According to the American Sleep Apnea Association long term CPAP compliance rates continue to languish at 50-60%. Its clear that plenty of people have a hard time complying with their CPAP treatment. Let me share with you one of the techniques I used to learn about myself and the difficulties I have with CPAP.

I started a spreadsheet. Every day I entered some basic details into it about the previous night’s sleep: the date, the total hours spent on the machine, the actual number of hours spent in the bedroom, and the number of times I put the mask on. I augmented these columns with some formulas to keep track of recent compliance.

So how did I keep track of all of this info every day? Every CPAP machine these days provides all sorts of measurements. My CPAP, and I think every machine made today keeps track of the total number of hours of sleep logged. The number of hours you slept last night is just today’s total hour count minus yesterday’s total hour count.

Now the machine can’t do it all for you. I also kept track of when I entered the bedroom. Not down the minute mind you. But I’d get it down to the nearest 15 minutes, e.g. 12:30am, 11:45pm. And I’d keep track of the times I put the mask on in my head.

This info helps you in a couple of different ways. You can correlate your nightly sleep totals with various environmental variables: bedroom temperature, the time you went to bed, the sheets you are using, etc. This will definitely help you increase CPAP compliance.

But there is another, more subtle benefit of detailed daily record keeping. I’m talking about the simple ability to keep the mask on. When you dedicate yourself to analyzing your sleep you become a detached observer of your own behavior. It becomes much easier to deal with any fears you have towards your sleep machine when you get caught up in keeping track of all that data.

Gradually my fears of the CPAP mask receded because I was so preoccupied with diligently measuring my nightly sleep numbers. I didn’t have the time or energy to indulge my phobias. Plus it made me more aggressive in putting the mask back on in the middle of the night: I needed not just the sleep, but more numbers for my study. And over time the repeated wearing of the mask wore down my mild - and to my mind perfectly natural - claustrophobia.

So open up Excel and get cracking. Don’t have Microsoft Office? Or go to Open Office and download their free software. Do you have a GMail account? Then try clicking that link labeled “Documents” up at the very top of your browser window. The fine folks at Google have provided not just a web-enabled word processor, but a spreadsheet facility as well.?

You need to know that you can beat sleep apnea, and that keeping a daily record of your progress will give you both the information and confidence you need to benefit from CPAP. Believe me, if I can do it you can do it. Take your life back!

If you are a person who snores, here are some practical cures to help you stop snoring. These are simple and easy to do, and are considered to be the most effective ways to reduce or completely eliminate snoring. As with any suggestions, these are open to trial and error. Try them and make your own adjustments to find what works best for you.

Some of the best stop snoring cures:

1. Change your sleeping position

The number one most effective thing to cure snoring, is not to sleep on your back. Sleeping on your side or your stomach can help a lot. Just try simple changes in position and see which ones are less likely to cause you to snore. Try sleeping with a few pillows under your back to give you a little lift.

2. Use a pillow to lift your head

Lying flat is often the reason someone is snoring. When we lay flat on our backs, it puts the neck and throat in such a position that the tongue relaxes and can slide back slightly blocking the throat opening. Which in turn causes the sleeper to begin to breathe through the nose causing a vibration of the soft palate which makes a noise we refer to as snoring.
You don’t want big oversize pillows, just try a couple of smaller neck pillows like a neck roll or one of those rounded ones that look like a horseshoe.

3. Try an adaptive device such as nasal strips or a chin strap

The nasal strips are designed to open the nasal passages and hold then in that open position while you sleep. Insuring good air flow to the lungs helps a lot. And the chin strap device is meant to hold the jaw in a forward position so that everything is in alignment as it should be. With proper jaw placement you should have no more incidents of snoring.
Try them one at a time or a combination of all three, who knows you may just cure your snoring altogether.

One third of our time is spent by our sleep. Good sleeping habit is good to our sinew recovery, wisdom improvement and health maintain. Sleep is also an important process for immunity improvement.
Why we need sleep? When uridine in our body cumulates into some standard in our hypothalamus of our head, our physiological reaction is to have a sleep.
The majority think that it’s really enough to have a sleep 8 hours a day. But in fact, there’s no clear standard according to the various body condition. Someone needs 8 or 9 hours a day, but 5 or 6 hours is enough for some energetic one. It is said that Napoleon only sleeps 3 hours a day, but Goethe can sleep 24 hours one time. Sleep is simple but important for our health. How many hours you need one day on earth? Someone said that you need to sleep more the next day as long as you sleep less than the former day, someone has the totally opposite idea. Look at your after-sleep health condition or body reaction to your sleep! Are you still too sleepy to study or work well? Are you too energetic for your over-sleep?
Someone said that it is bad for our health to drink before sleep, whereas, some milk before sleep is extremely good for our sleep and health.
Sleep is closely related to our health, how to sleep in order to keep health?
Firstly, we should obey to our biological clock, never disturb it at random. We should form a regular sleep habit, such as when we go to sleep, and when we get up. Generally speaking, 9 pm to 2 am is good for us go to bed. Go to bed before 11pm if you don’t want to see your wrinkle in your face rapidly, especially for those girls who chases for beauty maintain. For those aged man, much sleep than young is better although most of them always get up early and go to bed late. Aged man is easy to be tired, so they need longer time to recovery from fatigue. Sleeping as much as then can is important for good sleep for them. Taking a nap at least half an hour every day is extremely practical for everyone to recovery the energy after the tiredness of half a day. Certainly, changing the bad sleeping habit is crucial for us to keep good sleep and maintain our health. Remember 5 “Never” as follows:
1. Never sleep with the lamp open. We still will be affected by light although we close our eyes during our sleep.
2. Never do strenuous exercise before your sleep.
3. Never drink strong tea or high alcohol drinks.
4. Never look awesome books, movie and television.
5. Never taking sleeping potion often.
You’d better take a footbath in warm water. Opening your windows is good for the air circulation, which will improve your sleep perfectly. Some hot milk is very practical for your sleep speeding because of the amino acid which has light soporific function.