Resmed and Respironics CPAP Reviews from Real CPAP Users! Tagged "travel dreamstation go" Page 3

Try Sleeping On Your Left Side and This Will Happen To Your Body

January 09, 2016

Are you someone who loves sleeping on your left side? If so, you’re improving your health much more than you may think.

Your sleeping position can determine how well your body clears toxins, and decides how well your body will recover from the previous days’ events.

sleeping-on-your-left-FB

Sleeping Positions and Your Health

There are several sleeping positions – your stomach, back, left side, right side – and they all affect your health. They can even play a role in snoring, heartburn and wrinkle formation.

Side Sleeping

A vast majority of people sleep on their sides. I love sleeping on my side, especially my left. Sleeping on your left side not only improves circulation to the heart, but it actually allows the brain to remove waste more easily. This prevents the build-up of Alzheimer’s-related plaques in the brain.

Sleeping on the left also takes pressure off the liver, and helps minimize symptoms of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). Holistic medicine designates the left side of the body as the dominant lymphatic side, and so sleeping on the left is said to better filter out toxins through the thoracic duct and the lymph nodes.

Sleeping on the right can have the opposite effect. It can cause the lymphatic system to run more slowly, resulting in poor toxin elimination and poor lymph flow throughout the body. A sluggish lymphatic system results in a variety of chronic diseases, due to build-up of toxins.

Once you start sleeping on your left side you’ll notice that your body is more efficient at toxin disposal. Your digestive system will begin functioning at a higher capacity, and it will be able to extract more nutrients while disposing of un-necessary toxic waste.

Back Sleeping

If you’re one of the people who love to sleep in savasana pose, your back and neck will be incredibly happy. The spine is straight, and not forced into odd contortions. Of course, choosing the best mattress will affect how well your spine and neck feel the next day.

Sleeping on your back also leads to fewer facial wrinkles, because your face isn’t squished up against a pillow. Sleeping on your back, however, can lead to snoring and sleep apnea. It is also linked with worse-quality sleep.

Stomach Sleeping

Sleeping on the stomach will prevent snoring and some cases of sleep apnea, but it is actually one of the worst sleeping positions you could get yourself into. It flattens the natural curve of the spine, which can lead to lower back pain. Sleeping all night with the head turned to one side also strains the neck.

Learning To Sleep On Your Left Side

Breaking the habit of sleeping on your stomach, back, or right side in exchange for sleeping on your left will take some time and practice, but the body can quickly be trained. Here are some tips to help you start sleeping on your left side:

Try lying on your left side and press a full-length body pillow up against your back. The pillow will prevent you from rolling over during the night, and will ensure you stay on your left side.
Keep a dim light on your right side. Naturally (and un-consciously) your body will want to turn away from the light during sleep, and so it will make it easier for you to sleep on your left side.
Switch the side of the bed you sleep on, so that when you flip over to the left side, you can still enjoy the same sleeping experience.

The Best Mattress For Healthy, Restorative Sleep

Getting deep, healing sleep is important if you want to live a healthy life. When the brain is in the deepest stage of sleep (Delta sleep – Stage 3 and 4), the body is also doing most of its healing work: releasing human growth hormone, repairing tissue, stimulating the production of new cells, etc. This time is also associated with reduced depression, improved immune, nervous and digestive system function as well as improved memory.

Sleeping on a bed that creates pressure on our hips, back and shoulders often has us tossing and turning throughout the night (even without our knowing). When we interrupt our deep stages of sleep (Stage 3 and 4), we come out of the deep restorative sleep, which inhibits the release of human growth hormone.

Tribal people don’t need 8 hours of sleep — maybe we don’t either

October 17, 2015

Researchers studied the sleep patterns of some of the world’s remaining tribal people, who don't nap or go to bed at sunset. By: Ariana Eunjung Cha The Washington Post, Published on Fri Oct 16 2015

Donald Page / The associated press

A new study that shows that tribal people get the same amount of sleep as those of us in modern societies raises many questions. As the study's authors note: "This has important implications for the idea that we need to take sleeping pills because sleep has been reduced from its ‘natural level’ by the widespread use of electricity, TV, the Internet and so on.”

It now appears that our ancestors may not have been getting the doctor-recommended eight hours of sleep either.

In an intriguing study published in Current Biology this week, researchers travelled to remote corners of the planet to scrutinize the sleep patterns of some of the world’s last remaining hunter-gatherers — the Hadza of Tanzania, the San of Namibia and the Tsimane of Bolivia. Cut off from electricity, media and other distractions, these pre-industrial societies are thought to experience the same sort of natural sleep ancient humans enjoyed more than 10,000 years ago.

Located in a woodland-savannah habitat two degrees south of the equator, the Hazda gather their wild foods each day. The San are not migratory but interact very little with surrounding villages and live as hunter-gatherers. The Tsimane, who live close to the Maniqui River, are hunter-horticulturalist.

Using Actiwatch-2 devices (a kind of a souped-up, medical-grade Fitbit for sleep), researchers recorded the sleeping habits of 94 of these tribespeople and ended up collecting data representing 1,165 days.

What they found was a striking uniformity in their sleep patterns. On average, all three groups sleep a little less than 6.5 hours a night, do not take naps and don’t go to sleep when it gets dark. Like many of us, they spent more than that in bed — from 6.9 to 8.5 hours than actually sleeping. That computes to a sleep efficiency of between 81 to 86 per cent — very similar to today’s industrial populations.

Jerome Siegel, director of the University of California at Los Angeles’s Center for Sleep Research, explained that this suggests that sleep may not be environmental or cultural, but “central to the physiology of humans” living in the tropical latitudes where our species evolved.

“The short sleep in these populations challenges the belief that sleep has been greatly reduced in the ‘modern world,’ ” Siegel said. “This has important implications for the idea that we need to take sleeping pills because sleep has been reduced from its ‘natural level’ by the widespread use of electricity, TV, the Internet and so on.”

Our ideas about napping may need some revision, too.

Scientists have long documented that people have a tendency to “crash” in the mid-afternoon. Some have speculated that’s because we are suppressing an innate need for siesta. The new study provides evidence that this is unlikely.

The data from the San in Namibia, for instance, shows no afternoon naps during 210 days of recording in the winter and 10 naps in 364 days in the summer. The findings were similar for the other two tribes.

Another fascinating finding from the study had to do with the circadian rhythms related to sunlight. Instead of going to sleep right at dusk, the hunter-gatherers were sleeping an average of 2.5 and 4.4 hours after sunset — well after darkness had fallen.

All three tribes had small fires going but the light itself was much lower than you might get from your average 60 watt bulb. They did, however, have a tendency to wake around sunrise — an hour before or an hour after depending on the season and the group.

Siegel and his co-authors investigated this further by looking into the role of temperature and found that temperature may play a big role. “(S)leep in both the winter and summer occurred during the period of decreasing ambient temperature and that wake onset occurred near the nadir of the daily temperature rhythm,” they wrote.

It should be noted that the tribespeople studied are different from your average American in a number of respects.

Importantly, very few of the hunter-gatherers suffer from chronic insomnia. It isn’t even a word in their languages.

In interviews with the researchers conducted through translators, 1.5 to 2.5 per cent of the study subjects said they had sleep onset or sleep maintenance problems more than once a year, which is far lower than the 10 to 30 per cent documented in many countries today.

The hunter-gatherers are also much healthier. Not a single one is obese, and they also tend to have lower blood pressure, better heart conditions and higher levels of physical fitness.

Thus comes a critical question. If we can’t blame the lack of sleep as causing our obesity, mood disorders and the like could it be that the reason we feel so unrested is because of poor health?

What is Sleep Apnea?

March 19, 2015

The most common sleep breathing disorder is Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), which is caused when the upper throat muscles relax too much during sleep, cutting off or restricting the airway. (1-4) These episodes, which also cause the oxygen level in the blood to drop, last from 10 seconds to a minute or longer. (2,3) The brain registers lack of oxygen and the individual wakes up just enough to open the throat and begin breathing again, starting the cycle over. Most of the time, individuals don’t remember these episodes in the morning, but they severely disrupt the restorative effects of sleep. (3) People with moderate or severe sleep apnea may be waking up hundreds of times every night without knowing it. (2) Officially, about 4 percent of men and 2 percent of women in the United States have sleep apnea, but research shows that many more people are living with it. (1,3) One estimate put numbers at 24 percent in men and 9 percent in women; another said nearly 14 percent of adults have the disorder. (6)

“Sleep apnea is a major health concern worldwide,” says Edward Grandi, executive director of the American Sleep Apnea Association. “It’s common but under-diagnosed, and the effects of untreated sleep apnea can be quite serious.” Signs and symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea include loud and frequent snoring, including choking or gasping during sleep, sleepiness or fatigue during the day, and difficulty concentrating. (1,4,6) OSA doesn’t just cause annoying tiredness; it’s also the cause of several serious health problems. Untreated sleep apnea can cause or contribute to heart conditions such as heart attack, heart rhythm disorders and high blood pressure; it’s also associated with stroke, epilepsy and diabetes. (1,3,4) Poor alertness due to lack of quality sleep can cause reduced concentration, decreased productivity at work or school, and even motor vehicle accidents. (4,6)

TESTING AND TREATMENT

Sleep apnea is diagnosed using an overnight polysomnogram (PSG), or sleep study. (1,2,3) A PSG is conducted overnight at a sleep laboratory. Several monitoring devices continuously measure breathing, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, limb movements and more. For adults, if breathing stops or is reduced more than five times per hour, OSA is diagnosed. Even a mild case of OSA can cause health problems, but people with severe obstructive sleep apnea wake up more than 30 times every hour. (1,3) Other tests can support an OSA diagnosis, such as unattended polygraphy, which is conducted at home, or pulse oximetry, which monitors blood oxygen levels. (1,2,3) However, an overnight PSG in an accredited sleep center is considered the definitive test.

(1,2) The most effective treatment for OSA is the application of continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP. A CPAP machine forces pressurized air through a nose or facial mask, preventing the limp muscles at the back of the throat from closing off the airway. (3,4) (See more information on CPAP in the Q &A below.) Sometimes, treatment can be a device for the mouth that helps keep the airway open (oral appliance). (1,3) Surgery may be an option in some cases. The doctor may also recommend lifestyle changes, such as weight loss, decreasing alcohol and caffeine, and quitting smoking. (3) “The ‘Breathe easy, sleep well’ theme of World Sleep Day 2012 is timely,” says Grandi. “Obstructive sleep apnea and other breathing-related sleep problems are fairly simple to diagnose and treat, but recognition of the problem needs to come first.”

Q & A: CPAP

Continuous positive airway pressure application is the gold standard treatment for obstructive sleep apnea, but there are many variations and customizations available. Here, two world leaders in sleep medicine, Antonio Culebras, M.D., and Liborio Parrino, M.D., answer the most common questions about the therapy. Dr. Culebras is professor of neurology at SUNY, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York; Dr. Parrino is assistant professor of neurology at Parma University, Italy.

Q. What is CPAP?

Dr. Culebras: Continuous positive airway pressure applies a constant stream of air pressure to the throat, working as an air splint that helps keep the airway open during sleep. (3,4) It also improves lung function, decreases the work of breathing during sleep, and improves heart function in people with obstructive sleep apnea. (4)

Q. What are the benefits of using CPAP for obstructive sleep apnea?

Dr. Parrino: Not only does CPAP reverse or correct many of the signs and symptoms of sleep apnea, such as sleepiness and snoring, but it also decreases the risks of associated conditions. Studies have shown that CPAP can lower blood pressure, decrease insulin resistance, and lower the risk of heart attack, stroke and epilepsy in people with obstructive sleep apnea. (1)

Q. Are there different kinds of CPAP?

Dr. Culebras: Yes, there is standard CPAP, auto-CPAP and bi-level PAP. The standard CPAP delivers a constant level of air pressure. The auto-CPAP takes into account that the need for air pressure can vary throughout the night depending on sleep position, stage of sleep and other factors. The auto-CPAP measures how much air pressure is needed to keep the throat open and adjusts accordingly. The bi-level positive airway pressure, or bi-PAP, has two levels of adjustable pressure: higher pressure while inhaling, and lower pressure while exhaling. The auto-PAP and bi-PAP options can be tried if adjusting the pressure settings on a standard CPAP do not alleviate discomfort. (1,3,4)

Q. What other modifications are available?

Dr. Parrino: CPAP has become highly customizable, with more options available than ever before. There are literally hundreds of CPAP masks available, including many different variations of straps, tubes and apparatuses that fit to the face differently. Some masks can be worn like a hat; some don’t have straps at all, while others cover the entire face. Some only have what are called nasal pillows instead of a mask; even cloth masks are available for people whose skin is sensitive to plastics. (1) Dr. Culebras: CPAP is the best therapy for obstructive sleep apnea, but the most significant challenge is to ensure that patients are actually using it. If people find it uncomfortable or otherwise difficult to use, CPAP use can become inconsistent. In addition to the many mask options, there have also been advances in technology to make CPAP machines smaller, quieter and overall more friendly. Certain medications can be prescribed for some patients to help with comfort. Sometimes using an auto-PAP or bi-PAP can help, as can adding humidification to the machine to replicate the nose’s job of warming and humidifying the air. (1,3)

Q. How can I find the right CPAP for me?

Dr. Parrino: An accredited sleep laboratory is the first place to start. The sleep medicine specialist who interprets the sleep study results and discusses treatment options will also follow up later, making adjustments to masks, equipment and medication as appropriate. Many sleep laboratories allow patients to try out several masks before purchasing to find the best, most comfortable option for them. (1,3)

ADVANCES IN CPAP HUMIDIFICATION TECHNOLOGY

Why is heated humidification such an effective tool in CPAP treatment? Up to 75 percent of those using non-humidified CPAP report a dry, congested and sore nose and throat. (7,8) The use of a heated humidifier with CPAP has been shown to: -Increase compliance (9-1) -Decrease abandonment of CPAP therapy (10,11) -Decrease nasal symptoms (12-14) -Decrease mouth leak (15) For many people, heated humidification makes CPAP a more natural and comfortable experience; for others, it is about more than just a comfort. The following criteria make patients more likely to require heated humidification: -Patients over 60 years are five times more likely to require heated humidification. (9) -CPAP users taking two or more medications are six times more likely to require heated humidification. (9) -Patients with chronic mucosal disease (defined as subjective chronic nasal obstruction, chronic sneezing, nasal discharge and postnasal drip, abnormal appearance of the turbinate mucosa, and polypsis) are four times more likely to require heated humidification. (9) -Patients who have undergone uvulopalatopharyngoplasty surgery are four times more likely to require heated humidification. (9) Even if a patient doesn’t fit into any of the categories listed above, he or she may still benefit from heated humidification. Mouth leak on CPAP treatment has been shown to occur for up to 31% of total sleep time. (15) Even relatively minor or infrequent dryness may become a significant comfort issue.

Why did humidity for CPAP treatment need revisiting? Conventional heated humidifiers (CHH), defined as any heated humidifier that does not employ a heated breathing tube, are a well-proven tool. However, like many new product introductions, there was considerable room for improvement. The amount of humidity that a CHH can provide to the patient is limited by ambient room temperature. As a result, a humidity setting that may have been perfectly tuned to the room temperature at the beginning of the night may cause water to accumulate in the CPAP tube as room temperature drops. The benefits of the humidifier may be outweighed by the issues that result from condensation. The advent of the heated breathing tube resolved many of these problems.

REFERENCES

Park JG, Ramar K, Olson EJ. Updates on Definition, Consequences, and Management of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Mayo Clin Proc. 2001;86(6):549-555.
Sunitha C, Aravindkumar S. Obstructive sleep apnea: Clinical and diagnostic features. Indian J Dent Res 2009; 20:487-491
Foster E. Uncovering Sleep Apnea Misconceptions. The Nurse Practitioner 2008;33(6): 23-28.
Theerakittikul T, Ricaurte B, Aboussouan LS. Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation for stable outpatients: CPAP and beyond. 2010;77(10): 705-714.
WASM, World Sleep Day 2012 Toolkit.
Chan J et al. Am Fam Physician 2004; 69(5): 1147-54.
Constantinidis J et al. Acta Oto-laryngologica 2000; 120(3): 432-7.
Pépin JL et al. Chest 1995; 107(2): 375-81.
Rakotonanahary D et al. Chest 2001; 119(2): 460-5.
Kline L & Carlson P. Sleep 1995; 22(suppl): S230.
Massie CA et al. Chest 1999; 116(2): 403-8.
Koutsourelakis I et al. Eur Respir J 2010.
Ruhle KH et al. Sleep Breath 2010: [ahead of print].
Mador MJ et al. Chest 2005; 128(4): 2151-8.
Martins de Araújo MT et al. Chest 2000; 117(1): 142-7.
Nilius G et al. Eur Respir J 2008; 31(4): 830-6.
Massengill JS & Lewis KL. Sleep 2009; 32(suppl): A217.
VIP. Valley Inspired Products 2010: [testing].
Almasri E & Kline LR. Sleep 2007; 30(suppl): A190.
Powell. Sleep 2010; 33(suppl): A159.
Powell. Sleep 2010; 33(suppl): A164.

CPAPmachines.ca

CPAP product reviews and other helpful tips for CPAP users!