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Sleep apnea and attention deficit
Jamie Phelps | Feb 18 2006
I have been having trouble with attention deficit symptoms that have progressively worsened over the past 2-3 years. I was talking with a friend who said that he used to have similar problems and that he was finally diagnosed with sleep apnea. Once he started using a CPAP machine, his apnea was much better, his wife would not have to sleep on the couch, and his cognitive functioning was markedly improved. The research on sleep apnea that I have been reading indicates that sleep apnea can cause attention deficit troubles. I am pretty sure I'm a good candidate for sleep apnea, as I reflect two of the three common risk factors: overweight, middle-aged, male. I'm 25, so I'll let you guess which two I fit. I'm 5'10 1/2" and weigh in at around 230. The most basic treatment for sleep apnea is to lose weight. After that, tests and such have to be run that would be a strain on my student budget. I have health insurance, but $300 for a test that I wasn't planning for is a little steep. So, all that being said, anyone here have experience with sleep apnea? Did you experience attention deficit troubles as a result? How much did correcting your sleep apnea help your attention deficit symptoms? What treatments helped you? Did simply losing weight help or do you use a CPAP? I don't think I am a candidate for SA surgery, but if anyone has any experience with that, I would like to hear about that as well. I have contemplated taking medication for the attention deficit symptoms, but I would much rather fix the problem than treat the symptoms. Thanks in advance. 32 Comments
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 ADD is a misnomerSubmitted by geomantic8 on February 23, 2006 - 1:29pm.
Berko wrote:
I can focus like a madman when I am on a deadline. That's why I have treated it as a discipline problem for a long time. Right! So, it's not that our attention is deficient, but that it's *selective* (although I don't mean to imply that we can control the selection). I think it's author Lynn Weiss that argues that 'ADD' is a misnomer. Berko, your experience and mine is that we *can* concentrate when the chemistry is right (e.g. deadlines, interesting subj matter, etc.). Weiss also asserts that ADD is not a 'disorder'. The problem is that the vast majority of the populus are linear thinkers and we are not. Hence, our attention is 'deficient' and that's a 'disorder'. In reality, we are quite creative, intuitive, good at seeing the inter-related nature of life, sensitive, loyal, and funny, among other things. Berko wrote:
Part of improving is knowing yourself and compensating for your deficiencies. Recognizing strengths also helps you recognize where you have been patching your deficiencies instead of fixing them. I couldn't agree more about the need for self-knowledge and the need for compensation. Now that I'm squarely in my middle age, I've acquired a reasonble amount of self-knowledge. My need is for tools to compensate for my deficiencies. It plays out in my search for time management techniques and organizational tools. » POSTED IN:
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