Admittedly, (b) is now less of an issue since there are a handful of auto-titrating machines on the market now. They’re less reliable than a sleep study, but they’re better than nothing.
It is true that other things can be the issue. There is a place for sleep studies, and at home sleep studies can detect sleep apnea fast and cheaply, and should be the first option, unless some other ?neurological? symptom is already presenting itself.
And I totally agree about the CPAP – any morning after I accidentally take it off in my sleep (pretty rare, but happens especially as the seasons change), I feel like absolute garbage. It's amazing what actually breathing through the night can do for you.
This is used to justify eyeglass prescriptions.
This bullshit really needs to go, especially for eyeglass prescriptions. Making people wait weeks for another eye exam when their glasses break after the first year is honestly bullshit.
(In some parts of CA, Heal will send a doctor to your house for a one-time fee of $159. And after my mom complained to said doctor about my snoring, their doctor ordered me a sleep study. So yes, that's one way to get it.)
That said, out here, most of the small independent offices that used to exist have been bought out by one of 3 medical groups. And with the large medical groups it's pretty hard to get a concrete number sometimes.
Like all medical things they're (a) expensive (b) limited in supply (c) you don't have the knowledge, experience or impartiality to self-diagnose (d) you can't tell whether you need the device but buying it anyways removes limited supply from the market (e) you don't know how to calibrate it (f) you might hurt yourself.
Same reason it's insane Americans are allowed to self-refer to specialists: you don't know which specialist you need, you don't know whether you need a specialist at all, there's a limited quantity and you're likely just squandering a valuable resource.
In both cases letting unqualified end users have at it could just as easily increase the price not decrease it.
Glasses, though, no excuse.
Simply sleep with an APAP for a week, review the pressure graph and draw a line at the bottom of the values. Then set the minimum pressure to that number, or slightly less and done.
Review every few months.
If you ask a Dr. about this they'll talk about the 1% of less cases that will not be correctly adjusted by such a machine. But all you need to do is ask the patient after a week "do you feel better?". If they say no you can go for the more complicated options.
The vast majority of patients take months or longer to get acclimated to the machine. Most will say they feel /worse/, because the machine gets in the way of their sleep at first.
I look forward to hearing more medical pearls from the web design community.
5, 6 hours in a base minimum for me to not feel sluggish and possibly even start the day with a headache.
Sounds like your experience is with much older machines. Is that reasonable to say?
Also: wore it 8 hours the first night, and every night since. Not that hard to get used to.