I don't have sleep apnea, as in, my severe snoring doesn't cause significant drops in blood oxygen levels, but it's still severely impacted my life - when my wife and I married, I spent the first night of our honeymoon awake so that she could sleep.
Oh and it's so loud that I'm at risk of damaging my own hearing.
And I bounced off CPAP hard, no matter what I tried, I would eventually remove the mask in my sleep, it was heartbreaking, I was so excited to finally be able to fall asleep beside my wife.
I also tried the mouth guards and would wake up panicking and gagging.
So my only other option currently is self-funding expensive surgery (our public system doesn't fund treatment for severe snoring unless it causes apnoea, and my private health insurance excludes the most expensive portions shrug), which like all surgery, carries no guarantees of success, and also carries the risk that any general anaesthesia application does.
So this is awesome! I just hope it continues proving efficacious and safe.
You snor so loud it damages your own hearing? Can you wear ear plugs to sleep?
Not yet it hasn't, but another 10 years of exposure to it will - and I do. :)
I phrased it like that to try to convey the impact my snoring has on anyone near me.
When I got hunting or tramping, and intend to stay at a backcountry hut, I always carry my bivvy bag in case there's other people staying at the hut, if there are, I go sleep in my bivvy bag about 50m away from the hut.
Nothing like waking up and 20 other people all want to beat you.
I found a way to stop removing the mask through smarthome magic: flash my lights if I take off the mask.
Parts:
1. Smarthome coordinator - HomeAssistant/AppDaemon (runs on my desktop)
2. Prescense sensor - e.g. Aqara FP2
3. Smart light - e.g. Phillips Hue
4. Smart Plug/Power Meter - e.g. Kasa ESP25P4
5. Claude Code to write the logic
.....
The alarm goes off if all of the following are true:
1. it's in sleep period (11pm-6am)
2. i am in bed
3. i have been in the bed for at least 3 minutes
4. i have worn the cpap (wattage > 10w for 3 minutes during sleep period)
....
I can't get around this system at all without walking across the house to my desktop, at which point I'd be too awake to be stupid enough to remove the mask.
Bonus CPAP nerdery: Wireless data collection into homeassistant using a Toshiba W04 SD Card/Wifi Transmitter.
I think I, ironically, sleep to deeply fir that to work for me, but it's not a bad idea at all!
Then swap out the Phillips Hue for super bright corncob LEDs, or an air siren, or a bed shaker