Below goes the laptop and everything else .
ping . The ASAA does not endorse any product , but an ASAA staff member and one of its officers both traveled with the bag and reported it to be well made and remarkably handy . Added disclosure : Gordon has promised to donate to the ASAA $ 15 of the purchase price of each bag sold if the buyer designates that charity on the order form .
There may be other handy homegrown inventions out there for the PAP user , but Wake-up Call hasn ’ t heard about them yet . Tell us . n
The Question Box : Another answer
To the Editor :
I read the “ The Question Box ” item in the Summer 2012 issue and I became very concerned . The answer givers are missing the point of why a person needs to use white vinegar in cleaning PAP equipment . White vinegar will kill the spores in your tube as well as in your water reservoir . I can tell you so . I have had bronchitis and sinus infections when I haven ’ t cleaned my tube for a while . It ’ s important to clean the tube at least weekly . You will not breathe in the vinegar if the tube is rinsed well . One needs only to put in one tablespoon of vinegar . If one cleans only with soap and water , you aren ’ t killing the spores that can accumulate .
— Gail Strandberg , Marina , CA
Brief letters to the editor are always welcome . They may be lightly edited .
Sleep apnea may cause major depression
A new study by staff researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers increased support for the idea that sleep apnea patients suffer from more than their share of major depression . The researchers found that in a sample of the general population , men who had been diagnosed with sleep apnea were twice as likely to be depressed as those who had not . Women diagnosed with sleep apnea were five times as likely to be depressed .
Men and women who had not been diagnosed but who reported that they snorted or stopped breathing while asleep , possible symptoms of sleep apnea , were also likelier to suffer from major depression than those whose sleep breathing was less disturbed .
The authors also looked for an association between depression and snoring , another sleep breathing behavior that is a possible sign of sleep apnea . They found none .
Major depression had already been identified as a likely comorbidity of sleep apnea , but the studies on which the finding was based were small and the subjects were limited to persons already diagnosed with sleep apnea , often severe sleep apnea . The data in the new study were drawn from a cross section of the general adult U . S . public , 9,714 persons interviewed between 2005 and 2008 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey , which the CDC conducts annually . The study ’ s chief author is Anne G . Wheaton , Ph . D ., of the division of adult and community health in the CDC ’ s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion .
Wheaton said in an e-mail exchange that she and her colleagues on the CDC sleep team were already working on depression when she saw the possible benefits of a large-scale survey . “ Given that sleep apnea and sleep-disordered breathing are commonly undiagnosed , a sample of community-dwelling individuals would provide us with a better picture of the issue in the general population ,” she wrote .
Questions asked in the NHANES vary from year to year . In the years that Wheaton and her team analyzed , interviewers posed a number of sleep and sleep disorder symptoms questions to the subjects . The same years also included a depression-screening questionnaire . This “ was important ,” Wheaton wrote , “ since depression also is often undiagnosed .”
Coauthors with Wheaton of “ Sleep Disordered Breathing and Depression among U . S . Adults : National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey , 2005- 2008 ,” published earlier this year in the journal Sleep ( Vol . 35 , No . 4 ), were Geraldine S . Perry , Dr . P . H ., Daniel P . Chapman , Ph . D ., and Janet B . Croft , Ph . D .
The huge numbers of American adults with undiagnosed sleep apnea was unmistakably signaled by the authors ’ report that 80 percent of the survey participants who said they snorted or stopped breathing five or more nights a week had not been diagnosed with sleep apnea . Just under 23 percent of the men and 15 percent of the women said they experienced such sleep breathing disturbances at least one night a week — about one-third of both those men and those women said they experienced the disturbances nearly every night . The authors suggested that actual numbers might be even higher . Since the phenomena were self-reported , the participants were describing their own behavior while asleep , not an easy task to be accurate about .
The survey also offered confirmatory evidence of another trend often related to sleep apnea , that American adults continue to get fatter : 72 percent of the men and 63 percent of the women in the sample were either overweight or obese .
The lesson of the survey findings , Wheaton and her colleagues said , was that sleep doctors should ask their OSA patients about depression and mental health professionals should ask the depressed about sleep apnea . The literature suggests that OSA patients often do better on PAP therapy when their depression is treated and that depression is sometimes eased by PAP therapy , they wrote . n
Footnote : Responding to the editor ’ s question , Wheaton e-mailed , “ NHANES was the only national dataset that allowed us to conduct this study .” The reply ’ s significance is that NHANES ’ sleep section , which costs less that $ 1 million per year , has lost its funding in the pending federal budget .
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