Megan Caldwell
One Espresso, One Night, One Number: How to Read Health Trends Without a Lab
On a Tuesday in February I drank a double espresso at 4:12 p.m. — call it 150 milligrams of caffeine — specifically because I wanted to catch my own sleep in the act of falling apart.
Who Actually Gets Sleep Apnea? The Body Type Myth, Compared Against the Data
Picture the person you think has sleep apnea. For most people the image arrives fully assembled: a middle-aged man, heavyset, snoring loud enough to rattle a door, going quiet for a few seconds, then…
I Logged 90 Nights of Sleep Apnea Data to Learn What My AHI Actually Means
For three months I checked a number on my phone before I had checked my email. The number was my AHI — the count of breathing events my CPAP machine estimated per hour of sleep the night before.
I Took the Same Sleep Complaints to Three Kinds of Care: What Actually Catches Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Women
I spent four months carrying the same list of complaints — unrefreshing sleep, 3 a.m. wake-ups, a fatigue that coffee dented but never fixed — through three different doors: a primary care office, a…
The Fear That Ruins Sleep Testing Is the Belief You Have to Sleep Well
You have been handed a prescription for a sleep study, and somewhere between the parking lot and the front door a worry has installed itself: What if I can't fall asleep with all that stuff on me?
I Wore Three Head-Mounted Displays to Bed So You Don't Have To: What Virtual Reality Actually Does to Sleep Onset
For six weeks I ended my evenings the way a certain corner of the wellness-tech market keeps insisting I should: strapped into a headset, watching a virtual campfire or a slow drift over digital…
What Actually Happens During a Sleep Apnea Diagnosis (From Someone Who Wired Themselves Up First)
The first night I wore a fingertip pulse oximeter to bed — the thirty-dollar kind, the kind that clips on like a clothespin and glows red through the dark — it told me my blood oxygen had dropped to…
When Should You Take Your Wearable Sleep Tracker Data to a Doctor?
Your watch told you that you slept 7 hours and 14 minutes, that your "sleep score" was 87, and that you spent 14% of the night in deep sleep. The number felt good.
Sleep Hygiene Is Real, But It Won't Fix the Magnesium You're Missing
The night I decided to test this, I took 200 mg of magnesium glycinate at 9:40 p.m. and wrote the time on a sticky note.