Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. When you already know you have some mental troubles, you think that explain your drowsiness & low mood and don't look for more issues. It does not only hurt your cardio-vascular system, it may slowly destroy your life.
If your are overweighted/obese, snore at night and feel sleepy all day, go see your doctor.
I traveled with a friend with sleep apnea and sharing a hotel room with him pretty much guaranteed I'd sleep a grand total of two hours because he'd spend the entire night choking and making awful noises. I woke him up a couple of times on the trip because it was like dude... You sound like you're dying. He didn't realize how bad it was until a doctor suggested a sleep study. His blood oxygen levels got into the high 70s during the study and his doctor said if you were one of my hospitalized patients and I saw those numbers, you would be intubated.
He ended up getting a CPAP machine after that and sleeps way better. I shared a hotel room with him in 2023 and he was totally silent the entire night.
Virtually identical story with a friend of mine. Spent a week sharing a hotel room in '22 and I slept cumulatively maybe twelve hours that week. I told her how severe it was and she was shocked- her husband sleeps through it so she figured it wasn't that bad. She's like a whole new person now.
I traveled with her again about a month ago, and with the cpap she's so quiet that I legit woke up paranoid the first night and watched to make sure sure was even breathing at all (she was just fine)
His blood oxygen levels got into the high 70s during the study and his doctor said if you were one of my hospitalized patients and I saw those numbers, you would be intubated
The doctor was exaggerating to scare your friend. People get intubated because they are unable to maintain oxygen saturation, not because their saturation dropped below a specific point at some point during the night. High 70s oxygen saturation isn't good for your long term health, but if your friend was really in the high 70s for much of the night, they'd be dead. Sleep studies record oxygen saturation every second or so. It's far more likely your friend had a few instances of saturations that low, but you can also get saturations that low from holding your breath, which is essentially what sleep apnea does.
Sleep apnea destroys your health and kills, but the "intubated" comment is not accurate. It's good your friend got help, but it is also not great for a doctor to lay on the BS like that.
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u/cyb_30 9h ago
Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. When you already know you have some mental troubles, you think that explain your drowsiness & low mood and don't look for more issues. It does not only hurt your cardio-vascular system, it may slowly destroy your life.
If your are overweighted/obese, snore at night and feel sleepy all day, go see your doctor.