Obstructive sleep apnea is a medical condition and sleeping disorder where you repeatedly stop breathing throughout the night, anywhere from 5 to 30+ times per hour. Each time you stop breathing you rouse yourself out of sleep to begin breathing again, though in the morning you will not remember rousing.
A CPAP device/machine, or Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, is a small, rectangular box with a motorized fan inside and an adjacent humidifier. It is the primary tool used in CPAP therapy and is considered the gold standard for treating obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
A continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine is often scary for people who are concerned they have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) or have already been diagnosed with it. After all, it doesn’t exactly look comfortable. People who already use it sometimes struggle with ensuring that their CPAP is effective.
Let’s look at the main ideas behind:
CPAP therapy is a treatment path that is used to treat obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Obstructive sleep apnea is a medical condition and sleeping disorder that causes your throat muscles to relax, your airway to become obstructed by your tongue or tonsils, and you to stop breathing. This leads to many subsequent arousals throughout the night, referred to as an apnea event.
Obstructive sleep apnea can be mild or severe:
When you stop breathing and rouse this much throughout the night (anywhere from 40 to hundreds of times throughout the night), the natural result is severe sleep deprivation. As a result, your life may be shorter, unhappier, and less performant than if you treated your sleep apnea.
This is why CPAP therapy is so important. In CPAP therapy, you use a CPAP machine to gently push air into your airway to keep it from collapsing, allowing you to continuously breathe while sleeping.
A CPAP device/machine stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. CPAP is considered the gold standard of obstructive sleep apnea treatments and in ensuring that you are breathing and sleeping continuously throughout the night.
A CPAP machine is a small box with a motorized fan inside. Connected to it is a tube that leads to a breathing mask, which you wear. The fan gently pressurizes the mask and delivers air to your nose and/or mouth (depending on which type of mask you get) as needed. This results in no more lapses of breathing at night.
CPAP machines also have a humidification chamber built in so that you don’t get a dry, scratchy throat/mouth or nasal passage. While a humidification chamber is optional, it’s generally recommended as lack of humidification can lead to irritation in the nasal passage and throat.
For individuals diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea who use a CPAP machine on a daily basis, common issues arise that may interfere with quality of therapy. Especially for individuals who are about to, or have just started using a CPAP device, typical problems that CPAP machine users run into are important to know about. Continue reading to learn about 6 common problems and their solutions.
CPAP, standing for continuous positive airway pressure, is a commonly prescribed sleep therapy for individuals suffering from obstructive sleep apnea. With almost 22 million Americans suffering from sleep apnea, CPAP therapy is the most widely used method to curb the negative side effects of sleep loss. However, its use may not be straight-forward. Continue reading to learn more about commonly asked CPAP therapy questions.
One of the reasons they are more travel friendly is that they tend to:
Travel CPAP machines are made specifically for traveling, and though they are a bit more expensive than regular CPAP machines they are not made to “replace” your regular CPAP.
Traveling is often a hassle, and your CPAP device takes up a lot of space. Additionally, people with CPAP devices may wonder if they even can even travel with their CPAP device. Because of this, people with sleep apnea can be a bit...neglectful in being diligent about traveling with their CPAP device. Nonetheless, it remains important to wear your CPAP every night.
So, can you travel with your CPAP device? Yes. Should you travel with your CPAP device? Most definitely. Here's some useful information to know about traveling with your CPAP device.
We are so excited to let you know about the latest technology for people with sleep apnea. Ultra-portable, compact, seamlessly integrated and superior quality are just a few of the adjectives used to describe the NEW DreamStation Go by Philips. Anchorage Sleep Center is proud to introduce you to a new portable CPAP machine which delivers on all of the features sleep apnea patients desire in a unit. The just released Philips DreamStation Go hits the sweet spot – size and portability with all the functionality necessary for uncompromised results. Here are some reasons the DreamStation Go is expected to be a big hit with individuals in therapy for sleep apnea.