S2S

Hi Alex, Do you suffer from stress/anxiety as this can have strange affects on a lot of things in your life? Stress can have a large effect on your life that can bring on other things and if this comes along with anxiety attacks can be devastating on your well-being. It is very easy for someone to say try not to get stressed but that is not easy for some people. Count to ten and take a deep breath. I don't know of any study that has been done on Sleep Apnea sufferers concerning stress, but these studies can be picked apart due to the way they do some of them.

I am just wondering if you were accessed before they did the implant and what advice they gave you. I know you don't want to say to much, but they must have accessed you for suitability for the implant? Did it not work at all for you or was it very limited success?

I don't think I would allow anyone to implant something like that, I know someone was experimenting with one that hung round the neck that tightened the muscles around the neck, but I have not heard anything about it for some time now.

So it is up to you, but I would still want to see recommendations from users that have had this done and I would also want to see results after the implant is fitted. I believe you have to wait some time after it being fitted before it can be used.

I have been reading that this device does work for some, but not all patients. You need to be screened to see if you are suitable for the device and even then some people will find it will not work for them. Sad if you are one of the few it does not work for. On anther forum there was two people had had this implant, one said it was a life changer. Strangely he would not answer if he had had a Sleep test done since it was fitted. You would think he would be more interested since he drives a truck for a living. The other didn't say to much, except that he felt his tongue move a lot and this tended to wake him up, so it was not so effective as he had wanted it to be. So make of this implant what you will, personally, I would rather I just clipped on to something like it and it was outside me rather than inside me. No problem with implants being inside, but what would happen if you were put through a scan like an MRI with this implant inside you and you were unconscious at the time? Ok, you can carry warning cards etc, but I always wonder about this being missed during an emergency.

Oops, typo!

" csheavensent Wrote: +1 point · 4 months ago I've had this implant surgery done in 2017, recently I had it removed."

I found out the implant you had done and thinking about it, how do they expect this implant to give enough power to make it work? It is almost like a pacemaker but expected to do a lot more and make a lot more muscles contract and to provide enough power to open the airways! Well I am sorry, but I do not see how this could work. There was another bit of equipment on trial a while (not heard much about it lately) made by another company that was external and you could just take it off. I had reservations about it working, but at least they were offering a trial period to see if it did work for you. The Inspired product I would be very sceptical about having something implanted before seeing proof that it even worked, before I even thought about getting one fitted. I would ask for a list of people that had this surgery done and talk to them before fitting this. It has to run on batteries, are they safe? Is the appliance safe to have fitted? What is the life of the batteries? Not as if you can fot a charger to your chest when asleep! It might work for a very mild Sleep Apnea patient, but I would require proof before I had anything done like this. There are to many quacks around claiming to have cures for Sleep Apnea with all sorts of devices. Most do not work or will never appear on the market. I would be very sceptical about anyone claiming for devices that work for Sleep Apnea, most are a con or are looking for money to develop a device. So if you come across anything or anyone claiming to have a cure for Sleep Apnea that sounds to good to be true it probable is.

I have found that the only way is to get a good CPAP, better still a good APAP and get Sleepyhead to look at your data. Tell you sleep doctor you are going to do this and if he/she is a good doctor they will approve of you doing this and ask you contact them before you adjust your equipment. I have a Sleep Nurse that was a bit sceptical until I showed her the Website I was involved in (well, two of them) and she agreed that I could adjust my own equipment (she said I was the type that would do it anyway, even if she said no. She is a good judge of personality lol) so she only agreed to let me do this if I kept in touch, but when I asked how I was meant to do this she asked if I could send in my data card if asked. I said I would email all the data if she asked for it, but it would be in Sleepyhead form. So she said she would have to take a machine home and learn about Sleepyhead. As a point, she said one of the forums was very good and some of the users were on the ball and very knowledgable with their replies. She also said that she wished the clinic could see patients every three months until their treatment was was as good as they could get it, but they are just to busy and take best guess at what pressures they need. A sleep study is fine, but once they leave the clinic it is a different world and patients often need a different mask of pressures than what they were prescribed. I'll back her up on that one, I was always going to get something adjusted, mostly in the days when I started, it was mask after mask and then changes in pressure. Everyone should be given an APAP and set closely to the pressures they need and not given one that is set to 4 to 20, that is someone not doing their job, i.e. if you need a pressure of 16 to clear all apnea events, it is best to set the machine at say 10 or 12 to clear most events but not all, alowing the machine to take care of the rest with the machine set slightly above what the maximum pressure you need. In this case 16 was the maximum pressure, so it would be set to 17 or 18 for a straight forward case. This allows the best comfort and allows for good treatment without the pressures going up and down affecting the patient to much if at all. Expiry Relief: It helps you breath against the pressure of the machine when breathing out, in some cases if this is used it has been found some patients require an increase in the maximum pressure, not much but a slight rise. However, some do fine without the increase, it is best if you use as little Expiry Relief that you need i.e. 1 instead of 3, but if you need it use it rather than suffer. CPAP is the best treatment for Sleep Apnea, so get the best machine you can b[/b] you don't need to adjust the machine yourself, you can get your sleep doctor to do it after you discuss it with them. It is your health and getting a good mask, good APAP Sleep Apnea machine and a Good Doctor/Sleep Tech to work with is far better than spending money on new treatments that promise you everything. When you get a prescription for a machine, make sure the Doctor understands you want an APAP and one with a data card and is Sleepyhead compatible. Masks are more of a challenge, it may take you a good few models before you fine one that works for you.

I am sorry the implant didn't work for you, but this might serve as a lesson for us all. Do not expect something that sounds to good to be true to work, it may not work and be a big disappointment. Check to see if they offer a trial first and if they insist on full payment and they are not a well known large company, but a little cautious. There is an old saying "Fools and their money is easily parted" but some of these people can be very convincing.

I don't know if that piece of equipment works for some or not, but I suspect if it does it will be the few rather then the many. As soon as they mentioned implant I would have wanted a lot of evidence that it worked first. If it does work a good Sleep Doctor would know about it, so I would ask them about anything first before doing a bit of research on my own.

There is also all sorts of research going on out there and all sorts of studies, but if you read the documents carefully you will find that a lot of it is a bit duff! Studies: They take to small a group of people and they make it turn out the way they are looking for the study to turn out, usually. If they took a large group form all over the country then the study would have more value to it. A lot of these studies are financed to get results that someone is looking for and if financed by big industry it is no surprise that it usually works out the way they want to a bigger or lesser degree!

Always be a bit sceptical of new devices claiming to cure things as there is a lot of weird claims out there.

At the moment, stick with your CPAP/APAP (preferred) machines, they are proven to work.

Unless you have a complicated Apnea with lots of other problems that require a Auto Bi-level or Servo type machine or require extra oxygen a good APAP and mask will work for most of us. However, It is very tempting for us to grab at something we can put in our pocket that can be used anytime without anyone noticing. We will just have to wait for something to come along that Sleep Doctors start to recommend rather than CPAP/APAP machines.

Untill than, sleep well with your best pall the Sleep Machine.

It can be just the brain forgetting to send your body the signal to breathe. I used to do this when I was tired or had just lost interest and drifted off into a world of my own. Then I would realise I was not breathing and start again with a gasp or a jolt and a little bit of a panic sometimes, but I could do this without anyone noticing.

30 seconds is a long time not to take a breath. Usually it is increasing the EPR that reduces centrals not the other way round. If you have it set at 3 at the moment, try it at 2, but wait a few nights to what result you get before adjusting it again. If it gets worse, just go back to where you were. Sometimes you just have to try things, but do it slowly and with small adjustments. Go with the best average result you get between Obstructive and central. If you have an APAP it should deal with Obstructive Apneas, however, it has a problem dealing with Central Apneas. I would go for the lowest you can get in Central and leave the machine to deal with Obstructive ones, however, you do not want them to increase a lot either, so it might be a balancing act. Sometimes reducing pressure can help, I used to get quite a few Centrals, then I got a new machine that runs at a lower average pressure and the Central Apneas dropped almost to 0, but I still get the odd one. With the APAP and it running at a lower pressure I sometimes get a 0.0 result, however, when the headgear slips or I have a bad night it has been as high as 0.6 AHI with one central. This can be a bit frustrating!

Yes, it is like you just forget to breath, then your brain suddenly realises you are not breathing. You have to make yourself breath. When this happens it makes you think, what if you delayed breathing for a few seconds more? Would you still have the sense to make yourself breathe? Makes you think!

I did stop breathing during the day, but only at the point when I was so tired I was barely functioning. I would catch myself stopping breathing, then start again with a jump. It has been reported a few times, but not after treatment has started. I honestly thought I was close to dying before I finally got a sleep study done and got a machine home next day. They thought it was so serious that I needed a machine right away. The consultant showed me the readout and the graph and said it was the most serious he had ever seen. However, I also responded the best he had ever seen,, so it had just built up until I couldn't function very well. I have never stopped breathing during the day since after a couple of weeks on the machine.