242 – Sleep Apnea and Microdosing
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Here is the transcript to today’s episode:
Dr. Dave: (00:00)
Hey there. Welcome back to Microdose U. I’m Dr. Dave. Thank you so much for being here. This is one of the episodes, um, that is so important. Um, I want you, if you tick or check off or star any episodes that you wanna refer back to. This is going to be one of them. It’s something that I’ve talked a little about in the past, but not nearly enough, and it’s something that I am actually worried about you, uh, possibly having this and that could be contributing to, let’s face it, because one of the, um, reasons that you’re likely here at Microdose you is because you’re suffering or you have suffered with something like anxiety or depression, PTs, d um, something along that order. Um, chances are, because most of the people that attend attend micro dose, you are, are in that category, including myself. I have, I have suffered with those in the past.
Dr. Dave: (00:54)
Luckily, the microdosing has totally taken care of that. But that’s a really good segue into this because, um, full disclosure, I did something major, um, a couple years ago that I think has also played a really big part in me feeling as good as I do every single day right now, and that is being evaluated and treated for sleep apnea. Now, before you go anywhere, I wanna share this with you. This is super, super important. Um, sleep apnea is a very, very dangerous medical issue. And, uh, they say that about 80 some per, I don’t have the statistics right in front of me, but it’s close enough. 80 some percent of the people that, um, have sleep apnea are not diagnosed. So, uh, that’s a huge, huge, huge number. And to put things in per into perspective more, um, since I’m in the United States, I’ll give you United States statistics, but it’s probably similar all over the world because there’d be no reason why it wouldn’t be.
Dr. Dave: (02:00)
Um, about 25% of adults have sleep apnea. Now, that’s a huge number. That means one out of every four. And, and I think that’s, from what I know about sleep apnea and from what, um, has been trending or, uh, uh, it’s maybe not the right word, but, um, taking place. Um, I think in my opinion, I think that number’s actually low. I think that’s a, that’s a low, very conservative number. I think more than 25% of the people in this country and probably in the world have sleep apnea. Let’s back up for a second. And I, I don’t want you to go anywhere because again, this is super, super important stuff. And if you don’t think this pertains to you, it may, So hold on just a second in case you’re not clear or understand what, what sleep apnea is. Um, in the most simplest terms, sleep apnea is, um, pausing, breathing in the middle of the night due to certain conditions taking place.
Dr. Dave: (03:02)
And, and the two most common conditions that people could stop their breathing in the middle of the night is due to an obstruction. So, in other words, let’s say you have some, um, tissue that when you lay down, um, locks your airway and you will several times or could be, uh, many times per hour, Uh, stop reading. And the reason you will start again is just like you’ll gasp or wake up a little bit and realize that you, your, your brain will realize that you stop reading and then you’ll start again, only to go back to sleep and then have this start over and over and over again. This could take place anytime from any amount from, um, they say if it happens five times per hour or more, that is considered sleep apnea, in my opinion.
Dr. Dave: (03:51)
Again, it’s only my opinion. Even, even if it takes place two to three times per hour, that is dangerous too. Imagine, imagine you’re sleeping and they say the guidelines for obstructive sleep apnea or sleep apnea are, um, five times per hour having an event like that the last 10 seconds or more. Okay? Now suppose you’re sleeping and somebody stabs, you just stabs you, hits you in the ch or does something to you five times per hour. That’s gonna just think about how that’s gonna disrupt your sleep. That’s really, really bad. Now, severe sleep abne is when it happens like, uh, 20 sometimes per hour. That is super, super dangerous and moderate is somewhere mild to moderate, somewhere in the middle there. Um, but suppose, see the guidelines for sleep ap me are anything under five is normal. It’s okay, but let’s go back to the example of somebody stabbing you or hitting you or doing something to you in the middle of night and waking you up.
Dr. Dave: (04:57)
Suppose somebody did that to you only two to three times per hour and it disrupted your sleep and you had to wake up and then you had to go back to sleep. That’s, I don’t think anybody would say that’s a good thing or safe or, or good for your health. So that’s why I think the guidelines and the standards for sleep apnea or, or need to be, in my opinion, need to be updated because, um, although there are a lot of other measurements that go into this, um, the easiest one to understand, and the one actually a lot of doctors even go by, whether it’s right or wrong, is, is called ahi, and it stands for apnea hypo index. You don’t have to know those words, but it just means the number of times you, um, stop breathing or pause your breathing in the middle of the night. There’s also another type of sleep apnea, which is called central sleep apnea. And it has nothing to do with your, um, your air being blocked, uh, your breathing being blocked, but it has more to do with your brain sending inappropriate signals or not the right signals to your, to your, uh, body, to, to,
Dr. Dave: (05:57)
To breathe when you’re, when you’re, when you’re sleep. And that’s called central, central sleep apnea. And that can be as bad or just as dangerous. And there could be something called mixed, mixed sleep apnea, um, or like a hybrid, which is a combination of central and obstructive. So you don’t have to know all this stuff. The most important thing for you to know is that sleep apnea, the definition of sleep apnea is less oxygen, less breathing, pausing and breathing in the middle of the night for, for some reason. Now, what can result from having sleep apnea? Well, a myriad of things, and coincidentally or not coincidentally, some of them are what the reason you’re here, Um, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, uh, you have a much better chance of of having, getting diabetes if you have sleep at me. That goes untreated. People that have untreated sleep apnea are more prone to go on to having major, major events such as heart attack, um, stroke, things like that. So it is very, very serious. Again, the most common symptoms that from the start of having sleep AP are, um, depression and anxiety and, um, high blood pressure. So you’re here for a reason. You’re here to learn about microdosing, so chances are you have some type of anxiety or depression or something like that.
Dr. Dave: (07:36)
I am going to strongly or since, since again, estimate an estimate of, um, one out of every four people have sleep apnea and 80% of the cases go untreated or un undiagnosed and untreated. It’s very, very serious. I’m going to suggest, I’m gonna strongly suggest that you look into this a little more and you go to your primary care physician and request a test for sleep apnea. It’s a sleep study. Most of the times it can be done at home. Most of the times your insurance will cover it, but in my opinion, this is one of the times that you can’t, we can’t worry about whether insurance is going to cover something because this medical issue is so far reaching and so common now and, um, so undiagnosed or underdiagnosed that we have to kind of put insurance to the side and, and say, I’m gonna pay for this, whether my insurance covers this or not. I’m, this is so important for me. I’m going to pay for this and I want, I wanna see if I have some type of sleep apnea. I would say there’s a decent chance that you do, especially if you’re frequently tired in the middle of the day, um, can’t concentrate, your blood pressure’s going up, you’re feeling anxious, you’re feeling depressed, um, there is a very good chance that you have it and you need to be, it needs to be looked at.
Dr. Dave: (09:03)
How is sleep apnea generally treated? Well, again, it depends what type you have, but a common thing, first of all is weight loss is a big thing because a lot of times people, if you have like excess weight, a thicker neck, then you should have, um, that can cause, um, sleep apnea to begin with. But again, that’s not the only cause. And thin people, like I’m reasonably thin and I have sleep apnea. So, um, the main way it’s treated the most mainstream and I think the most predictable and the best way it’s treated because there are all kinds of dental devices. And look, I’m a retired dentist and I’m all for dental devices if they work, but in my opinion, um, they do not work nearly as well as what is called A C P A P. And you changes are, you’ve probably heard of a C P A P, it’s a device that feeds positive air pressure.
Dr. Dave: (09:55)
You wear like a mask over your face. The but the masks are very, very comfortable these days. And I just wear something that kind of like sits, sits underneath my nose and I breathe through my nose throughout the night and it works very well. They deliver a C P A P machine delivers positive air pressure. That’s what the PAT stands for, positive air pressure throughout the night knight so that when you, there’s an obstruction that comes along, it will feed you the air and it will, um, break up or or disturb, disrupt the, the, the obstruction. That’s the, the idea behind it. It’s, again, it’s a little bit more complex than I’ll go into here. And they’re different type of C P A P machines and there’s, um, bilevel machines and, and actually through my usage of C A P and experimenting over the years, I actually, um, graduated to something called an a SV machine, which is, um, kind of like a high level C A P A C P A P machine on steroids, if you will.
Dr. Dave: (10:50)
Um, they’re not for everybody, but it’s more if you have, um, central sleep apnea is where your brain is not telling you when to breathe in the middle of the night. It’s it. So ASV stands for adaptive servo ventilation and it is the, again, cause I went through different types of C P A machines and it’s the only one that really works or work has been working predictably for me. And it’s totally helped me get outta my funk of not being able to sleep well and being super tired during the day. And I am a very, very, very strong believer in, um, using a C P A P machine for sleep apnea.
Dr. Dave: (11:32)
Um, where do we go from here? What should you do? As I said, I, I really believe if you have any of the symptoms that I’ve, um, outlined earlier, um, especially, especially, um, high blood pressure, um, anxiety and depression, um, I would strongly suggest to your primary care physician that you really want to get a sleep study. Um, after you get the sleep study, when the results come back, please listen to your doc and, um, take the advice on treatment because again, it could be the most important medical decision you’ve ever made in your life. I’m surprised there’s just not more of this. I think, um, a decade from now, it’s gonna be so mainstream to be talking about sleep apnea. It almost is now, but, um, not enough. Not enough. So that’s what I wanna share with you. Again, super, super important. I cannot stress that if enough that if you are kind of like saying, Ah, this is not for me, this is not, But if you have any of these symptoms, I’m telling you this could be for you.
Dr. Dave: (12:36)
So I’m glad you made it this far. Um, remember that, um, I put these episodes out on, um, my YouTube channel called microdose U as well as my audio podcast, um, which is also called coincidentally Microdose u. Um, I’ve got our, um, microdosing resource page that describes if you’re a beginner at this, it describes everything from kind of start to finish about microdosing. Go to my website, it’s david maow.com, D a v i d M A d o w.com. I welcome all questions of comments. I do my best to get back to, um, almost everything as much as I can. Sometimes I miss a little bit just because of my work schedule, but um, I do the best I can and I thank you so much for being here. Dr. Dave Micro, does you talk to you soon?
