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Re: Your help is greatly needed

Posted by Bird Watcher on March 26, 2007 at 11:37:30:

In Reply to: Your help is greatly needed posted by Tired in Albany on March 26, 2007 at 10:29:48:

Some straight forward advice here, I'll jump right into it:

1. If you're excessively overweight, go on a diet, urgently, hopefully under your doctor's supervision. Apnea is not helped by being overweight, not always cured by losing weight, but NEVER helped by gaining weight.

2. If you're not getting good results on auto-cpap mode with your machine, go back to CPAP mode. All Auto pap's can be switched to CPAP mode. Auto pap mode is for those that already can do fairly well on CPAP mode but are looking for better results or to aviod air swallowing. You should also be using a CPAP machine with exhale relief to see if that helps. Exhale relief is a feature called 'C-Flex' on Respironics CPAP's and 'ERP' on ResMed CPAP's. This feature can really help some poeple.

3. The structure of some people's jaw is not always helped by CPAP alone. A person's tongue is connected to the jaw at the chin, and big tongues can partially block the airway during sleep. CPAP may not be strong enough to move the tongue out of the way and at pressure that won't wake you. It could be strong enough at a high pressure, but then you couldn't sleep with it. There are special dental devices that hold the jaw (and tongue) forward of the upper teeth during sleep. These devices can be worn with CPAP during sleep, in difficult cases, for better results. I would think you would want to consult a dentist about this. Most bigger cities have dentists who are in this special practice.

Please don't consider surgery until you've tried these suggestions and found they are of no help. Surgery to the throat area is risky. Surgery to the nose area is a bit less risky, but often does not cure apnea.

Good Luck.

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  • Sleep Deprivation due to Sleep Apnea and insufficient sleep are common and can present as insomnia, narcolepsy, or idiopathic hypersomnia. In infants and children sleep problems commonly present themselves as ADD or ADHD.


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