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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

I've seen many articles and comments about apnea and its serious consequences. The thing is, I have no idea if I have it. As far as I know I sleep fine, so I don't bother looking deeper, but I have this nagging FOMO doubt that I could maybe magically drastically improve my sleep. Wish there was some simple test that could rule out even starting down this rabbit hole.

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The most simple test is to use a continuously logging pulse oximeter (not an intermittent-sample type like found on some smart watches; also worth nothing continuous-logging sports watches at the high end of the market are usually very unreliable at O2 sat monitoring insuring sleep). Look for drops in O2 saturation dipping into the low 90s/high 80s intermittently. If you see them, you probably have an apnea issue.

That said, the over the counter devices that can do this reliably generally cost half as much (or more) as an at home sleep test.

I had it for years and had no idea, but had occasional nightmares about choking, so my wife suggested I get checked out. Eventually I got checked out and diagnosed, but didn't take it particularly seriously until I picked up a logging pulse oximiter which would show me my blood oxygen level overnight, and even give me a little vibration to wake me up if I stopped breathing long enough for it to drop below 80%. I don't wear it frequently, but when I do, it buzzes and wakes me up all night long if I'm not wearing the CPAP. If I do wear the CPAP, it's fine. [aside: I'm not sure what brand it is, but it and its software looks exactly like the one at getwellue.com, so I'm assuming those are at least the same OEM. The only thing I hate about it is that it uses a usb-micro connector for the charger, and the cable is so short I had to time travel back to 2003 to find a longer one.]

The blood oxygen level dropping so low so frequently is what finally motivated me to take it seriously. Your heart goes into overdrive when that happens, and it's not good for you long term to be going at 90bpm all night. It increases your blood pressure too. I actually feel fine if I don't use the CPAP, but having concrete data showing it's probably taking its toll is very useful.

There are some clinics where sleep problems are treated and where you can go to sleep while being monitored by various medical devices. If there are any sleep problems, they should be identified in this way.

Sleep apnea is a serious condition. I believe that if you would have it you would wake up suffocating, unless you would die in your sleep.

My mother had sleep apnea as a consequence of severe surgery followed by a few weeks in intensive care.

Fortunately, in her case that was a temporary condition. After a few terrible weeks during which I was almost unable to sleep because I feared that I will not wake up in time during her next apnea crisis to help her, the apnea crises disappeared suddenly, from one night to the other, exactly when I was about to buy a CPAP apparatus.

STOP-BANG sleep apnea screening scale

https://www.mdcalc.com/stop-bang-score-obstructive-sleep-apn...

It is impossible to rule out apnea without a sleep study. My kid had apnea, and I'd lay in bed with him for hours, and I never noticed anything beyond sleeping with his mouth open, or slight stirring. Sleep study revealed that he was consistently waking up 6 times an hour.

His apnea got cured with EASE surgery. It dramatically changed his personality. Sleep apnea is often misdiagnosed as ADHD in kids.

Dry mouth and headache upon waking are common, though not a definitive test. Have someone watch you sleep and watch for periods of not breathing followed by strained gasping for air. Still not a substitute for a sleep study. The peer comment suggesting a logging pulse oximeter sounds interesting.

sound like the OP has some thoughts.

But I am using the app SnoreLab which records me at night and scores what percent of the night I'm snoring and how loud (and lets me listen to it back).

The lowest tech way is to just record audio of yourself sleeping. If you snore, you've got it. If you stop breathing / choke / do a "snort snort snort"--you've really got it.

I urge you to set aside a few nights and get this figured out! It could be the most important decision you make for your health in your entire life.

Is snoring really an indicator of sleep apnea? I'm sure that those with apnea likely do snore, but I'm not convinced that everyone who snores has sleep apnea. That would indicate that almost everyone has apnea.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/snoring/sympt...

"Snoring is often associated with Obstructive Sleep Apnea... Not everyone who snores has OSA".

Snoring is really, really bad. A cute little "snooze" could be okay, but anything more than that should be considered a potential life-shortener and potential-limiter.

And yes, I am saying that almost everyone is in danger of apnea. I think this is one of the many ignored epidemics of our time, similar and related to obesity.

That's it, I'm getting a PulsOx sensor and breaking out my Raspi and getting to the bottom of this! :-)

Nice!!

If you find one that lets you extract the data directly, please post. The one I got just has this proprietary app that communicates with it via bluetooth, and I'd much rather have it in a proper time-series format and automate the data-pull.

Also, if you do end up getting a CPAP, those things have a fascinating amount of time-series data stored on their SD cards. If I recall mine logs about 20 independent datapoints, which is a surprising number for something that's just blowing air into your nose. :D But for example, it can detect when you're snoring and it logs a boolean for that all night long.

The off-the-shelf devices look pretty appealing for not having to build the actual on-finger package from scratch. I'd bet the Bluetooth device would be easy to read from something other than an app so I'll give that a try.

I came across this writeup by Thejesh GN that I hope to replicate. https://thejeshgn.com/2020/08/05/reverse-engineering-a-bluet...

(will submit to the queue too, I think this is cool).

Neat. I think this device is fundamentally different from mine in that it appears to stream the events over bluetooth rather than storing them locally and then downloading the "session" over bluetooth. Make sure you don't get one like mine if you want to stream them.

Most people experience some degree of apnea. They don't diagnose you unless you have more than 5 events per hour.

Not everyone who snores has sleep apnea, but it is a HUGE symptom. Basically if you snore and have even ONE of the other symptoms, you should see a doctor. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/snoring/sympt...

However, apnea is very very common and very hereditary. If all the men in your family snore and wake up multiple times per night to pee and are tired all the time, as they are in my family, it's easy to think of those things as just a part of aging.

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