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Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

Slightly tangential to the study here but I’ve been going down the sleep apnea rabbit hole in recent months and I strongly encourage folks to investigate their sleep. A lot of people have sleep apnea and don’t realize it. You don’t have to snore to have it. A surprising statistic I found was 20-30% of people with ADHD have sleep apnea. A lot of people may be treating symptoms of sleep apnea like ADHD and high blood pressure with medications while ignoring the root cause. My experience with this has been that doctors are surprisingly ignorant. They’ll happy prescribe you medications for anxiety, ADHD, blood pressure for years, and never think to ask you about your sleep. Do some of your own investigations or ask about it if you have any suspicions.

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I'm going to add myself as a data point. After suffering years of feeling sleepy regardless of how much I slept and frequently unmotivated and withdrawn, I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. A few years ago I was given Dexedrine, Ritalin, Adderall, and I even tried self-medicating with modafinil to ameliorate the symptoms of what doctors thought was ADHD with varying levels of success; but the drug-free treatment of sleep apnea with a BiPAP machine got rid of all of these issues; in addition, I feel about ten years younger.

Do you have any suggestions on how can I not too expensively measure my sleep quality at home?

If you want to confirm a severe case of apnea, it's extremely simple: record yourself during the night. Then listen to the recording and look for moments when you stop breathing completely.

Milder cases of apnea require a more thorough counting of apnea events to confirm; that ought to be done in a proper sleep lab.

Thank you, really for your insight.

I’m also diagnosed with ADHD and I currently take everything from Ritalin, to Strattera. And self medicating with modafinil.

I’m going to look into this, again, thank you for the insight.

If you're lucky enough to have decent medical insurance I'd simply bring it up to your primary care doctor for a referral or sleep doctor in your area (you usually don't need a referral if you want to seek out a sleep doctor directly).

They will have you come in for a visit to talk about your symptoms and evaluate you, then usually they'll schedule you for an in-home test, which means you get a little device to take home and strap to your chest. It'll have a pulse-oximeter you connect to your finger, and an air flow meter that you run to your nose using a nasal canula.

If this isn't conclusive or something else seems to be going on they will bring you into the lab to sleep with even more devices connected to you measuring brain waves, muscle activity, etc. These usually look like a hotel room so it's not too uncomfortable.

I wanted to get a head start on my own so I set up a camera that has night vision to record myself since I happened to have one. (Lots of home security type cameras will have a night vision mode.) It wasn't particularly conclusive, I couldn't really make out that my breathing was stopping, but it did make me realize I seem to wake up and move a lot. Additionally I was surprised to learn I sleep with my mouth closed, since I've always gone to sleep with it open.

There are options I've seen online from various online CPAP stores to order an in-home test as described above, I don't know how reliable they are, presumably they mail you the kit and you mail it back.

> Additionally I was surprised to learn I sleep with my mouth closed, since I've always gone to sleep with it open.

Do you grind your teeth or clench your jaw when you sleep? If you grind your teeth your dentist will be able to tell. If you clench your jaw you will wake up with muscle soreness.

When I was a trader I had a lot of stress and would slam my jaw shut with enough speed to wake myself up, and in one case, break a dental appliance.

I'm not sure if you're implying there is a connection between bruxism and sleep apnea, but after a quick search, it looks like there is[0]. I've dealt with some of the issues mentioned above -- in addition to bruxism -- and never even thought to make the connection. So, whether you meant to or not, you may have just helped my tremendously. Thanks!

- 0: https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/the-link-between-sl...

Very happy to hear I've helped you!

I have also dealt with both bruxism and sleep apnea so I know the symptoms. I also thought the same thing about going to sleep with my mouth open. I figured we had something in common.

Eventually I had surgery to fix my sleep apnea. Saying the surgery was a life changing experience is an understatement. Getting proper sleep for the first time after being tired my entire life was a giant step forward for me as a human being.

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