Biden Uses a CPAP. What’s a CPAP?
Reading Time: 3 minutesSleep apnea affects more people than old, overweight men., Biden uses a CPAP machine. What’s a CPAP?
Yesterday, America learned that Joe Biden now sleeps with a long tube protruding from his face. This revelation came because there were indents from the straps that keep the tube secured on his nose visible on his cheeks as he left the White House on Wednesday morning.
Bloomberg reporters confirmed it was a CPAP—or continuous positive airway pressure—machine. Biden has obstructive sleep apnea, where the airway is repeatedly blocked throughout the night, and rest is interrupted. A flow of air from the machine keeps the passage open.
Conservative pundits latched onto the revelation: The Ingraham Angle ran a segment called ‘Just How Sleepy Is ‘Sleepy Joe’?.’ (Though, actually, not addressing a sleep disorder is what makes you sleepy.) Texas congressman and disgraced former White House doctor Ronny Jackson mused, in characteristic all-caps, that if the president has been hiding using a CPAP machine, he must be hiding something else, too.
Still, we’re all voters here, and it’s reasonable enough to ask what using a CPAP portends for our 80-year-old president. But basically … it means that he has an extremely common and manageable condition, for which he is lucky to be getting gold-standard treatment. What’s dangerous is untreated sleep apnea.
Audrey Wells, a sleep medicine physician in Minnesota, found the news totally unsurprising. ‘Of course he does,’ she told me. Half of folks over 65 are at high risk for obstructive sleep apnea. In a 2019 review in Lancet Respiratory Medicine, researchers estimate that some billion people worldwide have the condition.
And those indents on Biden’s face, from the straps? ‘What that tells me is he used the CPAP for the entire night,’ Wells said, approvingly. Some people will wake up and take the device off, and so it doesn’t support them through their REM cycle. But when used properly, a CPAP can eliminate sleep apnea, Wells says. She offers group coaching programs for CPAP users, where patients can learn strategies for making the mask more comfortable, as well as find a sense of community.
Maybe Biden can even help destigmatize CPAP use. ‘I was pleased to see that he was out in public with some marks on his face, which are very common,’ said Lauren Tobias, a sleep medicine specialist at Yale. ‘I try to encourage people not to worry about the cosmetic aspects.’
It’s true that weight is a risk factor for developing the condition, but the idea that sleep apnea only affects overweight people is ‘a big myth,’ says Wells. Other factors, like face shape, can play a role. Biden, for what it’s worth, last publicly clocked in with a BMI in the normal range. We’ve known from presidential medical reports that Biden has had obstructive sleep apnea for over a decade.
Age of sleep apnea patients, too, can vary—just take a look at the #CPAP hashtag on TikTok. ‘It took a while to mentally accept that I would need something like this for the rest of my life,’ Kajsa, a TikTok user in her 20s explained in a recent video. ‘I personally had to start thinking of what it was doing for my life instead of to my life.’ While the machine made her feel unattractive and embarrassed, the increased energy that a good night’s sleep that the CPAP allowed for ultimately outweighed the awkwardness.
In fact, more people could use the care that the Biden is opting for. Some symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea are more obvious, like waking up gasping for air. But even just feeling unrefreshed in the morning, and dozing off during the day, can be signals that you may want to get your sleep checked out, says Tobias. The authors of the Lancet Respiratory Medicine review write that ‘most cases of obstructive sleep apnea remain undiagnosed and untreated, even in developed countries.’ So good for Biden for using his CPAP—and even being willing to sport the evidence.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/biden-cpap-sleep-apnea-what-is-it.html
Ref: slate
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