When you have a
medical problem, the kind of treatment recommended will vary
according to whom you ask for help. A chemist will give you drugs, a
surgeon will offer to cut the problem out, a faith healer will give
you bullshit and a sleep clinic will fit you with a CPAP machine to
keep you breathing at night.
For instance, if you
happen to have a little sleep apnoea like me, you first take a sleep
test to determine the severity of your symptoms. You go to a sleep
clinic with your pillow and favourite teddy bear and they stick wires
on your skin to your head and chest. They attach a blood oxygen
sensor to your forefinger and tuck you in for an uncomfortable
nights' sleep.
Once the severity of
your symptoms are determined, you are fitted for a mask. A CPAP
machine is calibrated to force enough oxygen into your airway to
ensure that every night is as uncomfortable as can possibly be. After
a couple of weeks of sleepless struggling as the CPAP machine tries
to explode your sinuses with cold air, you toss the CPAP machine out.
This is called being 'non-compliant'.
If you are
unfortunate enough to have a GP who is savvy on up to date remedies
for apnoea you will be chided on being non-compliant and then given a
referral to see a maxillofacial surgeon as a possible alternative to
CPAP. The surgeon will tell you to have a radiology scan of your head
to see if the state of your sinuses and the size of your bank account
will justify nasal surgery. After the surgeon carefully looks at the
speed boat brochure laying next to your radiology scan he recommends
carving up your sinuses to allow you to sleep easier and 'relieve'
your suffering.
On the gurney you
calmly recall your boss telling you that her nasal surgery left her
in daily pain for the last seven years, but that 'rarely' happens.
The surgeon and the anaesthetist give you winning smiles as they lean
over you and say, “you will hardly notice anything.”
You wake up an hour
and a half later and it was true, you didn't notice anything and
everything is fine, until the local wears off. In the middle of the
night you have to demand the nurse give you a shot of morphine as she
doesn't really believe that Tylenol 'doesn't do anything' for you.
A week later, after
removing five kilometres of gauze from your nose, you are ready to
try out your new sinuses. Things are different. There is a clean,
cool breeze every time you inhale through your nose and your sinuses
drain like a faucet. When you bend over a little, a river of liquid
snot runs out of your nose. Well, maybe that's an improvement. It is
certainly much more entertaining than it used to be. But you still
suffer from a light to moderate amount of sleep apnoea and you chalk
it up to being a little overweight. So you resign yourself to taking
a spontaneous nap every afternoon and needing more sleep than
everyone else. Yeah, fuck it.
A couple of years
later, you try some allergy pills for a couple of days while on
holiday in the states. The pollen season is in full bloom and being
in the Willamette Valley, you can hardly breath.
You are apprehensive
about taking allergy meds. The last two kinds allergy pills you tried
left you feeling like shit. Pseudo-ephedrine left you sleepless and
benadryl put you to sleep. This new stuff, fexofenadine, really works
without obvious side effects. So you take your new meds for a couple
of days, until you leave Oregon and head off to other parts.
A few weeks later
you take your daughter Anna to an allergist to look into
desensitisation. You watch the doctor verify the diagnosis of dust
mite and cat hair using a scratch test. The control, histamine, is
put on the skin in one spot and then a sample of dust mites and of
cat hair in liquid form is put on her skin in other spots. After a
few minutes the skin becomes inflamed and swells up at each of the
spots.
It occurs to you
that this stuff runs in the family as you tell the allergist that the
sniffling daughter leaves a trail of tissues behind her everywhere
she goes. The ever-present bandanna hanky weighs heavy in your back
pocket, and not just metaphorically. Maybe, just maybe, your sleep
apnoea is caused by a reaction or swelling in your sinuses, throat
and lungs caused by the dust mites which have bothered you for
decades. But this doesn't occur to you until after you have left the
allergist's office. If I bring it up to the allergist, I am sure he
will agree and recommend a course of allergy treatment. Just like the
sleep clinic and CPAP, the surgeon and surgery, this will be the end
all of my problems. Except, all sarcasm aside, there is possibly a
ring of truth to this.
It seemed intuitive
to experiment with some allergy meds after suspecting there is some
link between my allergies and sleep apnoea. So I took up a regimen of
allergy meds for a couple weeks. I noticed that after a week that I
felt more rested than I had been for ages. My relationship with food
seems more relaxed. I am able to concentrate better. Very
interesting.
I went to the Google
and looked this up. It appears that there is also a link between my
allergies and anxious behaviour. I read somewhere that ADHD and sleep
apnoea are connected, where ADHD is claimed to be a consequence of
the loss of sleep suffered by sleep apnoea. I have also read that
loss of sleep associated with sleep apnoea is also blamed for
overeating.
This whole chain of
shit was started from the epiphany of seeing the inflammation caused
by the scratch test being administered to offspring Anna and linking
it to little observations I had made.
Then again, maybe
it's just the yoga.
