QUESTION: Should everybody have a back-up CPAP machine?
ANSWER: Yes! Emphatically YES.
Here is why: By the time that your sleep apnea gets bad enough that you take action to correct it, you’ve probably been suffering from it for 20 or more years. Obstructive Sleep Apnea is insidiously slow. You think your are sleeping well but your bed partner can tell you different. Your friends and hunting buddies can tell you different. Snoring, not breathing for up to a minute, chocking, gasping for air, it doesn’t bother you but it bothers them. You sleep the night away but they don’t.
Even though you sleep the night away, you don’t get the rest your body needs to repair itself. Dreaming does not mean that you are resting. Unless you are getting into the lower stages of sleep, your anatomical functions do not slow down so that the cellular structure of your body can do the necessary repair work. Without the cells repairing themselves, your body goes down hill and eventually you develop additional maladies as heart attacks and strokes that can not be resolved.
CPAP therapy restores normal breathing while you sleep. It keeps your upper airway open allowing you to breath normally. It allows you to go into the deeper stages of sleep allowing your anatomical functions to slow down and do the necessary repair work. After using CPAP for a while, your system returns to it’s normal functioning. The stresses placed on the heart and lungs is eliminated. You get back to a near normal state. Your heart rate is normal, your breathing rate is normal, your circulatory system gets back to normal and your respiratory system start functioning the way it should.
Suddenly, your CPAP machine or your nasal interface quits or breaks. You can’t use your CPAP machine because it is showing SERVICE REQUIRED or and ER (error) code in the LED window. It won’t run. Can you get along without it? Sure! All you need to do is sleep setting up. As you find out on night one, that doesn’t work out too good. The next night you sleep on your stomach. That doesn’t work out because it is very uncomfortable. The third night you keep jerking yourself awake because you are not breathing properly, the apnea is waking you up or your snoring is waking you up. You are not sleeping. The next day you are tired, sleepy, can’t concentrate, have a hard time staying awake while driving, watching television or trying to read the daily paper. Your apnea is back, full blown and trying to kill you. Suddenly the stresses that cause heart attacks and strokes is much higher because your system had acclimate to a near normal stress level, thanks to the CPAP therapy. With out the CPAP you are at a much greater risk.
If you had a back up CPAP machine setting in the closet, when the old machine quits, within 10 to 15 minutes you could be back to sleeping like a baby. You and everybody else would be happy.
Get a back-up CPAP machine now. They are not that expensive. Check out these suggestion:
DV51D, DV53D, DV51D-HH, DV53D-HH, 11763, 11764, M-114820-US, M-114800-US
This is affordable insurance, even setting in the closet!
You can check it out at http