2025 Recap - My Life with Sleep Apnea

Translated from the Spanish original with AI assistance. The original was written entirely by hand, no AI involved.

At the start of 2025 I began a sabbatical after six years at full throttle in a startup. Also early in the year I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea, which finally explained the incredible difficulty I had doing focused work, the memory lapses I suffered, and the chronic exhaustion that no vacation could fix. When, after a long string of appointments and tests, they finally handed me the order for a Polysomnography, I literally thought this “sleep study” thing was bullshit. I could not have been more wrong.

This story is long, but it’s worth it. Very much so.

For far too long I normalized the fact that thinking was hard, that mid-conversation I would forget even the names of people I worked with every day, that the slightest physical effort wiped me out — and let’s not even talk about how long it took me to recover.

I normalized it by telling myself “it’s just tiredness”, “next quarter I’ll take a couple of weeks off”, “age is catching up with me”, and other nonsense along those lines. Then I started to seriously think something was wrong with me, and I began making the rounds of doctors and getting tests done until finally the Polysomnography led to a diagnosis of moderate Sleep Apnea.

The Sleep Apnea thing was not bullshit.

Sleep Apnea is a disorder where breathing is repeatedly interrupted during sleep, either by a physical blockage of the airway (obstructive apnea, the most common) or because the brain doesn’t send the right signals to breathe (central apnea), and this produces episodes of hypoxia — lack of oxygen.

Sleep is an incredibly important mechanism for our mental and physical recovery, and if that process is constantly disrupted by episodes of hypoxia (low oxygenation) the effects are catastrophic, to the extreme that it can seriously compromise the cardiovascular system. Sleep is complex and we still know very little about it.

I was prescribed a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), a device that pumps pressurized air through a mask (nasal or full-face) to keep the airway open while you sleep. Picture Darth Vader’s mask, but hooked up to a flexible hose. It’s not oxygen, it’s just pressurized air that keeps the airway clear to guarantee airflow.

Here’s where the story gets interesting.

Due to problems in the systems of the health provider I was affiliated with — caused by my switch from being employed by a company to paying my own contributions as a freelancer — I couldn’t get the CPAP. The systems issue literally took months to resolve, and it’s not like you can just buy the device on Amazon and use it on a wing and a prayer.

At this point you’d think I was Genghis Khan in a past life, but keep reading.

While I waited for the CPAP I told the whole story to my dentist during a teeth-cleaning appointment, and she recommended trying a Mandibular Advancement Device. It’s an oral splint that moves the lower jaw forward to mechanically achieve the same effect of keeping the airway open.

But at that very moment, of course, the joint on the left side of my jaw was inflamed from a subluxation I suffered some years ago that flares up from time to time, so the Mandibular Advancement Device got postponed at least until the inflammation went down — and conditioned on me actually being a candidate for it.

Me and Wile E. Coyote both, then. BUT…

I decided to take it easy and kept up my Myofascial Exercises, which strengthen and relax the muscles in the area. The funny part is that I originally ended up in Speech Therapy because I noticed that recording courses and giving talks to executives tired my voice out very quickly, and I was diagnosed with Vocal Fatigue from incorrect and/or excessive use of the muscles around the larynx. The Sleep Apnea diagnosis arrived the very same day I was starting speech therapy sessions, and the doctor was able to adjust the therapy accordingly.

And while all these stars seemed to refuse to align thanks to the karma of my past lives, eventually something unexpected happened: one day I woke up fresh, radiant, full of energy, after sleeping some eight hours almost straight through.

I became a being of light!

And the same thing happened the next day, and again the day after that, and for a few months I became an enlightened being — rested, focused, full of energy. IT WAS FUCKING MAGICAL, I could sit all day trying out AI Coding Assistants, studying Elixir, completely focused, I could go to physiotherapy and bounce back quickly. It was incredible to suddenly experience all the benefits of enjoying deep, restorative sleep every single night.

But what did I actually do?!

I even got to thinking it was psychosomatic, because I couldn’t really attribute it to anything with certainty. BUT my wife told me I had completely stopped snoring, and that was no small thing because my snoring had become a serious problem for her own sleep — and on top of that, the Whoop consistently reported top-tier sleep and recovery.

But not anymore :-(

But a few weeks ago, as the end of my sabbatical approached, my sleep stopped being a 10/10, and after a lot of self-examination and research I associate it with the anxiety I started feeling about my sabbatical ending, asking myself “What do I do now?” with a huge existential charge — and yes, I know: bullshit, but I’m only human. I’m not even sure this is the real explanation, because I never knew exactly what I did right in the first place, but it’s the best hypothesis I have so far.

And I made this situation worse on purpose.

Since the pandemic (through bad luck I ended up living far from my family, isolated, for a year) I had been taking some natural relaxing drops before bed — not because I had trouble falling asleep, but because a problem I’ve dragged around my whole life got dramatically worse: I’m one of those people who crash hard, then wake up at three or four in the morning and struggle to fall back asleep. When I took the drops before bed, the probability of quickly falling back asleep after waking in the small hours was very high — practically 1.0.

But reading about sleep I learned that sedation ≠ sleep, and that sedatives — even mild, natural ones, and in my case initially prescribed by a doctor — can alter your Sleep Architecture, the pattern through which our brain cycles between different sleep states, and that is not good in the long run. This is no bullshit; it’s been extensively studied.

So I decided to drop this chemical crutch to see what would happen and get a clear idea of my sleep baseline. No surprise: once again I have a terrible time falling back asleep when I wake up between three and four in the morning, and my total hours of sleep have gone down.

One additional data point

A few weeks ago I woke up with a very sharp discomfort around my right clavicle; after being up for a while it suddenly went POP! — loudly — and the discomfort eased considerably. If I sleep on my right side I wake up feeling bad there, and while I’ve improved with physiotherapy focused on the area, I’m waiting on the results of an MRI to get a concrete diagnosis.

Now, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this injury is in that area, so close to the neck and airway, and on top of that tied to my sleeping posture.

So what was it that actually worked?

Honestly, I don’t know for sure. In the context of the sabbatical I was doing a ton of things related to accumulated (health) technical debt: myofascial therapy, the fact of exploring new technologies with zero commitments, training at the gym, a change in diet (one of the high priorities with apnea is getting to your ideal weight), supplements…

What I do know is that it worked, that the Whoop recorded it night after night, that my wife confirmed it, and that my body felt it. AND THAT I WANT IT BACK — but I shouldn’t stress about that, because it’s counterproductive :-D

So what’s the plan?

Quitting the relaxing drops isn’t because I’m a masochist; the evidence simply indicates that somehow I can sleep like never before without mechanical aids, and I have a list of things to put into practice systematically to figure out how to get back to nirvana — the less invasive, the better.

I’m also still following up with a doctor, I’m going to get a new polysomnography to know where I stand, and I’ve learned a lot about sleep since all this started.

This story will continue…

As I write this I’m still experimenting, and I promise to share what I discover. But in the meantime, if any of this resonates with you, don’t wait for things to get worse.

My two cents.

If you wake up feeling like absolute shit even after a full eight hours, snore like crazy, or wake up in the night choking and startled; if you tend to wake up at night and struggle to fall back asleep, spend the day tired or drowsy, have trouble concentrating, or suffer memory lapses: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. Don’t normalize it like I did. Get professional help — go to your trusted doctor first, and if they don’t help you, look for professionals or organizations specialized in sleep problems. Believe me, you can live a much fuller, richer life if you sleep well, but you have to focus on optimizing it.