Testing Begins
Once your physician suspects you may be suffering from Sleep Apnea, you are sent to a specialist who will isolate you in a small chamber to evaluate your breathing patterns in order to assign settings for your next level of testing.
This next procedure is to simulate your normal breathing history during actual overnight sleeping conditions. This procedure is called the sleep test.
You are told that you will spend the night in the test area while measuring your sleeping habits in order to determine the severity of your condition. After checking in, you are told to dress appropriately for a night of rest and in order to fully test your experience, they attach multiple sensors at various locations on your body.
During your over-night visit, your respiratory history is recorded to determine if you are showing signs of Apnea and if so to what degree this is affecting you while at rest. The next morning, while visiting with the tech, I was told that I had shown signs of over sixty episodes during the night. Five episodes are considered normal which indicated that I was showing signs of sever Sleep Apnea.
Reflecting back on this experience I began to have doubts as to the accuracy of the experience in the breathing chamber as well as the over-night stay. My first concern was that in my case, my breathing was not the normal pattern. For many years I have practiced slow, shallow breathing due to my history and interest in yoga. I have intentionally slowed my respiration as well as practicing more shallow breathing which places less stress on a person’s heart. I shared this with the tech when I entered the isolation chamber. I also shared this with the tech supervising my over-night sleep over. I mention this to establish what I had hoped would be helpful information on all of my tests. Unfortunately, they weren’t listening.
Our next posts will explain why the concept of “one size fits all” approach does not always work.