Laura Pendleton
I Read 30 VA Sleep Apnea Decisions Looking for the TBI Link. Here's What the Paper Trail Actually Says.
A veteran in my reading group filed for sleep apnea secondary to a 2007 blast injury. He was sure the link was settled — everyone in his Facebook group "knew" TBI causes sleep apnea.
I Slept Nine Hours and Felt Worse: Living With Sleep Apnea Fatigue Before and After CPAP
The more I slept, the more tired I got. For about two years I treated exhaustion as a math problem — not enough hours in, so add hours — and the math kept failing.
What I Learned Reporting Out Sleep Apnea Surgery as a CPAP Dropout
The first thing most people are told after a CPAP machine stops working for them is that sleep apnea surgery is a last resort.
What Sleep Apnea Actually Steals: A Four-Week Self-Audit of Deep Sleep
A counterintuitive claim, stated plainly: for most people with moderate sleep apnea, the disease is not really about breathing. It is about deep sleep.
Bruxism and Sleep Apnea: What the Link Actually Looks Like at 3 a.m.
A colleague told me, kindly, that my jaw clicked twice during a video call. I hadn't noticed. That night I went to bed wearing a cheap fingertip pulse oximeter on one hand and a single-use adhesive…
The Best Cooling Mattress Isn't Always the One That Feels Coolest: A Heat-Retention Test
The standard advice for a hot sleeper shopping the $500–$2,500 range goes like this: get a hybrid with pocketed coils, look for gel-infused foam in the comfort layer, and prioritize a phase-change…
Jet Lag, Melatonin, and the Sleep Aids That Actually Move the Clock
The morning after I flew Sydney to Los Angeles — fourteen hours in the air, nineteen hours backward on the clock — my Oura ring told me my readiness score was 58. Not catastrophic. Not good.
Alcohol and Sleep: What a Nightcap Actually Does to Your Brain at 3 a.m.
There is a particular kind of awakening that drinkers know well. It happens at 3:14 a.m., or 2:47, or some other unreasonable hour.
Does CBT-I Actually Work for Chronic Insomnia? An Honest Answer
You have probably already tried the obvious things. Magnesium. A later coffee cutoff. The app that makes ocean sounds. Maybe a short course of zolpidem that worked until it didn't.