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Comment by garyclarke27 | Hacker News Reader

I never had a problem with adopting CPAP. It's been transformative for me, sleep quality is literally 10 times better than without, I wake up feeling awful if I have a nap without it. Why would someone keep a mask on for 4 hours, then take it off? does not make sense to me.

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1) People who are not fully awake often do things for no clear reason -- I regularly wake up finding that I have no memory of removing my mask after 2-5 hours.

2) If you're prone to nightmares, waking up with something covering your face that causes bizarre sensations when you try to breathe through your mouth or speak may disturb you enough to tear it off.

I pretty regularly take my socks off while sleeping and occasionally take my pants off, no way is my sleeping self not going to take a mask off.

Congrats to you. 40% of people probably wish they could tolerate it.

> Why would someone keep a mask on for 4 hours, then take it off?

I started CPAP about a decade ago and in the beginning I would take the mask off in the middle of the night, while sleeping-- completely unaware of what I was doing.

My doctor said this is common with many patients.

Frustrated, I started taping the mask to my face with medical tape.

I only stopped taping up my face when I was able to make it through the night without waking up to my sleeping self trying to rip the mask off.

It took me a year to get used to my mask, and I use a pillow mask. The difference with and without is night and day, yeah, but man adapting fucking _sucked_.

restlessness, semi wakefulness doing dumb actions.

also, I think the default cover-the-whole-nose mask for sleep apnea isn't really good. Maybe people pull it off. I found the nasal pillows a significant improvement (maybe that's what P10 is?

I know someone who snored like crazy, would quit breathing at night and was diagnosed with sleep apnea. She got a CPAP and tried to use it for a year. Snoring was worse although it helped her not stop breathing. But it gave her some form of pneumonia or some such and she began coughing all night! Then it spread to daytime. Then everyone around her started getting the cough. I had to take antibiotics to shake off the infection I got from being around her.

Believe me the introduction of CPAP into this person's life was a f*ing disaster for her and everyone who was around her that year! She went to see ~11 doctors, finally quit the CPAP on her own, without any doctor's suggestion. Things got better immediately. Then out of desperation she went to a Chinese herbal doctor. Somehow after that the cough began to die down. I make no claims for Chinese herbal cures - I'm amazed anything worked after that year.

While apnea is real, CPAP looks like a scam to me, for the sleep clinics and especially for the CPAP makers and suppliers.

As someone who has used one and who has family members that use one, I can tell you they 100% work and it would be insane not to use one once you discover how different your sleep is. You immediately notice a difference, and there is no question the treatment is effective.

Your claim is that CPAP gave this person a _communicable_ chest infection, which was then cured by herbal medicine? How could that possibly happen unless your local distilled water supply was contaminated with tuberculosis bacteria?

Improper cleaning maybe. People get Legionnaire's from shitty motel rooms with AC units that don't drain correctly, so it isn't that farfetched for a closed loop respirator full of moisture to harbor nasty pathogens all the same.

Yes, you can get infections from poorly maintained CPAPs (or respirators -- are those a scam, too?) but that's not going to spread to your whole family.

What part of "I make no claims for Chinese herbal cures" did you not understand?

It just underscores how batshit crazy people are and the low quality of some so-called "medical cures". Sometimes that includes "snake-oil salesmen", a category into which I now put CPAP vendors.

> While apnea is real, CPAP looks like a scam to me, for the sleep clinics and especially for the CPAP makers and suppliers.

100% not a scam. Was life changing for me, and the two other coworkers I know who are on it.

*"100% not a scam. Was life changing for me, and the two other coworkers I know who are on it."&

Yeah, but so is Jesus to some people.

Well... instantly measurably dropped my blood pressure and stopped me nodding off to sleep while on the way to and from work. But I guess Jesus performs all sorts of objectively measurable miracles too.

I would say that CPAP is more of a Holy Spirit miracle, but why place limits on that?

What? No, CPAP makes my sleep measurably (literally) better. But yeah, different people react to them in various ways. A relative couldn't keep hers on all night for a month, while I put mine on the first night and slept like the dead, better than I had in years.

That said, I find the pneumonia story a little tough to swallow. Correlation is not always causation. CPAP machines don't spontaneously spawn new diseases. Does she use the humidifier? What water does she use? Does she change it every day?

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