\n<\/p>\n
When Nick went camping in the summer with friends, he would set up his tent 100 metres away from the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt became a bit that I did,\u201d says Nick. As early as his teenage years, he learned to use humour to cope with what was immediately a social problem: the \u201ccacophony\u201d of his snoring.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until 2019, at 37 years of age, that he learned it was also a medical problem.<\/p>\n
When a visit to the doctor revealed an \u201calarming\u201d blood pressure number, despite his active life and healthy diet, Nick began to connect the dots with other symptoms he had been experiencing including frequent \u201cuncontrollable\u201d daytime tiredness, which led to micro sleeps in meetings and on public transport.<\/p>\n
When Nick, who requested his first name only be used, underwent a sleep test, he noticed a device, with a long tube attached to a mask, next to the bed. It was a Cpap machine \u2013 standing for continuous positive airway pressure, which uses mild pressure to keep breathing airways open during sleep.<\/p>\n
<\/span>After years of undiagnosed sleep apnoea Nick says his first night of uninterrupted sleep \u2018was just completely revelatory\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n The attendant explained that the study was purely observational. The machine was there only in case symptoms became so severe <\/strong>it was needed to prevent liability issues. A shame, Nick remembers thinking before he fell asleep, as he was curious to try it.<\/p>\n An hour later the lights came on, as did the mask. The attendant explained that from his desk 30 paces away, they did not need microphones to assess what was happening.<\/p>\n Nick was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnoea \u2013 a condition that occurs when the throat muscles relax too much during sleep, <\/strong>resulting in episodes of shallow breathing or breathing stopping.<\/p>\n \u201cSnoring to sleep apnoea is a bit of a continuum,\u201d says Dr Linda Schachter, a sleep and respiratory physician and a member of the Sleep Health Foundation board.<\/p>\n \u201cSnoring is the partial upper airway obstruction, and as the obstruction gets worse, you start developing sleep apnoea,\u201d Schachter says.<\/p>\n Humans have long sought practical solutions to snoring, a problem that plagues the snorer and those attempting to rest around them. An Egyptian medical papyrus from circa 1550BCE recommended using thyme, while during the war of independence in the US cannonballs were sewn into snoring soldiers\u2019 uniforms to stop them sleeping on their backs.<\/p>\n But interest from a medical perspective is relatively new, Peter Cistulli, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Sydney, says.<\/p>\n Early in Cistulli\u2019s career, he says sleep apnoea was considered a rare disorder. The only treatment available was tracheostomy, a surgical procedure where a hole is made in the trachea so breathing can bypass the nose and mouth.<\/p>\n Now, there are several less-invasive treatments available and the technologies to measure sleep have also improved. This, alongside growing awareness of sleep disorders, <\/strong>has driven demand for sleep services, says Cistulli, who is president-elect of the World Sleep Society.<\/p>\n Although sleep medicine has been slowly rising in popularity for 30 years, there has been a \u201crapid\u201d spike, he says, driven in part by wearable consumer tech products that monitor sleep.<\/p>\n Cistulli\u2019s mentor, Prof Colin Sullivan, invented the Cpap, which was first sold commercially by the Australian company now known as ResMed, whose value has more than quadrupled over the past decade.<\/p>\n When Nick wore a Cpap mask for the first time during his sleep test, he slept for four hours. \u201cThe level of energy and clarity that I felt upon waking up was like nothing I had experienced in living memory,\u201d he says, adding: \u201cThe amount of focus and energy and general sense of wellbeing that I had from getting \u2013 what turned out to be the first four hours of uninterrupted sleep that I had had in my entire adult life \u2013 was just completely revelatory.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Mask attachments for Cpap machines. The devices have celebrity endorsements: Amy Poehler and Jack Black both praise Cpaps for improving their snoring.<\/span> Photograph: Avigator\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Initially, only people at the severe end of sleep apnoea used Cpaps but Schachter says there has been a rise in prescribing for milder sleep apnoea, as doctors increasingly recognise the condition and the significance of its symptoms.<\/p>\n The devices have celebrity endorsements: Amy Poehler and Jack Black both praise Cpaps for improving their snoring. On Reddit, users even credit the devices with saving their marriages.<\/p>\n Dr Donald Lee, a respiratory and sleep physician and director at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, warns that some third-party retailers such as pharmacies and online resellers try to market Cpap machines as consumer technology.<\/p>\n Thanks to the popularity of sleep-tracking wearables, \u201cwe now have a term called orthosomnia: a new condition where people are overly preoccupied about trying to get a perfect night\u2019s sleep,\u201d Cistulli says.<\/p>\n While the Cpap is considered a safe therapy when the machine is set up properly, Schachter says if the pressure is set too high for a person\u2019s needs, they can end up swallowing air and getting burping symptoms, or the pressure may itself disturb sleep or cause breathing problems.<\/p>\n double quotation markThere\u2019s often a misconception that snoring is benignPeter Cistulli, professor of sleep medicine at University of Sydney<\/p>\n Lee also likens Cpap machines to a \u201cvacuum cleaner turned the other way\u201d, which can be uncomfortable and claustrophobic for some. He says people will only be motivated to use the \u201ccumbersome\u201d machine if it actually makes them feel better.<\/p>\n Cistulli says while the stereotypical sleep apnoea patient was once an overweight middle-aged man who regularly drank alcohol, \u201cwe\u2019re seeing more subtle forms of sleep apnoea at younger ages, across genders\u201d.<\/p>\n Schachter says doctors are more aware now that women have been under-treated for sleep apnoea. While women might be diagnosed with a mild condition based on their number of breathing episodes, they tend to have more significant symptoms of tiredness.<\/p>\n There is also more recognition of \u201cupper airways resistance syndrome\u201d, where a person doesn\u2019t fully fit the criteria for sleep apnoea but their breathing still causes sleep disturbance and awakenings, Schachter says.<\/p>\n Cistulli agrees that snoring warrants medical investigation. \u201cThere\u2019s often a misconception that snoring is benign \u2026 my own philosophy is that if you want to prevent the development of sleep apnoea, you probably ought to be treating snoring before it develops into sleep apnoea.\u201d<\/p>\n Even without sleep apnoea, Schachter says \u201cyou can have health risk just from the snoring itself\u201d, as a few trials have shown an association with stroke. But Lee believes bigger datasets are needed before there is cause for concern around these reports.<\/p>\n Beyond health issues, snoring affects relationships. If someone\u2019s snoring disturbs their partner\u2019s sleep, <\/strong>this is also worth treating, Schachter says.<\/p>\n If a sleep test reveals there is no sleep apnoea, only snoring, Schachter says it would be unusual to treat the person with a Cpap, unless the person is very symptomatic or has upper airways resistance syndrome.<\/p>\n She emphasises that many treatments are available beyond Cpaps, which can cost more than $1,000 if not covered by health insurance, including mouth splints, external nasal dilators if a person has narrow nasal passages, as well as weight-loss drugs if excess weight is a factor contributing to snoring.<\/p>\n Those treatments are often the first line for mild to moderate sleep apnoea says Lee.<\/p>\n <\/strong>He adds that if a person is troubled by any aspect of their health, they should speak to their doctor.<\/p>\n Nick likens his Cpap to getting a pair of glasses after not realising there had been a gradual erosion of eyesight. Now after many years of using it to manage his condition, he says, \u201cIt\u2019s just not that big of a deal.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a world of trade-offs, it\u2019s absolutely no contest,\u201d he says. \u201cSelf-care is sexy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Nick went camping in the summer with friends, he would set up his tent 100 metres away from the group. \u201cIt became a bit that I did,\u201d says Nick. As early as his teenage years, he learned to use humour to cope with what was immediately a social problem: the \u201ccacophony\u201d of his snoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2994,3257,1244,4025,23814,2938,9464,11983],"class_list":{"0":"post-46809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cleaner","9":"tag-disorders","10":"tag-popular","11":"tag-sleep","12":"tag-snoring","13":"tag-solution","14":"tag-turned","15":"tag-vacuum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}