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> If you have excessive daytime sleepiness, confusion, and difficulty thinking Ive always wondered and never found data: do you have an idea of how many people

by shados 8y ago

> If you have excessive daytime sleepiness, confusion, and difficulty thinking Ive always wondered and never found data: do you have an idea of how many people with these symptoms get prescribed mental disorder medicines from not knowing the real root cause? I can picture this stuff being misdiagnosed pretty hard by some practitioners.

auntienomen 8y ago
I don't know what the statistics are, but they definitely tried this with me. Aside from the usual sleepiness and confusion, sleep apnea can also cause anxiety. (No wonder, you're basically running on cortisol by the time it gets bad enough to notice.) I don't fit the standard profile for someone with sleep apnea, so they pushed anxiety meds pretty hard on me. Had to insist on a sleep apnea test.
- shados 8y ago
  Yeah, that's what Im scared of. I personally have a lot of the symptoms. I have extremely low attention span, awful memory, I wake up 5 times a night, weird dreams, can't focus at work, can't keep track of anything for more than a few minutes... Talking to my doctor and going through my health history, he immediately ruled out sleep apnea and started suspecting ADHD and such. While it definitely could be that, for the first half of my life I was the opposite... extremely focused, top of my class, photographic long term memory, you name it. I need to convince someone to let me do a sleep study
  - Hydraulix989 8y ago
    That sounds a LOT like sleep apnea. I'm not sure how your doctor could _possibly_ rule it out without a sleep study (it's pretty much impossible -- he would have to confirm any potential normalcy by watching you sleep and breathe).
01100011 8y ago
Good question. I think the sea change will come when there are cheap and widely available sleep monitors which include continuous pulse oximetry. We're close, but not quite there yet.

by shados 8y ago

auntienomen 8y ago

I don't know what the statistics are, but they definitely tried this with me. Aside from the usual sleepiness and confusion, sleep apnea can also cause anxiety. (No wonder, you're basically running on cortisol by the time it gets bad enough to notice.) I don't fit the standard profile for someone with sleep apnea, so they pushed anxiety meds pretty hard on me. Had to insist on a sleep apnea test.

shados 8y ago
Yeah, that's what Im scared of. I personally have a lot of the symptoms. I have extremely low attention span, awful memory, I wake up 5 times a night, weird dreams, can't focus at work, can't keep track of anything for more than a few minutes... Talking to my doctor and going through my health history, he immediately ruled out sleep apnea and started suspecting ADHD and such. While it definitely could be that, for the first half of my life I was the opposite... extremely focused, top of my class, photographic long term memory, you name it. I need to convince someone to let me do a sleep study
- Hydraulix989 8y ago
  That sounds a LOT like sleep apnea. I'm not sure how your doctor could _possibly_ rule it out without a sleep study (it's pretty much impossible -- he would have to confirm any potential normalcy by watching you sleep and breathe).

01100011 8y ago

Good question. I think the sea change will come when there are cheap and widely available sleep monitors which include continuous pulse oximetry. We're close, but not quite there yet.