Samuel Briggs
I Tracked My CPAP AHI Every Night for 90 Days to See If the Standard Sleep Apnea Advice Holds Up
The standard advice, the kind you'll get from a support forum or a hurried follow-up call, goes like this: if your CPAP reports an AHI under 5, your therapy is working, and you should stop staring at…
I Took Both Kinds of Sleep Apnea Diagnosis Tests. Here's What the Home Kit Missed.
The first device was the size of a matchbox and clipped to my finger like a tiny blood-pressure cuff that had wandered to the wrong limb. A second sensor sat under my nose.
The 80 Percent Problem: What the Numbers on Undiagnosed Sleep Apnea Actually Tell You
There's a statistic that gets repeated so often it has worn smooth: roughly 80 percent of people with moderate-to-severe sleep apnea don't know they have it.
If I Stop Breathing at Night But I'm Not Snoring, Is It Central Sleep Apnea?
A reader wrote in with a question I'd been circling myself: their sleep study came back showing dozens of breathing pauses an hour, but the technician's notes said "minimal snoring" and their partner…
Do Natural Sleep Aids Work? A Field Guide to What the Evidence Actually Says
You have probably heard the advice, maybe from a friend, maybe from the side of a supplement bottle: don't reach for a prescription, try something natural first. It sounds prudent. It sounds gentle.
I Measured My Own Nose for CPAP Therapy: What Three Weeks of Nasal Mask Sizing Taught Me
The first number I wrote down was 41 millimeters. That was the width of the bridge of my nose, measured at 11 p.m.
Sleep Apnea Myths, Walked Backward Through the Body
You have heard the reassuring version. Slim people don't get sleep apnea. You're not heavy, you don't snore that loud, you wake up more or less in one piece — so the obstruction in the airway is…
Six Weeks With a CPAP Mask: What the Marks on My Face Actually Told Me
The marks on your face are the best feedback your CPAP therapy will ever give you. Chase them away with the wrong fix and your AHI goes up; read them correctly and you'll be sleeping better inside a…
CPAP Travel Without the Missed Nights: What the Compliance Data Actually Says
Four hours a night, seventy percent of nights. That is the threshold Medicare uses to decide whether a CPAP machine is "working" — meaning whether it will keep paying for one.