It usually starts like this—an elbow to the ribs in the middle of the night from your spouse. You wake up asking, “What the f*ck was that for?” She proceeds to tell you that the sound coming out of you while you were sleeping is akin to someone pulling a 12-ton safe across a floor made of corrugated tubing. “Whatever…” is your reply as you doze off again into the land of 1600-lb squats and spring loaded Kevlar bench shirts. This goes on for a bit until your significant other relocates you to either a) the sofa, b) the backyard, or c) another zip code. “No worries,” you say to yourself, even when your family members present to you an audio recording of the finals of the World Lumberjack championship chainsaw finals. It’s all a bit puzzling until you hear the sound stop for about a minute followed by an awful choking and gasping sound. Funny, you don’t remember that from last year’s event. You’re in disbelief when you’re told that those sounds are you!
Fast forward to the work day. You woke up with a nasty hangover headache, but your fridge still had a full 12-pack of Natty Light. Hell, you went to bed at 9:00 p.m. like a good boy should but still feel like you haven’t slept. You slam down a RedBull and head out the door to work. Damn! You almost fell asleep at the traffic light. You get to work, sit down, and go about your business. After lunch, you have another RedBull (one of about three you’ll consume today), but you keep dozing off. “Ah, I’m just tired from all the heavy training I’ve been doing lately. I just have to see what happens on tonight’s Golden Girls rerun cuz that Bea Arthur is such a looker…” OK, I digress...
At the gym, you just feel like you don’t have “it” tonight. In fact, you haven’t had the “it” feeling in quite a while. Come to think of it, all your lifts have been stagnant, even reversing for about a month. What the heck is going on?
You visit your doctor’s office. You get on the scale (280 lbs…nice), and your blood pressure is read (140/90…hmm, that’s up?). You sit down in the room and your doctor pulls out a tape measure. How cool. Now even the doctor wants to see how big your guns have gotten. You proceed to tell him how one arm dumbbell triceps extensions have made all the difference in your lockout when BOOM! He wraps the tape measure around your neck. “Eighteen inches,” he tells you. “Awesome! My neck is bigger than most guys’ arms!” You give yourself a mental high five as he asks you some questions about your overall health, especially your sleep habits. Do you snore (like a champ!)? Do you have headaches? And then comes this: “I’m writing you a referral for a sleep study.” Huh? WTF is that? He tells you something about this thing called obstructive sleep apnea or OSA (you thought OSA meant oughta squat again).
You go home and tell your wife. She is thanking God for the two nights of peace she’ll have while you’re at your study. So you go. The techs at the lab put enough probes and wires on you so that you could be mistaken for C3PO and then they tell you to sleep normally. By the time your study is finished, you’ve been referred to another company for a CPAP and mask. A mask? What am I? Zorro?
Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a very serious medical condition caused by the collapsing or blocking of your airway. There is a significant percentage of the population who has this condition. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about it. Sometimes, Mother Nature designed certain people with a small airway and that’s just how it is. However, there are several signs that are good determining factors of your own chances of having sleep apnea:
1) Large neck size (17 inches and up)
2) High body weight (This doesn’t have to be fat weight either. A densely muscled football player, bodybuilder, or powerlifter is in this category.)
3) High blood pressure
4) Restless leg syndrome
5) All day fatigue even though you go to bed early every night
6) Morning headaches
And snoring! This is an incomplete list, but it just gives us some parameters to examine. If you are personally having any of these symptoms, get into a sleep study and continue to read on to see what happens after the study.
Basically, a CPAP is a device that provides continuous positive airway pressure (see? CPAP!). This keeps your airway clear from obstruction, allowing your body to breathe normally and get the oxygen it needs to function. Sometimes a doctor may provide someone with BiPap therapy. This is for more severe forms of sleep apnea (yes, there are different forms of sleep apnea kinda like single ply, double ply…you know?).
The premise of the device is the same—to let you breath while you sleep. After your study, the doctor probably will go over your sleep events. Yes, you have events while you sleep! These events include total sleep time, total arousal time, time spent snoring, apnea and hypoapnea, and time spent not breathing. What?! You stopped breathing? Remember the audio tape your family played for you when you were gasping for air? That was your body’s defense mechanism waking you up to get you to breathe.
There are a myriad of health problems linked to sleep apnea, including but not limited to:
- Congestive heart failure
- Diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Heart attack
- Obesity
If that isn’t scary enough, 90 percent of people who have sleep apnea don’t know it! So now that you know you have it, how do you deal with it?
Your CPAP and you
This guy is now your new nighttime friend, companion, and life partner, And you will be faithful! Just like your spouse, it takes some getting used to and adjusting. You have to establish a relationship with it, and the mask is what makes this relationship work. Now, unless you have been sleeping nightly with a catcher’s mask on, this will be the hardest part. We aren’t used to sleeping with things on our faces. It’s your body’s natural reaction to reject wearing this thing at first. You have to approach the use of a CPAP as what it is—a therapy treatment.
Let’s put it like this. If you broke both of your legs, you wouldn’t start squatting or jogging again full force after the casts came off until you got used to standing, walking, running, and training. Do you see the point? Therapy takes time to get used to. The most important thing with your CPAP is to use it (duh). And I can almost guarantee that you will hate this device at first. Now you have to try to sleep with pressurized air blowing in your nose. Heck, this is worse than not sleeping sometimes. Sooner or later, your body will adapt to the treatment and you will start sleeping better and longer with the CPAP on.
If the company supplying you with your CPAP is reputable and reliable, they will show you a variety of masks/nasal/pillow/full face systems. There are literally hundreds on the market, and the proper mask is crucial—crucial—to treatment. If the mask isn’t first and foremost comfortable, you won’t wear it. Second, it must fit properly. If it leaks, the therapy is pointless. Make sure your provider has the knowledge to fit you properly. They need to take into account things like size and shape of the nose, whether you are a mouth breather or not, and what your prescribed pressure settings are (a high pressure setting may require a full face mask). Steer away from a company that forces you into a particular brand or style. You should be allowed a choice. If any company tells you that you have to get this or that particular mask or this particular CPAP, find another company.
As lifters, we like to wear the same T-shirt four days in a row to the gym because it’s “lucky.” However, even though general hygiene can sometimes be ignored, your CPAP equipment must be cleaned regularly. Your mask must be cleaned daily. Lots of goodies grow in a warm, moist environment. Ever notice your funky breath in the morning? Bacteria and germs, kiddies, and if you don’t clean it, you breath it back in. Your tubing should be cleaned once a week as well as your water chamber inside your heated humidifier. Please, don’t use bleach, chlorine, Pinesol, Tide, Oxyclean, or the like to clean with. It really shouldn’t have to be stated, but that’s why they have to put the label on a hot coffee cup warning that the contents may be hot. People do it. A good rule of thumb—if you wouldn’t clean a newborn with it, you shouldn’t use it on your CPAP. Use Woolite and water. That’s all you need.
Your cushions, pillows, filters, and tubing should all be replaced monthly at a minimum. Your DME provider (that’s the company that gave you your CPAP) should have thoroughly gone over this with you at your initial set up. Keeping your equipment nice and tidy and changed out regularly will prevent illnesses and make you more apt to use your CPAP. After a period of time, you will feel better, your energy levels will rise, your training will be more productive, and you will be able to sleep in the same room with your wife/husband. Oh, and by the way ladies, sleep apnea isn’t gender specific. I’ve heard that some of the most horrific sleep sounds have come from women who look like a Victoria’s Secret model.
Look, I know it seems like a lot to do—sleeping in a mask, daily cleaning, remembering to change supplies, etc. It can really blow! See? CPAP blow? Joke? OK, not funny. In all honesty, sleep apnea can kill you if left untreated. The hardest thing to do sometimes as a strength athlete is admit weakness. It is unbecoming and goes against everything we train for. Sometimes a little humility and realizing that we aren’t God and have a finite time on this earth is the wake-up call we need to take care of ourselves so we can be around for our loved ones. Bigger, Stronger, Dead isn’t the name of that movie. Besides, if your spouse has sleep apnea as well, you can go to sleep looking like Goose and Maverick from Top Gun. “That’s right, Ice Man. I am dangerous…”