Sleep apnea is one of those conditions that hides in plain sight. Most people who have it do not know, partly because the worst of it happens when they are asleep and partly because the symptoms during the day, things like fatigue, brain fog, morning headaches, and irritability, are easy to attribute to almost anything else. The diagnosis often only arrives after a partner notices something is wrong, or after a doctor flags the pattern of complaints during an unrelated appointment.
This category is the foundational reading on the condition itself. Not the equipment, not the practical side of using therapy night after night, but the deeper questions. What sleep apnea is, what causes it, who tends to get it, how it is tested for, and what happens to your body when the airway collapses dozens of times a night for years on end. I was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea more than a decade ago, and I have spent the years since reading the research, watching my own data, and asking my treating clinicians the kinds of questions a computer science background tends to produce.
You will find posts here on what sleep apnea actually is, the symptoms that should prompt a sleep study, how a diagnosis is made, and the difference between obstructive and central presentations of the condition. There is also writing on how untreated apnea connects to migraine, cardiovascular risk, stroke, and other conditions where the link is easy to miss until somebody points it out.
If you suspect sleep apnea in yourself or someone you love, the symptoms post and the diagnosis post are the right starting points. Nothing in this category is medical advice, and nothing here replaces a sleep study or a conversation with a clinician. The aim is to give you the vocabulary and the context to walk into that conversation already knowing what to ask.
