Patrick Sumner
Obstructive Sleep Apnea: What the Snoring Actually Means
The advice is everywhere, and it is not wrong: if you snore and you're exhausted during the day, get checked for sleep apnea. Print it on a poster. It has sent a lot of people to the right clinic.
How Shift Work Disorder Is Diagnosed — and When "Just Push Through" Stops Working
The standard advice for anyone starting night shifts is some version of your body will adjust. Sleep badly for a couple of weeks, the reasoning goes, then your rhythm resets and you're fine.
I Recorded My Son Sleeping for Two Weeks: A Parent's Field Guide to Pediatric Sleep Apnea
Here is the short version, stated up front so a tired parent can stop reading and go to bed: most childhood snoring is harmless, pediatric sleep apnea is real but uncommon, and the single most useful…
CPAP Maintenance Versus Bedroom Hygiene: Which One Actually Protects Your Sleep?
Pull the water chamber off a humidifier that's been sitting since this morning and tip it toward the light.
COPD Basics for People Who Wake Up Tired: The Myth of the "Smoker's Cough"
A cough you've had for years stops being a symptom and starts being a personality trait. The morning hack, the throat-clear before you talk, the way you avoid stairs and call it getting older.
I Wore a Home Sleep Apnea Test for a Month to Check the "Big Necks, Bad Sleep" Rule
The standard advice goes like this: if you're a big man — especially the kind of big that comes from a barbell rather than a buffet — you should get checked for sleep apnea, because your neck is thick…
Sleep Apnea Management During the Holidays: What a Week Without My CPAP's Data Taught Me
On the second night at my brother-in-law's house, I realized I'd left the SD card from my CPAP machine sitting in my home office, plugged into a laptop. The machine still ran.
Three Months on CPAP for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA): A First-Person Comparison of Mask, Pressure, and Patience
After the sleep lab handed back an apnea-hypopnea index of 34 — moderate-to-severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), 34 breathing events an hour, oxygen dipping to 81% — I was given a prescription, a…
Why CPAP Therapy Feels Worse in Winter — and What Humidification Actually Does
In a Toronto sleep clinic in February, the patient complaints arrive in a pattern. Nosebleed on waking. A tongue that feels like felt.