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Diverticulitis

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Nanaat32 +0 points · over 2 years ago Original Poster

I have been using a cpap machine for the past year. In that year, I have noticed that I have had several flare-ups of diverticulitis. Prior to using a cpap I would have a flare up maybe once a year. I am curious if anyone else who suffers with this condition has noticed an impact on it since using a cpap? TYIA

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Sierra +0 points · over 2 years ago Sleep Patron

I have not had this issue, and can't really think of a way it could be caused by use of a CPAP. I am a believer in using Metamucil daily to keep regularity, and also to reduce my cholesterol. I think it helps. Other sources of soluble fiber should help too.

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Biguglygremlin +0 points · over 2 years ago Sleep Enthusiast

You all know how much I love my CPAP right?

Well, this looks like just too good an opportunity to implicate it in yet another crime.

Based entirely, of course, on scientific data and conclusive research! (Or blind prejudice and guesswork.)

I supposedly had diverticulitis for the first time several months ago and it nearly put me in hospital and even Metamucil, despite it's universally restorative powers, was barely able to save me.

So it would suit me just fine to be able to blame my CPAP!

Now let's look at the hard evidence.

Normal people, that's people who are not condemned to using CPAP machines, are permitted, even encouraged, to move around freely and unencumbered during their sleep.

While us CPAP victims are shackled to that noisy machine lurking on the bedside table and pinioned by our mask and hose and constricted by a plethora of straps and clips and weighed down by a perpetual awareness of bondage and restraint aggressively enforced by things that hiss at us if we dare to move the wrong way thereby increasing the risk of diverticulitis.

Obviously, my CPAP could be implicated just on that basis alone.

But wait! There's more!

My CPAP spends the entire night enacting an evil plot to turn me into a balloon by pumping air down into the digestive system!

Air that causes discomfort and escalating tension and pain!

Air that causes frequent disruptions in the digestive processes!

Air that invokes pain, causing the digestive system to constrict, once again increasing the risk of diverticulitis.

My Cpap is looking more guilty by the minute!

So what, you say!

Lots of foods cause flatulence.

Did I mention AIR?

Air, containing oxygen.

Oxygen is quite a different thing from methane or whatever other gasses are produced naturally during digestion.

Oxygen is not supposed to be in the digestive system in such vast quantities.

Oxygen feeds the wrong monsters, starts the wrong processes, multiplying and escalating significant risk factors, including diverticulitis.

So, in conclusion, I don't think we can blame the butler when all the evidence points clearly to my CPAP!

Now, where did I put that reference article?

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Biguglygremlin +0 points · over 2 years ago Sleep Enthusiast

An hour after writing the above comments my CPAP tried, one final time, to kill me, and when that failed, it simply refused to function anymore.

I'll have a little party to celebrate my victory, but then I think some kind of farewell is warranted, after all, that CPAP's been my arch-nemesis for several years now, but I'm not sure what would be an appropriate send-off.

Where do old CPAPs go to die and how does it impact the elephants?

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Sierra +0 points · over 2 years ago Sleep Patron

Second Wind in the US will buy old CPAP's and then resells them. I am sure they are well sanitized before they are sold, but it may not be a big business during COVID though!

I have read somewhere that about 1/3 to 1/2 of all CPAP's prescribed end up collecting dust in a closet. The dropout rate is very high.

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