation helps me stay calm. It also helps me stay asleep. Without it, I wake up in the middle of the night.