re: I’m about to get my sleep study done right now

You either stop breathing in your sleep or you don’t, starving your brain of oxygen and inducing a bunch of negative downstream effects

But keep telling yourself it isn’t real because they want money for the machine to help you

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You either stop breathing in your sleep or you don’t, starving your brain of oxygen and inducing a bunch of negative downstream effects

But keep telling yourself it isn’t real because they want money for the machine to help you

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I don't doubt for a moment that it can indeed help some people...equally I have no doubt, given my personal experience with the industry with myself, my father, my wife and a good friend who is pushing 90 and still does electrical work on the side about 4 days a week I know with no un-certainty that the industry consists of a sizeable number of very posh and expensive facilities where they high pressure up sell people, many of whom are on Medicare and of the opinion that "by god I earned it, I am going to get it 'cause it ain't costing ME a penny" in the exact way that snake oil salesmen of old would push their products. No doubt some of the snake oil pushed in the past had some positive impact on the lives of people who bought it...if nothing else a placebo effect where their taking action was the true elixir and not that of the actual balm or tonic they had purchased.

For every study done by the industry there is another study which indicates that the positive impacts are either non-existent or severely over blown. Mathematically the advent of the sleep apnea industry has not increased life expectancy at all, in fact life expectancy increases have slowed down considerably after the industry became widespread...from 1900 to 1985 life expectancy averaged an increase of about .432 years every year. Since 1985, the year the industry touts as the beginning of the sleep apnea industry, that number has averaged .046 years if increase. It is not possible to determine the underlying cause of this because it is a million different things but one that can be said for certain is that the sleep apnea industry, a $7.5 billion a year industry, has not done a lot to increase life expectancy. Couple this with the used car salesman tactics common in the industry and it is not out of the question that the industry is nothing more than snake oil by and large.