Arlene1963 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:04 am
From the moment I was diagnosed with OSA I've been intensely interested in trying to figure out why some of us (the minority) have OSA and yet most folks don't.
In my head (which I admit can sometimes be an odd, scary place), I don't think of myself so much as part of a minority who "have" OSA. I use those terms externally for convenience. But internally, that is buying into the present medical approach to sleep-breathing treatments more so than I am prepared to do at present. To me, those terms are only used because a conscious choice was made by an industry to keep PAP in the doc-diagnosed medical world in order not to preclude docs from being involved and to make sure there was enough money to spread around for PAP to take off quickly.
My personal preference would actually be for PAP machines to be sold in the pharmacy section of Target on the shelf somewhere between the room humidifiers and air purifiers. I believe they would be the safest machines or substances in the entire section of the store. That, to me, is the direction SDB-treatment should go--OTC. Not to preclude docs, but to keep cost down and not deny the "nondiagnosed" the possibility of benefiting. That's how wildly outside-the-box I am. Compared to my beliefs, HoseCrusher's are downright mainstream.
So, anyway, I think of myself as someone who is 'known to benefit from PAP,' full stop. To me, if we stop thinking in terms of who "has" something and who "doesn't," but instead think in terms of who may find benefit from PAP and who might not, we then begin, I believe, to see that PAP may have a much wider application and that it may turn out to be of benefit to a much larger segment of the population than those who presently benefit from it--perhaps the majority of adults, not the minority. I believe that even mild snorers would have a greatly improved life on PAP, not to mention bed partners of mild snorers. What would that be? All together, maybe eighty percent of the population in the Western non-Amish world? I don't know. Maybe D.H. knows.
I don't need a diagnosis and an Rx to be able to take the risks of buying an aspirin for a headache. So why do I need a diagnosis and an Rx just to get a little pressurized air to sleep better and allow my wife to sleep better next to me? I only pretend that it makes sense to me. But deep down, it really doesn't.
Imagine how inexpensive the machines would be if made on that large of a scale!
Hey, just me.
As one of my favorite Canadians once sang, "I'll always be a dreamin' man, I don't have to understand, I know it's alright."
