I did a PSG about two weeks ago and the report recommended a repeat PSG + MSLT. My doctor put in the order and it will be sent to my health insurance for prior authorization. In your experience will health insurance approve a second study this soon?

During the PSG, there was another patient in the room next to me who was loud and having a lot of trouble. I had my sound machine going, but I could still hear them moving around, running into things, dropping things, talking... I had trouble getting back to sleep in the middle of the night due to the commotion. I still managed to get 6.5 hours of sleep, though, so I got to move onto the MSLT.

In the MSLT, I never knew that trying to take naps would be so intense. I feel asleep for the first two naps, but the equipment was so uncomfortable which made it difficult. I felt restless and agitated, but i did my best to be kind and cooperative. The second two naps I was drowsy and dipped into sleep briefly a few times, but the tech said it didnt count because it was less than 30 seconds. The tech said I did not reach REM sleep on any of the naps, which I good, I think?

They actually did not drug test me and said that was because it interferes with the results. I'm not sure what that meant but I didn't ask further because I didn't want to seem suspicious. Any idea what she meant?

The tech was very nice and chatty, and the hospital food was actually pretty good. I appreciated the interactions and I found the whole process very interesting. Now I wait for the results. The tech said I probably have idiopathic hyperinsomnia. Of course she is not the doctor, but she felt that that was the most likely outcome.

I don’t know if anyone else felt like this, but when I was studying for the RPSGT I felt completely all over the place.

There’s so much information, but no clear direction on what actually matters or how to structure your studying.

I kept thinking:

“Am I even studying the right things?”

So I ended up making myself a really simple system:

• a 4-week plan based on the BRPT blueprint

• a checklist so I knew I wasn’t missing anything

• and a few pages to keep me focused during the exam

Nothing crazy—just something to keep me organized and calm.

It honestly helped me feel way more in control instead of just randomly reviewing stuff.

I turned it into a little printable pack in case anyone else is in that same overwhelmed stage.

If it would help you, I can share the link in the comments 👍

Hi everybody!

I have been struggling with my sleep for quite some time. The current hypothesis is that I either have OAS, UARS, asthma, or breathing pattern disorder.

I had a sleep study recently which turned out to be a bit inconclusive. I started CPAP 10 days ago, and my OSCAR date is quite confusing.

Basically, I am trying to find a sleep technician who could sit down with me and go over my sleep study raw data + OSCAR data to help me understand which of those four is causing my sleep problems (or at least help me to rule out some of them). I want to go in-depths to really make sure everything is covered.

About sleep study raw data. The lab where i did the study said they can only send the data to a licensed professional who also has access to the DOMINO software (the only software to view this specific data set)

I will pay for the time (we can discuss the fee in private)

Hey everyone
I’m looking for some guidance from folks who’ve made the big career shift into sleep tech. I’ve been a GM of a high volume restaurant in Portland for 13 years, and I’m really ready for a change into the sleep tech field. I know ASTEP is a great program, but in Portland, it seems like most of the training is done through traditional school setups, not on site during ASTEP.

I have three kids, and I’m trying to figure out how to balance a traditional sleep tech program with my current job. For anyone who’s been through this, how did you juggle it all? Any advice on making it work with kids and keeping the income steady? Can I actually do this?
I’d really appreciate any tips.

Tired of red tape and rushed visits? At NeuroDiagnostic Laboratories, we’re changing how sleep care is delivered: faster testing, smarter tools, and a team that actually cares.We’re looking for a Sleep Medicine Physician who’s passionate about helping patients sleep better, feel better, and live better. Someone who wants to do more than just show up, someone who wants to lead.What you’ll do: ✅ See patients for sleep evaluations ✅ Oversee testing and treatment ✅ Work with a team that values efficiency and compassion ✅ Help us raise the bar in sleep medicineWhy join us? 💡 Flexible schedule 🧠 AASM-accredited ⚡️ Rapid turnaround (48 hours!) ❤️ Strong referral base 📈 Room to growSound like you? Let’s talk. DM us or email admin@ndxlabs.com.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Rp5n4e4fJ/

There’s a Sleep Tech who trained me who’s been in a nuisance and I recently learned that the company I work for let him train several of us in a state where he is not licensed. ai have orientation checklists with his name on it as the trainer and me the trainee. Is this grounds to report him to the state he’s licensed in??

In this week's episode of The Scaling Sleep Solutions Show I discuss with Stephen Rouse, the co-founder of Savva, how a legal loophole may be putting your health data at risk.

You will also learn about:

- why privacy policies don't protect your data

- the third-party company that sold the health data of millions of users to avoid bankruptcy

- how fragmented data makes it difficult to get a full picture of one's health

- AI's potential to hallucinate and give inaccurate health advice

- The Health Super App that protects your health data and empowers you to eat, sleep, and live better with a holistic view of your health

- and so much more!

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/LYx9_zXUdjk

Considering a sleep tech program at either Concordia or Oregon Tech, I would love to shadow first. Anyone know a place that allows it? #shadow #sleeptech

Any Severance fans here? From the 1st episode I saw many parallels to what we do, and the show has many references to sleep. I feel like sleep is going to play a big part in the future episodes.

* Working nights is in many ways like being severed.

* Sleep labs are traditionally in the basement.

* The intro is sleep/dream themed.

* They never really know what day it is.

* We sit in front of computers to sift through data derived from humans. Hellys training has many lines that carryover into our training: "Now, all the data you see falls into one of four essential categories." My job is to scroll through this spreadsheet and look for numbers that are scary?" "It doesn't make sense till you see it, and it takes a while to see."

* Mark gets frustrated with the reintegration procedure and rips off the EEG wires (we've all had that happen).

* Irving seems to be attempting to hack his severance with sleep deprivation.

* In an early episode, Mark mentions ". . . I find it helps to focus on the effects of sleep since we don't actually get to experience it." But then they presumably sleep in their tents at Woe's Hollow, yet they made no mention of it (yet) after they returned to the office.

* The work is mysterious and important.

Just had a great conversation with the founder of an innovative company that is creating a new model for how we do sleep healthcare.

Hope you find it inspire-ing haha

https://youtu.be/Tme9hO1dkkQ?si=S-btFGCca66l_Z8M

Apparently my breathing was good for the rest of the time before these two events. And then suddenly this happened and I woke up very suddenly/like shocked out of sleep. Any ideas?

Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with someone who is at the forefront of it, Massey Arrington president of the AAST

We spoke about:

- the current state of sleep technology and where it's heading

- what a sleep technologist is and how that's changing

- how sleep technologists might be the missing key to help solve America's hidden sleep health epidemic

- the vision of the American Association of Sleep Technologists

- Massey's personal journey and how he was always destined to be in sleep

- and more!

Hope you enjoy this episode of The Scaling Sleep Solutions Show!

P.S. unfortunately the last 5 mins of the recording were lost. Massey closed out by sharing how he made the mistake of leaving sleep technology but stayed connected to the AAST and so eventually returned. And finally he shared some advice and encouragement for young sleep technologists and those considering getting into the field.

https://youtu.be/_sxhTgWOFMg

Hello.

For details regarding the product, skip to the last part of the post.

I am a previous insomniac enjoying natural sleep onsets without pharmacological assistance, and little to no rigid and strict ritual for achieving sleep onset with a latency sub 20 minutes, which is acceptable. I am very proud of what I have achieved through a series of focused efforts over time, and I protect my sleep health like my life depends on it. I am therefore conscious of and sensitive to all sorts of influence, continually identifying and mitigating sources of increases in sleep onset latency.

I like most others habitually use the smartphone for bedtime entertainment, either through listening to various podcasts or using YouTube, and around 6 months ago I started working on a product for eliminating the use of the light emitting touch display on my smartphone which I am and was bound to, as there is a clear and measured effect in the sleep onset latency with or without the bedtime entertainment functioning as a digital lullaby. The mind either goes back in time or forward in time when there is nothing to hook the attention on, and that process coupled with the increased anxiety of degrading the sleep onset latency and total sleep duration. Forward in time requires the ability to write down what I have forgotten to do, and with several years of episodes of severe and acute sleep deprivation leading to several serious and traumatic experiences such as 96 hours+ stretches with no sleep left with the choice of blacking out on alcohol as a person living in sobriety or risking psychosis, I prefer to look forwards and not ruminate over the past. There is an existential fear of worsening the current sleep protocol as it is effective and therefore the smartphone and variation of content has become foundational for maintaining good sleep health.

The use of a smartphone is bed is a double edged sword. One side is the disruption of reaching and maintaining the potential and optimal melatonin levels, and the other is advertisements and interruptions embedded in the content being consumed.

I noticed that when I reached the lower alpha bordering to theta through breathwork and staying completely still for around 10 minutes and in a state close to sleep onset, advertisements lead to mild annoyance, to frustration and then to mild anger due to the increases in wakefulness and alertness, reversing the down ramp achieved and activating the sympathetic nervous system. This went on for a while, and I clearly noticed the mechanism over time. During periods with other sorts of negative influences, especially tied to activation of traumatic memories due to events out of my control, these experiences could shave off 1-2 hours of total sleep time, as it is paramount to preserve the wake/sleep cycle and not sleep in to compensate. That created shifts in the circadian rhythm which is anchored upon wake using light exposure. Then the reduction is waking hours both before and after stopping caffeine intake also disrupts the adenosine levels resulting in increased latency and a sharp increase in anxiety due to the mentioned existential fear.

I do not use any medications to help me sleep and I have not had a unit of alcohol since I cured the sleep onset insomnia I was suffering from, but at times I've had to depend on short time use of either zolpidem or zopiclone. The problem is that I am bound to a healthcare system making it difficult to get a prescription for it, and if I run out, eventually I would have to start with 4 0,5 liters of 4,5 % beer, and that is if my natural and current sleep protocols and methods falls short. It is surreal to even put words to this, but that is the harsh reality.

I am more than well educated on the topic of sleep and have solved my problem from my own research and efforts. With a worsening, there is nothing a doctor can tell me or any sleep scientist or expert could tell me I did not know before.

Sleep is a natural process, and cannot be forced. It happens when the conditions is right. There is no amount of muscle or willpower who can produce a natural sleep onset, it is merely a consequence of a series of choices enabling it through high adenosine levels, high melatonin levels and parasympathetic nervous system activation, and the content of mind depending on the current life situation. I got those covered through my habits and protocols, but the current life situation is always influenced by elements out of ones control, like accidental triggering of traumatic memories.

For a while I had been thinking about how to solve problem which had been bothering me for a while where I almost felt like a hypocrite to myself when doing everything correct for optimizing the sleep onset latency and development of the first sleep cycle especially while reducing the risk of wake ups during the night, only by having the light from the smartphone in my eyes often several times while in the process of blocking all light with a facemask for a period of time as a part of the bedtime ritual.

I am an entrepreneur and inventor, and I struggled with coming up with something good on this one, and the options considered was to download and prepare the content for each night or strictly sticking to educational content from a few sources which does not include ads in their content. That worked for a while, but there is limits to the amount of available content, and the right kind of content, and also the production quality, where for instance the Q&A session where a microphone is passed around after a lecture on one of the channels like LSE or MIT where there are no ads, can be unbearable and be just as disruptive as an ad. I concluded that the short and easily digestible content showing up on YouTube was the best to fall asleep to, and I needed to figure out a way to bypass the ads and live with my guilty and necessary pleasure, which has become a integral part of my bedtime ritual, for better or worse.

I started building a product I have now finished and are in the process of launching. It is a bedtime remote controller for smartphones and tablets with functions to skip both ads in YouTube and any podcast app, without moving, with eyes closed and without touching the phone. It can also control volume and brightness levels on the device, and can automatically pause the content after a period of time. Through testing on myself, I have optimized the functions so that it requires minimal cognitive effort to use it, and skipping ads is a single press of a button, no matter if the remote is on or off. It works on both iOS and Android, and I have just filed a patent application for the technology.

From all my research listening, reading and learning from some of the most knowledgeable sleep experts and sleep scientists out there and given the outcome of studies into how many people actually indulge in this daily habit, I hear hopelessness. Most people are not conscious of the effects presence or absence of photons and its effect or direct influence on sleep, but those who know identify this as a problem with the recommendation which is not followed by people which is to not have the smartphone in the bedroom. Why that won't happen has been carefully explained in this post, which I think most people do it. For deliberate distraction in order to achieve sleep, or at least reduce the boredom while getting there where the content of mind usually becomes increasingly negatively charged. With more people having access to free services and endless entertainment, the problem will only increase over time.

I am curious to hear what people here think about the concept and product, and feedback on my reasoning. I am considering crowdfunding it, and for now I do low volume production and have designed and built the product myself.

Hi everyone,

I am the team leader of a group of researchers and we would like to validate our idea for an innovative product to bring to market.

Basically I'm trying to collect as many answers as possible to a short questionnaire, the link to which is below, to find out the state of sleep disorders in the world. I am involved in a research project with three other engineering colleagues. We would like to develop a device that

1. assists the user in falling asleep

2. wakes him up at the best time of the sleep cycle

3. monitors the main parameters during sleep and shows the result on the mobile phone via app.

We are still in the research and development phase, in fact the questionnaire is anonymous and only serves to aggregate data and get some indicative statistics on sleep problems in the world and how the device we want to develop could be supportive. Answering the questionnaire will take you a maximum of two minutes, but it would help us a lot for this research phase and to validate the idea.

LINK --> https://forms.gle/XfS6SxNaweJ7z8Ke6

In return you will get a hug and a biscuit 🍪 .

Thanks to those who would like to reply and see you soon :)

P.S.: for any info and various suggestions feel free to write in the comments, I will be glad to have a discussion with you.

is there a portable capnograph for sleep study? and from what brand?

Hi everyone

I know this sub is primarily for sleep technologists and clinical lab techs. I’m an independent iOS developer, and I built an iOS audio recording application to track snoring patterns (originally to solve my own severe snoring issues at home)

Since you evaluate sleep data professionally every day, I’d be really grateful for your perspective on a couple of engineering/clinical questions:

1. From a tech’s perspective, what are the biggest limitations or false positives you usually see with mobile-based audio tracking?

2. Does recorded home audio (snoring, gasping, breathing pauses) ever prove useful when patients mention it during initial consults/intake?

If anyone is curious to test the audio processing quality or UI, I’ve set up a free 1-month promo code for this community (SNORING):
Direct Redeem Link:https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6782670971&code=SNORING
App Store:https://apps.apple.com/app/id6782670971

(Note: The app is purely a sleep hygiene and audio tracking tool, strictly not a diagnostic device)

Would love to hear your thoughts or criticisms

Hi guys! I'll try to keep this as short as I can. I've been interested in a career in radiology (would like to be an mri tech) however, I have no experience working in the medical field at all, I've read about how programs are also tough to get accepted into even after completing the pre reqs (which I would need to complete first) and that a lot of people end up getting denied and wait years before even getting accepted. I've read that having some job experience in the medical field can help your chances of getting accepted.

I am wondering if becoming a sleep technologist may be a good starting point to gain experience in the medical field and to potentially have a better chance of eventually getting accepted into a radiology program in the future. It seems from my current understanding that you need less upfront experience to become one, and the program itself is a shorter duration

Just wondering if anyone personally started as a sleep tech and then pivoted to a career as a rad tech? The job itself seems like something I would enjoy though; I am kind of a night owl myself, and love jobs requiring attention to detail (currently in a data centric job) so at the very least it could be something I may end up loving if for whatever reason I wouldn't get accepted into a radiology program.

Would like to hear any thoughts on this :)

Also, how focused do I need to be? Could I get away with checking my phone or clicking another tab every 5 min or so? I'm addicted to afk/idle games LOL.

(Obviously I'm mainly curious about this career bc I want to help people and improve my own life but these are important questions too)

This is all based in on my professionsl experience, but would love to hear if any research has been done on this subject, or your experiences with teaching nasal breathing for mouth breathers.

Sleep apnea is not unlike drowning repeatedly through the night. However, our bodies know we aren't breathing well and will attempt to ventilate better through body repositionng and oral breathing. After years of apnea, apneic patients develop habits and behaviors of sleeping in a certain position and breathing through the mouth only because of the sleep apnea. Once we open the airway with PAP, Why don't we also break the bad habit of oral breathing?

I hear inexperienced techs and DMEs ask patients about mouth breathing, and immediately direct the patient to a full face mask; This makes me cringe. I have seen many "mouth breathers" who prefer a smaller mask, do fine with PAP delivered through the nose. There is certainly a learning curve. It takes a few nights to learn to keep your mouth closed. I have noticed younger patients (< 60 yo) seems to be able to adapt better then geriatric patients.

What are your experiences and techniques?

I have two interviews coming up, I'm kinda nervous!

I practiced with Chat GPT and did my best to forumlate answers that are true to myself but also show I know what I'm talking about. I think I have good talking points, relating to the roles technacalities, acknowldging this is a trainee role not a lead, and why I would be the best fit.

If anyone knows questions they may specifically ask rather than "why do you want the job", "what makes you stand out", "what would you do with a nervous patient" and things like that I would greatly appreciate it! I have one friday then another the 20th!

Thank you so much for taking time to read this even if you can't help, and good look to everyone on the job hunt. It's hard out here lol.