[sudosteph]

I think nearly everyone should be screened for sleep apnea. The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.

I always thought that due to being female and a healthy weight, it wasn't something I needed to think about. I also didn't think I snored more than anyone else, so it took me years of poor sleep before a Doctor finally recommended I get tested.

Turns out OSA also can be caused or aggravated by: the size and shape of your mouth, the position you sleep in (I have twice as many events on my back vs side), and whether you tuck your chin in near your test (soft cervical collar helped for that). There are devices that alter how your mouth rests when sleeping (easier to breathe if your front teeth are forward) but they're possibly not good for your bite. CPAP/APAP is still the gold standard for a reason.

The coolest thing about CPAP though, is a lot of them have amazing metrics recorded if you pop in an SD card. And there's a big community built around open source software to analyze those metrics and tune the settings to minimize apnea events overnight.

Also, a cpap with a humidifier is amazing if you're prone to nose pain / nose bleeds due to dry air.

[exsss]

The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.

What is name of the product?

[sudosteph]

WatchPAT is what I used, there's a few different companies who will mail you one, then you sleep with it on your finger overnight, and a doc reviews the data

[weakfish]

My comment is more of a complaint than a discussion so apologies, but I was disappointed recently because I did at an at home test and scored borderline. I was hopeful that it would be sleep apnea so I could go about solving my bad sleep, but a lab test showed conclusively that I didn’t have it.

I got checked out initially because I mentioned to my sister that I didn’t recall the last time I’d woken up and felt refreshed all day, even with 8+ hours, and she said “…that’s not good, get that checked out.”

Back to the drawing board :(

[smj-edison]

Chronic tiredness can be such a hard thing to figure out, sorry you've been going through that! Is it sleepiness (as in can fall asleep at any point of the day), or fatigue (as in non-restorative sleep, brain fog, feeling exhausted, etc)? I've had chronic fatigue (non syndrome) for six years now, so I'm pretty familiar with how obnoxiously long it takes to get answers. Some things to look into:

Do a full polysomnogram with MSLT: this will check for sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, and idiopathic hypersomnia

Look into ME/CFS if you have post exertional malaise (pretty much you cross some invisible line in exertion followed by a delayed crash).

Look into MCAS if you also have strange allergy symptoms. I have MCAS, though tbh I didn't really have that many symptoms until I looked at Dr. Afrin's free chapter on MCAS.

Maybe fibromyalgia, but you didn't mention muscle pain, so it probably doesn't apply.

Obviously depression can cause somatic symptoms, so that's worth checking, but I think people jump to that conclusion too soon.

Note that a lot of these conditions don't really have tests, so it's really tricky to get a diagnosis. It takes finding a doctor who's willing to recognize them and give a diagnosis.

[weakfish]

Late reply, but yeah it’s fatigue. Thank you for the pointers, I’ll check all of those out with my GP.

I have diagnosed depression, but I wonder if it’s a chicken egg problem - am I depressed from bad sleep, or bad sleep from depression?

[pimlottc]

Got a link for some of those open source CPAP hackers?

[sudosteph]

The software is OSCAR, and apneaboard (a forum) is a good place for that stuff. You should be able to find it from there :)