Submitted by Susan Redline, MD, MPH. Professor of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School As many people are aware, obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes are associated with more severe Covid-19 infections. However, an important question is whether sleep apnea is an unrecognized or hidden risk factor for complications from Covid-19 and whether positive airway pressure (PAP), used to treat sleep apnea, changes this risk. Keep reading
Excerpt of an article written by Dr. Suzanne Bertisch and originally published by the Harvard Health Blog. These are unprecedented times. Given the threat of the coronavirus pandemic on us personally, our communities, and our society, it is normal to experience anxiety and sleep problems. Sleep is a reversible state marked by a loss of consciousness to our surroundings. As members of the animal kingdom, our brains have evolved to respond to dangers by increasing vigilance and attention. Keep reading
Keeping your CPAP machine clean can be a challenge. To help people using CPAP, there are many automated machines that claim to clean or disinfect CPAPs. You may have seen these advertised on TV, or you may even use one! On February 27, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that "you should think twice before buying a machine that claims to clean or disinfect a CPAP". The FDA specifically warned about CPAP cleaning devices that use ozone or ultraviolet light. Keep reading
For a long time, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) was considered to be a disease that mostly affected men. Today, women are being diagnosed more often. But still, 3-to-5 times more men are diagnosed than women. MyApnea founder, Dr. Susan Redline, and a team of researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Yale School of Medicine set out to understand how sleep apnea presents in men and women and its impact on diagnosis and health impact. For a long time, Dr. Keep reading
I don’t know how you are but sometimes the obvious is not at all obvious to me. I use a CPAP machine faithfully and have for several years. Honestly, I do not sleep well at all without it. With that said, I never thought about what I would do if I didn’t have it available or if I lost it. Recently I had a small stroke. My main concern was taking two baby aspirin and getting to the emergency room. Keep reading
For the last decades, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been treated with positive airways pressure devices, usually CPAP. But as many patients will attest, CPAP is often uncomfortable and can make it difficult to sleep both for the patient and bedpartner. A number of researchers, including Andrew Wellman and his colleagues at Brigham and Women’s, have sought to go beyond CPAP by developing drug treatments for OSA. Keep reading
Most people experience stress at some point in their lives. Stress can make you feel bad. Stress can also make your health problems worse. This includes heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, depression, even cancer, and of course, sleep! The important role of stress in health is what inspired MyApnea to collaborate on a new research study about stress. Keep reading
This post summarizes a recent article published in MIT, Sloan Management Review. Find the full article here The last time we posted, we discussed the concept of patient-initiated research and the “N of 1” approach. Since then, we conducted surveys in 10 countries to learn about all types of consumer-driven product innovations, including those in the medical field. Next, we did more studies to learn about medical-product innovation development, in particular. Keep reading
If you are like most people, the diagnosis of sleep apnea was a surprise. All of a sudden you have words and phrases like 'hypopnea', 'titration', and 'polysomnogram' thrown at you. Maybe you are told about treatment options, maybe not. Maybe you were told about other health issues that can occur or be made worse with untreated sleep apnea. Keep reading
We all know that sometimes life is hard. Things just don’t seem to go our way no matter how much we work at them. A post from a person on the forum got me thinking about this. Not that I haven’t thought about it before but I didn’t realize that others felt the same. Sometimes, it’s the little things. First though, let’s talk about the big things. Just some examples from my personal story but I would bet you have lots of your own. Keep reading
