Article:Brain Can Learn to Overcome Sleep Apnea

[DreamLady]

The implications are interesting. If this research is correct, apnea provides its own cure. So evidently most of us are cured by now and can dispense with our unneeded machines. Anyone buying this idea?

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't intend to be rid of my cpap machine anytime in the near (or even far) future.

[ResmedUser]

My brain never adapted to untreated sleep apnea. I just got sicker...and sicker...and sicker...and sicker. Eventually I ended up in the ER from it and was put in the chest pain observation unit. That led to a consultation with a pulmonary specialist and the rest is history.

This article sounds like it was written by another leftist type psychology type or brain researcher who believes heavily in environment versus basic commonsense biology. If you cannot breathe oxygen, you WILL DIE. It is as simple as that.

It is very simple. If you cannot breathe, you will be unhealthy and sick.

I have read articles written by neuroscientists who claim that as we age, our brains lose that "plasticity" factor. You are better off treating the underlying medical issue of OSA as aggressively and as soon as possible.

Mikey

[ResmedUser]

I think someone is looking for an excuse not to use their CPAP gear.

Mikey

[Julie]

I think ascribing a political position to this is as bizarre as the treatment apparently seems to be to this poster. Can you spell paranoid?

[mars]

.

[ResmedUser]

I think ascribing a political position to this is as bizarre as the treatment apparently seems to be to this poster. Can you spell paranoid?

Julie, let me explain something to you. First of all, I think this whole article posted is total bs. I made that clear yesterday. You need to realize that in neuroscience research today, there continues to be this split in school of thought amongst neuroscience people. There are those in that field who believe problems with the nervous system are primarily biological. This is the old school, Neurology mindset. Its the "once the brain is damaged, its gone" sort of thinking. Then there are these newer neuroscience researchers, who enthusiastically research and write about the human brain's "neuroplasticity." These folks claim the human brain and CNS can recover from terrible, terrible damage because nerve tissue (the brain) has plasticity-like qualities. And these same Neuroscience researchers usually tend to believe in environment over biology in the psychobabble intellectual environment they exist in. Usually they are leftist types, many of them are psychologists with some additional neurobiology education.

I have worked in aquatics enough and seen enough stroke survivors, seen my Grandparents who were stroke survivors. And I have seen enough MS patients in the aquatics environment that I currently work in and worked in the past to tell you...the brain has only limited "plasticity" once it is damaged. The CNS and brain are delicate things and I simply do not agree with this touchy feely modern era neuroscience researcher approach of "well, if they are put in a nice, caring environment and given lots of love and mental stimulation, their brain will greatly recover."

Horse puckey. Once its damaged, it might recover some. But it aint ever gonna be the same.

Anytime you read someone, you should ask yourself something. "Who is it that wrote this? What are their personal and professional biases, any financial conflicts of interest, what is their political leaning?"

This article is making a HUGE claim about a deadly serious topic called OSA. A claim that if read by someone uneducated and ignorant about the subject, might read and skip over CPAP therapy thinking "their brain's plasticity will allow them to do without CPAP."

I dont like that. If you want to call assigning a writer with a political leaning paranoid, by all means go ahead. I do not care. I call a spade a spade. I do not believe in the leftist "its the environment, stupid" that has crept into modern era Neurology.

Mikey

[SleepingUgly]

OK, first person to find and read the actual journal article wins a prize. Please post link if full text article is available. I sincerely doubt that the authors are as stupid as the posters in this thread are suggesting.

M.D. Hosehead, despite your post about the pharmaceutical company, you are my only hope in this thread. Please note my original post that studies have found that antidepressants increase airway patency in NREM, and note that many antidepressants, including tricyclics, block reuptake of norepinephrine. I've reached the limits of my knowledge here, except to say that I find it baffling that the crowds here are so mocking of research that may increase our understanding of apnea and prove helpful to them and their fellow apnea sufferers.

[SnoozyQ]

I don't have access to nail down the specifics but the article was noted elsewhere to list the source as "Identification of a Novel Form of Noradrenergic-Dependent Respiratory Motor Plasticity Triggered by Vagal Feedback". If you visit the website for the Journal of Neuroscience and search that title, the full text may in there somewhere.

[SnoozyQ]

I think someone is looking for an excuse not to use their CPAP gear.

Mikey

Who would that be?
I would think anyone that doesn't want to use CPAP wouldn't need an excuse, it's their choice.
I posted this as a food for thought topic for across the board thoughts, nothing more.

[robysue]

OK, I'll probably regret it, but I have to throw out another couple of potential implications of this purported study, which of course I have not read:

There's just a chance that the kind of phenomenon this study is about might partially explain why some of us have so few symptoms prior to being diagnosed with OSA ---even when our PSG clearly shows that our apnea is well into the moderate or severe range.

And this kind of study might also provide some insight into why some of us crash and burn when we start xPAP therapy---in other words why we suddenly start to feel substantially WORSE for some period of time (often MONTHS) after starting xPAP. And that's an issue that I wish the professionals in sleep medicine would get interested in, but in my humble opinion and my limited experience, there seems to be mighty little interest on trying to figure out why some of us really do crash and burn for weeks or months after starting xPAP. And I wonder how much of the "poor patient compliance" is really due to people abandoning therapy because during the x number of weeks or months they've tried to stick with it, their daytime functioning has literally plummeted from the level they were at before starting the therapy.

Take me for example: Before starting CPAP I was explicitly told by my sleep doc that I would start feeling better in a couple of weeks after starting CPAP. (Even though I was NOT feeling bad at the time!) And for the first three solid months of xPAP, I was completely non-functional during the daytime. In every sense of the the word. October through December of last fall are the darkest, deepest, most horrible, hellish period of my entire adult life. I can't even claim to have been "going through the motions" in retrospect. Any sane person would have concluded that the treatment was not worth it and just chucked the CPAP into the closet and I would have joined the great silent numbers of non-compliant patients who gave up. And I'm sure that the sleep doc would have noted on my chart that I gave up "because CPAP was uncomfortable" or "hard to use" or "inconvenient to use"---none of which would have really and truly accurately described the real rationale behind a potential decision of mine to chuck the CPAP because it was causing serious, substantial, and unacceptable side affects rendering a complete inability to function in the daytime.

Fortunately for my long-term health, I have been able stuck with xPAP largely through my own stubborness (not my sanity), lots and lots of loving support from my dear hubby (and extended family), an extremely understanding department chair at work (and a flexible job as a college professor), an excellent PA in an otherwise unremarkable sleep doctor's office, and support from this community. And slowly, now by the end of my fourth month I'm beginning to feel a bit like my old pre-CPAP self.

But how many people are there who crash and burn when trying to adjust to CPAP who aren't lucky enough to have the kind of support that I was fortunate enough to have? Is it any wonder they just throw the towel in after a few weeks or months of feeling worse on CPAP than they did before?

[SnoozyQ]

No wonder at all Robysue. My numbers are good, I'm compliant, I don't have a single supportive real life entity and I feel like garbage. Feels like a dead end. The only thing that keeps me hanging on to CPAP is the fear of stroke,etc. I don't fear feeling bad without it, I have that nailed either way. I've gone from bad to worse and back to bad. Maybe the purpose of the "worse" was to make "bad" look like an improvement.

Disclaimer: Maybe I shouldn't post when I'm coming off a 16 hour sleep day and have been sitting on the couch crying. My full work week last week must have been luck. Every single time I see a little light at the end of the tunnel, the train ends up running me over.

[chunkyfrog]

It wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear a drug company is funding this study. . .
If that is the case, don't anyone expect accurate, complete, or objective results. Just saying.

[Guest]

It wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear a drug company is funding this study. . .
If that is the case, don't anyone expect accurate, complete, or objective results. Just saying.

Totally agreed. The Neuropsychopharmacology research and sales field is probably the hottest area of drug sales right now. I would not trust a thing that comes out of these drug companies mouths. CPAP and weight loss are the two evidence based medicine "gold standards" for improving OSA. If the drug companies ever get in on OSA, they will probably end up killing a whole bunch of OSA sufferers who were doing great on CPAP, then get sued, it will go to federal court, they will mediate/arbitrate it instead of actually trying the drug company criminals in a court of law. And settle for some big amount. And get off scott free.

I can already see it now, fifteen or twenty years down the road.

Mikey

[MidnightOwl]

Abstract: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/ab ... 0/50/16886

Looks like full text should be free in six months.

The author: http://labs.csb.utoronto.ca/peever/publications.php

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Peever%20J[au]

(that [au] should be a part of the link but it looks like it works fairly well without it)

You can follow links on the pubmed page to the full text of some of his prior articles.

Yup. Definitely looks like a touchy feeling kind of guy to me.

[SleepingUgly]

Yup. Definitely looks like a touchy feeling kind of guy to me.

I assume that wink means that your statement is sarcastic (I hope).