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Emergency Mask Repair Using Dental Floss

My CPAP masks seem to break at the most inopportune times and if I don’t have a spare handy, it can mean one miserable nights sleep–the kind we all used to have before getting our machines. In those situations where you need a temporary repair, I’ve found that dental floss works great. I just tie it around the air tube where it meets the mask and then use a slip not to tie it to the little plastic connector at the end of the head-strap. It doesn’t leave a bunch of goo like duct tape (which I’ve also tried) does and it’s amazingly strong stuff so it usually doesn’t break in the middle of the night. I find that even when I’m on the road I almost always have some dental floss handy, so it’s a nice quick fix in a pinch.

June 29th, 2009 | Posted in CPAP, MacGuyver, Masks, Respironics | No Comments

Sleepy Workers Cost Companies Money

It stands to reason that sleepy employees are going to be less productive than fully rested workers. Anyone who has had a sleepy day at work can attest to that. But Dr. Benjamin Gerson says that Sleep Apnea also contributes to increased healthcare costs for businesses due to health problems associated with Sleep Apnea. Dr Gerson said “the increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome which is the combination of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and obesity can be attributed to sleep apnea.”
Yosemite Stream by Jon Sullivan
From the article:

Sleep disorders not only affect worker productivity, but also cause weight gain that leads to hypertension, diabetes and other debilitating medical conditions, according to Dr. Benjamin Gerson, medical director of University Services, a sleep diagnostic and treatment provider in Philadelphia. Increased health concerns then result in increased healthcare costs to the employer. “58 million days of work are missed each year due to obesity related health issues,” Dr. Gerson commented during a presentation at
the World Congress Executive Forum on Rewards & Incentives to Improve Employee Health, held June 10-11 in Dallas.

Sleepy Employees Hurt the Bottom Line, Says Dr. Benjamin Gerson [PRWEB]

July 26th, 2008 | Posted in CPAP | Comments Off

Another Health Reason to Use CPAP

There is a new reason for OSA patients to use CPAP therapy: avoiding nighttime sudden death! According to a Reuters story, researchers have found a link between nighttime heart attacks and untreated Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Untreated OSA sufferers were 600 percent more likely to have nighttime heart attacks!

The body changes that occur with OSA may lead to blockage of the coronary arteries and heart attack, Dr. Virend K. Somers and associates explain in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. If OSA is a trigger for a heart attack, a peak of heart attack symptoms would be expected during the night.

To investigate this premise, Somers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues studied 92 heart attack patients in whom the time the chest pain began could be documented. The patients underwent overnight sleep tests 2 to 3 weeks after their heart attack.

OSA was identified in 64 patients (70 percent). Those with and without OSA were generally similar in terms of their health background and current medications.

From midnight to 6 am, the frequency of heart attack was higher in OSA patients, whereas from 6 am to noon, it was higher in patients without OSA. All told, patients with OSA were 6-times more likely to have to have a heart attack at night compared with patients without OSA.

Link to article.

July 25th, 2008 | Posted in CPAP, News, Sleep Apnea | No Comments

Sounding the Alarm for Clean CPAP Masks

When I first read the article over at www.IHateCPAP.com (not a joke, it’s really the name of the site), I have to admit I was a bit alarmed. Bandying about terms like “sinus and ear infections,” “bronchitis,” “constant mucous surplus” (ew), “infections,” “micro-organisms,” the article certainly caught my attention. But after a bit of reflection I decided that the article was just plain alarmist. Was I surprised that a blog with the phrase “I Hate CPAP” in its title was prone to a little hyperbole? I guess not. But it’s still off-putting just the same. When I read in the comments section that the Good Doctor is not an MD specializing in sleep disorders, the picture became a little clearer and it also explained the sales pitch at the end of the article for a “healthier” alternative to CPAP involving oral appliance therapy. You see, Dr. Shapiro is a dentist and he just happens to prescribe oral appliance therapy for a living.

So I decided not to post a link to the article.

It’s clearly inflammatory and biased against CPAP therapy, and I really don’t condone using scare tactics to sell a product. I also agree with a poster named “Joe” who left the following in the comments section:

Dr. Shapira:

While I respect your decision to market your products, I find it disturbing that you publish false and misleading information in order to scare people away from competing therapy.

CPAP equipment is not maintenance intensive. I have been on CPAP for the better part of 6 months and have yet to have an issue with colds, infections, etc.

CPAP equipment is easy to maintain. All it requires, according to the manufacturers specific instructions, is a daily wash in warm soapy water. That’s all. In fact, the manufacturers directions specifically state NOT to use antiseptic products on the equiment as this may damage it.

In Dr. Shapiro’s defense, he did publish the dissenting comment and even left a lengthy response defending his position. I tend to side with Joe on the matter of mask and tubing cleaning. I also doubt CPAP manufacturers would recommend using warm soapy water daily if having two seperate mask-and-tube setups alternately soaking in tubs of antiseptic solution was really necessary to avoid infections and bronchitis. (In fact, my own experience is that I have had far fewer respiratory problems since I started using CPAP and my mask-and-tube cleaning regimen has been far from stellar.) It’s also interesting to note that our friend the oral appliance salesman acknowledges that CPAP is virtually 100% effective for those who use it like they are supposed to.

But therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? CPAP can be hard to get used to and most of us would chuck our CPAP machines and masks if we could find something better–or at least as good but more comfortable. But a lot of people have a hard time tolerating CPAP therapy and give up. So it’s not an issue of the Bad Guys versus the Good Guys, it’s really about getting people the help they need to deal with this disease, and if oral appliences are part of the solution then I’m all for them. I’ll probably ask my Sleep Doctor about them the next time I make an office visit to see what he thinks. But until I find something better, I’m sure glad I’ve got my CPAP machine.

July 23rd, 2008 | Posted in CPAP, Oral Appliances, Sleep Apnea | No Comments

CPAP and Rafting the Grand Canyon

Dave Busher writes about his rafting trip down the Grand Canyon using a battery powered CPAP machine. He reports that he slept well the whole trip except for the night he spent dipping his ankle in the 50 degree water every 20 minutes due to a scorpion bite. (After consulting with my physician I have been assured that scorpion bites are not a common complication associated with CPAP therapy.) How big a battery did he take for a full week away from the power grid? Big. In fact, 66 pound, 100 amp-hour big.

CPAP and Rafting the Grand Canyon

Read the rest of this entry »

July 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Batteries, CPAP, Camping, Sleep Apnea | No Comments

Winter Camping with CPAP

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were reminiscing about camping with our respective families as children. She remembered how much fun she had camping out nearly every Summer with her mom and three siblings. I had similar fond memories. I especially enjoyed breakfast when we were travelling cross country. Dad would always buy fun things like sweet rolls and milk, or those little variety pack miniature boxes of “sugar” cereals–the kind we normally never got. Dad would cut open the boxes along the perforations, open up the “barn doors” and pour the milk right in the box. Sometimes they leaked, but it didn’t matter when you were sitting at a pic-nic table.

“Those are great memories.” I said, ”Why don’t we go camping more?”

She looked at me to see if I was joking.

“We don’t go camping because you hate camping.”

“I don’t hate camping.” I said, feeling a little defensive. “Besides, we go camping all the time. What about the time we went camping with your mother to the San Juans Islands?”

“Honey, that was 15 years ago.”

“Oh.”

Okay, she’s right. Camping isn’t my favorite thing to do, especially since I’m the one that has to do all the heavy lifting of putting up and taking down tents that my Dad used to do. But since my oldest boy started in Scouts two years ago, I’ve been doing a lot more of it. For example, last weekend we went on a snow camp out at a ranch along the road to Cascade, Idaho. There was literally 5 feet of snow on the ground.

As mentioned in previous posts, when your CPAP machine doesn’t work on a camp out, it makes for a very long, tiring experience. This time around I was confident that I was well prepared. I had my fully charged, massively over-sized, 25 lb., 30-Amp-Hour marine battery with enough capacity to run my CPAP for several nights without a recharge. I even brought a Mr. Heater portable propane heater so I could warm things up if it got too cold. There was no way I would go without sleep that night.

My Respironics REMstar Plus worked perfectly when I hooked it up and I drifted off to sleep at 11:30 and slept soundly for about three hours. That’s when my CPAP machine stopped working. The LCD backlighting was flashing, just like it did at Blue Lake when my battery voltage dipped too low. How could this be possible? I had tested my battery before leaving, so I knew it had a full charge, but no amount of “rebooting” my machine seemed to work. The rest of the night was a stark reminder of how unrestful sleep is without my CPAP machine. I staggered through the following day like a zombie.

When I got home I hooked up my battery to the charger: the needle swung to the far left: it was fully charged! So at work on Monday I talked to an Electrical Engineer friend of mine. How could my fully charged 30+ Amp-Hour battery possibly not run my CPAP machine? He said it probably just got too cold. I had the battery on the tent floor next to me, but under two thin, uninsulated sheets of fabric was snow. Effectively my battery was on ice. My engineer friend thinks I may have gotten a full night sleep if I had just put the battery on a sheet of styrofoam to keep it warm. D’Oh!

If I had realized that cold would be an issue, I would have kept my battery indoors for several days before the campout to get it warmed up to room temperature (the garage is cold and batteries are heavy so they change temperature slowly) and I would have kept it in an insulated box.

This is all just a theory at this point. It could be that my CPAP machine just doesn’t like the cold and the battery wasn’t the problem in either case. But I intend to get a more definitive answer before my next cold-weather camp out. When I do, I’ll let you know here.

February 12th, 2008 | Posted in Batteries, CPAP, Camping, Masks, Respironics, Sleep Apnea | 2 Comments

Maskless CPAP with CPAP Pro

I heard an ad on the radio today about “mask free” CPAP and I almost didn’t even go to their website. There are just so many dubious remedies on the market for CPAP that I was worried that this would be one to add to the list. But, to my surprise, I was actually impressed by the product I found there. As you can see by the drawing, the product employs a “Boil n Bite” mouthpiece like football players or boxers use to maintain the position of the nasal buds against the nose. (I guess the mouthpiece explains why the theme to Rocky starts playing in my head every time I look at the picture.)

One of the things that I find interesting about CPAP is the difficulty of a seemingly straightforward engineering problem: keeping a mask or nose buds held against the face while sleeping. I’ve used at least 5 different masks–including a direct-nasal system held in place by head straps–and none of them work perfectly. It’s just hard to get that perfect balance from the extremes of leaving angry red welts on the bridge of the nose from an ill-fitting or too-tight mask to having a mask that wakes up the neighbors by making loud “raspberry” sounds on your cheek due to air leaks. I don’t know how well the CPAP Pro system works, but they certainly get an A for originality.

If you’re a mouth-breather like me, the news is good. Apparently the device doesn’t require that you clench your jaw all night, but will stay in place even if you open your mouth a bit. You can also use a normal chin strap, which I imagine is the approach that I would take if I were to try this. I’ve thought about getting a Hybrid Mask, but getting rid of the mask part altogether is certainly an intriguing idea. If any of you has tried this setup I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

February 7th, 2008 | Posted in CPAP, Masks, Sleep Apnea | No Comments

All in the Family

When I first realized I had Sleep Apnea my wife couldn’t convince me to do anything about it. I don’t know if all marriages are like mine, but if you want to keep the relationship strong, sometimes you have to let someone else tell your spouse what they already know. In my case it was that I needed to get tested for Sleep Apnea and the Third Party was my mother-in-law.

She brought her CPAP machine with her on a visit and convinced me to put on the mask for a couple of minutes. At 8 PSI her pressure was just over half of what I needed, but somehow putting on that mask was the turning point for me. Within a few weeks I had my own machine and was sleeping better than I had in years.

Well, life has a way of going in cycles. Now I’m the one gently suggesting to my wife that she seems to stop breathing when she sleeps. But it wasn’t until my sister–who is a Registered Nurse–came to town recently that my wife finally passed her own turning point. My sister saw her stop breathing several times during a nap and told her, “That was scary. You really need to get tested.” That was all it took, she started calling doctors the next day.

I’ll let you know when we get her results.

December 17th, 2007 | Posted in Sleep Apnea, Sleep Studies | No Comments

Of MacGyver and Gorilla Tape

The instructions to my Respironics nasal mask clearly explain that you should disconnect the headgear from the mask when you put it on take it off. Now I know why. I broke my mask the other night. I was just pulling it over my head when a small piece of plastic broke off where my headgear snaps onto the mask.

I suddenly had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to sleep well that night. Read the rest of this entry »

December 12th, 2007 | Posted in BiPAP, CPAP, MacGuyver, Masks, Respironics | 2 Comments

Float Chargers

I wish that someone had told me about Float Chargers a long time ago. I got mine at Harbor Freight for about $5 on sale. By the way, if you do go to Harbor Freight, while you’re at it you might as well pick up a Harbor Freight digital multimeter so that you can measure the voltage on your battery. They are almost always on sale for $3, which is nothing short of amazing. Mine reads about 12.73 volts when it’s fully charged. But I digress. Read the rest of this entry »

December 11th, 2007 | Posted in Batteries, CPAP, Camping, Hiking | 1 Comment

Emergency Mask Repair Using Dental Floss

Sleepy Workers Cost Companies Money

Another Health Reason to Use CPAP

Sounding the Alarm for Clean CPAP Masks

CPAP and Rafting the Grand Canyon

Winter Camping with CPAP

Maskless CPAP with CPAP Pro

All in the Family

Of MacGyver and Gorilla Tape

Float Chargers

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