Natalie Forsythe
Sleep Surgery for Obstructive Sleep Apnea: What the Knife Can and Can't Fix
Somewhere in the folklore of sleep medicine there is a number: fifty percent. It's the figure people half-remember when they ask whether surgery can fix their snoring, their exhaustion, their…
Losing Weight Can Shrink Sleep Apnea. It Rarely Deletes It.
You have heard that losing weight can fix your breathing at night. That is roughly half true, and the half that is false is the half people bet on. Here is the plain version.
I Wore Nasal Strips for Six Weeks to See If I Could Dodge a Sleep Apnea Diagnosis
The nasal strips worked. My snoring dropped, my mouth stopped going dry, and my wife slept through the night for the first time in a season.
What "Mild" Sleep Apnea Actually Means When the Number Is Five
The number came back as 6.2. That was my apnea-hypopnea index — the AHI — from a home sleep test I'd worn for one night, a nasal cannula taped under my nose and a pulse sensor clipped to a finger.
The Half-Size Problem: Testing Whether CPAP Mask Fit Is About the Number on the Box
I spent two weeks asking a question that every sizing card refuses to answer: if I'm between a Small and a Medium, which way do I go?
I Ran My ResMed in Manual Mode for Three Weeks: What "CPAP Humidifier Settings" Actually Control
There is a number buried in your ResMed machine that you have probably never seen: 27°C. That is the tube temperature Climate Control Auto holds by default — the air the heated hose tries to deliver…
I Sat for 11 Hours a Day and Tracked My Sleep Apnea Risk for a Month
For one month I kept a record nobody asks for: total hours seated per day, against my overnight breathing data.
Sleep Apnea Causes: Why "Lose Weight and It'll Go Away" Is Only Half True
You have probably heard the short version. Somebody snores, somebody stops breathing in the night, and the advice arrives almost before the diagnosis does: lose some weight and it'll clear up.
I Slept With a Pulse Oximeter for a Week to Understand Obstructive Sleep Apnea
For seven nights I clipped a $40 pulse oximeter to my finger before bed — the kind sold for hikers worried about altitude, with a continuous-recording mode and a strap so it doesn't fall off when you…