Biguglygremlin

Yes, I do feel sorry for those plastic trees.

You rarely see one around here anymore.

Our grandchildren won't even remember what they looked like.

I do my bit to save a few.

I use that splashy stuff in the tap.

I know it's not real water but it seems to work.

Maybe that's why I have so much trouble with my CPAP.

I've never unpacked a CPAP at the airport but I am going to miss the old S9, because it had a good strong carry bag, which was the perfect size to add extra cables and chargers, medications, spare glasses, a few small gifts, assorted paperwork, a bunch of expansion drives, a decent-sized Ipad, a big fat puzzle book, that half-eaten elephant and ...................................... :)

Those CPAP comparison charts never show the stuff that really matters.

Sierra Sierra Sierra.

You have my admiration and respect and this forum owes you BIG TIME for your technical expertise and vigilance but .......

I do like to stir.

So here goes:

CPAP therapy has many adverse effects!

It costs time!

It costs money!

It causes trauma!

It disrupts my sleep!

It limits my lifestyle!

It causes embarrasment!

It even causes flatulence!

It interferes with my sex life!

It contributes to global warming!

It forces me to learn dozens of unwanted acronyms!

It has me pacing the floor late at night reading the tea leaves in my coffee cup!

That article was quite inspiring back when I was still hoping to make some changes.

I linked it to this thread a few years back.

cpap-is-not-the-solution

I think I first read your article when I discovered it on a blog by RebeccaR.

You have trodden a long and difficult road PutSleepApneatoBed and learned more terms and concepts than anyone should be compelled to acquire.

I'm thinking that I should have just stuck to the tea leaves because it would have been so much simpler than trying to figure out all of this.

My grasp of complex issues is rapidly fading which is why I launched this thread so that other people could sort out the complicated stuff. :)

In your above discussions, you have touched on some tantalizing concepts that I have tried to understand from different angles in the past.

"Rich" people do approach health and life differently and have different outcomes which can significantly alter the statistics for many health studies, especially Apnea studies. For my purposes perhaps the term 'rich' is too exclusive. If we are to be forever bound to the American model the delineation seems to be between those with health insurance and those without.

Diagnosis is another keyword for me because from my experience and observation it seems that it is too easy to get cursed with the Apnea label but perhaps a bigger problem is that being diagnosed with Apnea carries no assurances regarding all the other health issues that prompted the search for a solution in the first place.

"Heritable anatomical causes" I do love that term but every person is unique so to some extent 'heritable' is just one more factor amongst the tea leaves.

"Root cause" is such an all-encompassing term and hard to effectively embrace. Generally, we try to clarify this by dividing the tea leaves into groups and looking at each group separately on the assumption that at least some of the secondary causes are derived from similar factors.

There must be parameters out there somewhere but from my perspective, if we set aside Central Apnea as a different disorder, there are at least 6 or 7 types of Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Infant OSA,

non-age-specific OSA,

non-age-specific weight-related OSA,

age related OSA,

age and weight related OSA,

undecided,

none of the above

That's what I see when I stare at my tea leaves which are all very similar but the patterns for each group are slightly different which brings me back to a very old kids' science show which began and ended with "Why is it so?"

Hi PutSleepApneatoBed,

You have considerable knowledge and experience, much of it beyond my comprehension, but I find it hard to accept your opening paragraph regarding obesity and apnea.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Apnea and obesity circle and compound each other, so there is a very high likelihood that they are connected, perhaps in multiple ways.

I think we are on the edge of dividing Apnea into a number of distinct groups, especially when we consider the more significant circumstances and potential causes and effects.

All generalities contain some truth but, in the big picture and on a large enough scale, there are always exceptions.

I had assumed it was a non-existent CPAP, essentially just a control group, but your conclusion might make more sense of the term sham. Sham CPAP

Personally, I think the use of sham CPAP machines raises more issues than it resolves.

I only linked that weight gain study to generate discussion, not necessarily to prove any indisputable point.

As you so clearly highlight there are very few certainties in these fields because of the complexity of entanglements and uncertainty of cause and effect amongst the many interactions that often accompany aging.

What it does tend to dispute, simply because there was a measurable difference, is the general acceptance within the sleep industry and amongst the CPAP community that CPAP therapy is harmless and can only be of benefit to adherents in both the short and long term.

If consistent studies established that CPAP therapy facilitates increased weight gain that is not a benefit especially when it would almost certainly increase the severity of the underlying apnea.

The results of that study were not clear and certainly not conclusive but it is a minor question mark in a field of research that, I would maintain, is heavily funded and influenced by the sleep industry and the associated insurance companies and hence unlikely to fund or publicize research that might be detrimental to the industry.

The real purpose of this thread was to find out if someone was aware of any credible research into the impact of CPAP on the underlying OSA or if it was so pointless or irrelevant that it really doesn't matter.

Humans survive by looking for patterns and using them to predict future outcomes but this process is too often diverted by wishful thinking and a desperate need to keep our world stable and predictable.

This results in us selectively reinforcing existing beliefs and skipping over information that fails to support those prejudices.

I have raised many queries through the years that might be viewed as stupid or negative or just plain contrary.

It seems to me that rarely have any of them been properly confronted or discussed.

Some of those queries were to do with the diagnostic processes for Apnea.

Others targeted claims revolving around the long-term risks of apnea and the assumed benefits of CPAP therapy.

A lot of queries revolve around what I consider to be collective misinformation from the sleep industry and consistent misdirection and misinterpretation of apnea research.

One outcome of this misinformation is the false assurance that CPAP therapy has no adverse effects.

Whilst studying the tea leaves in my cup, which is quite challenging being a coffee drinker, I wondered, once again, what impact CPAP has on sleep apnea.

Not the usual spiel and routine sales pitch, but much more literally and directly.

What impact does CPAP therapy have on the severity of our underlying sleep apnea?

If we studied 2,000 people with severe apnea and put 1,000 on CPAP for a year, then took the machines away and tested both groups without CPAP, how would they compare.

What differences would there be in the broader picture and what would that mean?

Could CPAP users with OSA become physically dependent on the machine?

Does continuous support of OSA further weaken throat muscles and increase untreated OSA events?

Could CPAP therapy for OSA be an irreversible self-perpetuating process?

Could CPAP therapy foster psychological dependence?

Once they have been assigned a CPAP machine how many severe apnea sufferers are ever tested again without the CPAP machine?

I thought I would save myself a lot of writing if I stumbled across something online but the closest I found was this report:

Impact of Treatment with Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) on Weight in Obstructive Sleep Apnea

It doesn't directly address the subject of CPAP impact on Apnea but it does question a related assumption.

Now I've had my little rant could someone please explain how to read these coffee grinds?

Tasseography

I hadn't realized how old that study was.

I suppose it is still relevant but I wonder if there are more recent studies of a similar scale that are as detailed and circumspect.

I stumbled across this generalized summary some days back.

It discusses a few options I have not been aware of before.

Sleep Apnea: Latest Research

Has anybody had experience with any of those options?

I read something today and it seemed rather interesting, perhaps even pertinent to some recent discussions in this forum, but then I fried my last few neurons, so I thought I would link the study here and see if someone could simplify it for me or at least comment on it.

Mortality in Sleep Apnea Patients: A Multivariate Analysis of Risk Factors

You'll need to read the PDF.