No Reduction in CVD Events With PAP Treatment of Sleep Apnea

Another study, but the same flaw. Mean time using PAP was 3.3 hours per night.

A good study would be on those who use it all the time asleep, or at least six hours per night. I can't say for certain, but I think the results would be very different.

Also, even if this conclusion is correct, it's worthwhile to use PAP, since it does help with energy level, accident prevention, and mood improvement.


Link ===> http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/883157#vp_1

D.H. wrote:it's worthwhile to use PAP, since it does help with energy level, accident prevention, and mood improvement.

Heck I think it's worthwhile just preventing my having to get up 4 or 5 times a night to go pee.
I have always said that if that was the only benefit I saw ....I would still happily stuck that mask on my face every night.
Not to mention getting rid of the sleep apnea killer headaches that I would wake up to.
While I am still waiting to feel like superwoman...there's enough positive benefits for me to keep right on using it.

I once had to go one night without it...went on a trip and forgot the long hose and didn't realize it until way too late to rig up something.
Man, did I get a real ugly reminder just how bad I used to feel without cpap.

I hate those studies where the bulk of the participants don't come anywhere near using the machine long enough to count for much at all.
Flawed studies right from the start. Similar to the studies that put the fear of God in ASV users with a history of heart failure. They based the study on some already very sick people who didn't use the machine very long each night. Duh...maybe they died because they were just very sick in the first place and using the machine 3 hours a night simply wasn't enough to help an already seriously ill heart....yah think???

Pugsy wrote:

D.H. wrote:it's worthwhile to use PAP, since it does help with energy level, accident prevention, and mood improvement.

Heck I think it's worthwhile just preventing my having to get up 4 or 5 times a night to go pee.
I have always said that if that was the only benefit I saw ....I would still happily stuck that mask on my face every night.

Is this a thing? I haven't had to get up since I got my machine.

Dorhero wrote:

Pugsy wrote:

D.H. wrote:it's worthwhile to use PAP, since it does help with energy level, accident prevention, and mood improvement.

Heck I think it's worthwhile just preventing my having to get up 4 or 5 times a night to go pee.
I have always said that if that was the only benefit I saw ....I would still happily stuck that mask on my face every night.

Is this a thing? I haven't had to get up since I got my machine.

Yep, sure is.
One of the common symptoms of sleep apnea is nocturia. When we have an apnea event stress is put on the heart and the heart reacts by producing a stress hormone called ANP Atrial natriuretic peptide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_na ... ic_peptide
The short version of how it causes nocturia is when the heart dumps the ANP into the blood stream it eventually makes it to the kidneys and the kidneys react by working harder and we all know that when kidneys work hard more urine is produced.

Stop the heart from dumping ANP into the blood stream (by effective cpap therapy) so the kidneys won't ever get it and won't go into overdrive producing more urine.

Now of course there are other causes for nocturia besides sleep apnea...but for a lot of us lucky ones we don't have to get up to pee all night long now and that's real nice. Nothing like having to get up to go to the bathroom every couple of hours to totally trash a person's sleep quality. Not to mention the dreams I used to have...you know those ones where you just have to pee real bad and can't ever find a place where you can go.

Or like the dream my father had many years ago. He dreamed he was out hunting, and stopped to take a pee. He put his foot up on a log, and started peeing. The only problem, the log turned out to be my mother. She was one unhappy camper.

I used to go to the bathroom 3 or 4 times a night before using CPAP, now down to maybe once, tops.

Also, CPAP has given me a great gift of energy that I didn't realize I'd lost, so it might not be saving me from heart disease, but certainly has improved my ability to exercise which might help in that regard.

I can easily run 5kms daily (weekdays) and I lane swim for an hour 5 times a week. Last week I went to a Tom Petty concert and danced for 3 hours, having walked 10km to get to the concert (parking was an issue so we walked to the venue) I credit all this energy to CPAP, and sleeping well now compared with 2 years ago when I woke up hourly bathed in sweat with a racing heart at night.

Yes, I still have to take BP meds, and the cardiologist tells me that this is my genetic hand and CPAP is unlikely to change that.

When I started CPAP I took these studies seriously, now I believe that they are probably not worth the time to even read, because usage is so dismally low, and studies like this hardly help. I can only observe that when I started CPAP I had almost zero help from the medical community when it came to using CPAP and so it is no surprise that attrition rates are so high.

But it seems the conclusions of these studies are muddled. CPAP is seen as a failure, when the failure is the current system that is in place.

Good point, Pugsy. In addition to studying patients whose compliance was inadequate, they studied patients who were already quite ill. Perhaps the improvement in patients who are not so quite so ill would be better, even given this inadequate compliance.

Note that the first CPAP patient in 1980 was so ill that it was not clear he's make it through the night that they tried CPAP. It turns out that he died in 2007, of an ailment not known to be associated with Sleep Apnea. This is a 27-year survival of a patient whose death was believed imminent.

Arlene1963 wrote:Last week I went to a Tom Petty concert

Ottawa BluesFest?

ChicagoGranny wrote:
Ottawa BluesFest?

Yes, it was a fabulous night and we had a blast.

Here's a review from a local newspaper: http://www.ottawasun.com/2017/07/16/blu ... -bluesfest