The didge forces you to learn circular breathing, it's cheaper, it is easier to learn, and is easier to play well. Plus I think it sounds better. Everyone should learn to play the didgeridoo. Bagpipes are a whole another level, and feel more like a practical joke gone horribly wrong (Sorry Gran.)
In the case of the Great Highland bagpipes, the most similar traditional instrument is the rauschpfeife (capped double-reed with conical bore and without prominent bell):
Don't get me wrong. I try to remove plastics in all areas of my life as well (because of microplastics), but can't they coat the surface in some biodegradable polymer like PHA/PBS?
Or if this is too expensive coat it with some beeswax at the very least...
I have read a few references that humming or ‘ohming’ help sinus health and breathing so I guess it makes sense playing the didgeridoo would help also. Blowing bubbles through a straw won’t cause vibration, so probably in itself won’t help.
Personally, when I have not slept well and need to be productive in a day, I’m much more likely to want to load up on sugar and unhealthy food
Certainly is not defeating thermodynamics, assuming calorie absorption is not disrupted somehow it's likely the above.
There is a technique to it. You have to sing from the chest not the throat.
Got a link?
I (presumably like the majority) assumed that sleep apnea was at least partially caused by weight gain, but if there is weight gain caused by sleep apnea it’s going to give doctors some new tools
There are plenty of tools for doctors to treat sleep apnea. The problem is that they refuse to use them. Many people on CPAP would benefit greatly from being on BiPAP instead, but doctors commonly refuse to prescribe it. Some cases of sleep apnea can be treated using positional therapy (typically side sleeping), but there's no prescription for that. Some cases can be solved by exercising throat muscles (with or without a didgeridoo), but there's no prescription for that either, and there are virtually zero speech/physical therapists who focus on that. There are some surgeries that can really benefit some patients, but most sleep labs and ENTs refuse to even to even perform a proper sleep endoscopy.
Patient care should be at the top of the list, especially for something as important as sleep. But saving a few bucks in the short term seems to be more important. But people with improperly treated sleep apnea still suffer many of the same effects of people who aren't treated at all.
For surgery, it turns out there are higher rates of it being the improper treatment and partial or full failure, and you still might need CPAP anyways. And that’s on top of the fairly standard and obvious preference for non invasive treatments in general.
I will say a fairly non invasive surgery that is much easier to consider is fixing a deviated septum; it probably won’t fix your apnea, but it being deviated is probably not helping.
One thing to keep in mind is that surgery might still be useful even if it doesn't get you off CPAP: being able to use lower CPAP pressures could increase comfort and adherence.
I've been putting off my own septoplasty because it all sounds extremely unpleasant, so yeah.
The ones they generally don’t recommend in the US are those that involve airway or jaw modification; they have fairly low success rates, you’ll have trouble eating for months, and they can come with a whole host of nasty side effects like permanent uncontrolled nasal drip. Plus, in general US medicine tries not to recommend major surgeries if alternatives are good enough or better, not only to reduce cost and recovery, complications etc, but also because general anesthesia itself is risky.
Obesity increases the chance of developing sleep apnea, yes. But sleep apnea also increases the chance of becoming obese. It is not just a simple unidirectional cause and effect.
the water in the tank is heated to increase the humidity of the air circulating.
cpap machines work by increasing the air pressure on breath-ins and help open your airways by keeping your genioglossus tensor veli palatini muscles engaged.
It worked
It took me 1-2 years to learn circular breathing, but even just learning to play for 15 seconds on one breath can give the "oxygen high" from breathing so much.
Neither of us could get it below 98%, and this was at a mile of elevation (UNMH in Albuquerque).
As for the specifics that may have prevented you from doing what you wanted: If you breathe too shallow or too slow, you won't clear enough CO2. In freediving this is normal (even wanted), but for Wim Hof practice it means you didn't do it right. You really have to breathe so deep and fast that you enter an uncomfortable zone. It's not unlike physical exercise, except it's mostly mental.
Definitely no instructor involved, just a dumb 20 year-old living in Puerto Rico. It admittedly was dangerous, but I am living evidence that it was far from a "surefire" way to die. It was one of a hundred ways in which I put my life at risk during my 20s. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> As for the specifics that may have prevented you from doing what you wanted: If you breathe too shallow or too slow, you won't clear enough CO2.
I'm confident I was doing it sufficiently well to accomplish a longer period of breath holding than I otherwise would have been able to sustain, as evidenced by having done so (in addition to the usual symptoms of lightheadedness, confusion, loss of vision, near-syncope -- yes I agree quite uncomfortable). I know people on HN love to idolize Wim Hof, but in this context minute ventilation is not that difficult of a concept; I'm usually able to estimate the response in a paralyzed patient's PCO2 fairly well when making changes to their tidal volume and rate.
I didn't search for too long, but here's at least one relevant document, in which otherwise untrained subjects were able to achieve a substantial reduction in CO2 (17.4 vs 29.0) with a mere 15 seconds of hyperventilation, leading to an extra 23 seconds of breath holding prior to involuntary breathing moments. The peripheral O2 sat nadir in the hyperventilation group appears to have been identical to the non-hyperventilation group after the first trial (Fig 8b, looks like ~94%) and was only statistically significantly lower on trials 2-5: <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10363065/>
Basically hyperventilation + long breath holds. Probably similar to what free divers do without the mammalian dive reflex due to the cold water. Or like a dangerous game kids used to do when I was in school where you hyperventilate and then have someone press on your chest until you pass out.
But anyway, I'm not sure if the science would back it up, but Wim Hof describes it as over oxygenating the blood and then stopping and letting CO2 ramp up or something. Whether it is significantly dropping the CO2 or increasing oxygen during the hyperventilation phase, isn't it kind of the same thing? Adjusting the ratio.
Anecdotally, when I was doing it regularly I seemed to not get sick at all.
EDIT: your comment is otherwise entirely correct, particularly at sea level.
By the way, you can practice circular breathing very well in the shower. Take water in your mouth and breathe in through your nose while simultaneously spraying the water out through your lips.
Presumably quadruple reed instruments (that require even more air pressure to play) would be even better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruple_reed
Then I read studies showing oropharyngeal exercises can help treat sleep apnea. Originally I used https://snoregym.com/ for that, but then I switched to simply chewing gum once a day (being careful to chew on both sides of my mouth roughly equally), and also chewing my food a bit longer.
It totally cured my sleep apnea.
I was fully prepared to have to go through the entire gamut of masks to find one that worked, because I snore so surely I would need a mask that covers my mouth at least, right?
But even while sleeping, my brain is keeping my mouth shut so the simplest, nose-only mask works perfectly, with very little leakage.
Original paper: https://www.bmj.com/content/332/7536/266
Unfortunately this study doesn’t control for luck.
Didgeridoo (when played properly) can sound great. Like the bagpipes there are a lot of people who can barely play, but go out busking.
https://tribalneed.bandcamp.com/album/genetic-modification-o...
A more recent live performance:
"Participants received a standardised acrylic plastic didgeridoo that was developed by the instructor in collaboration with Creacryl GmbH (Ebmatingen, Zurich, Switzerland, and costs €80 (£43; $94), fig 1). The didgeridoo is 130 cm long with a diameter of 4 cm and an elliptical embouchure with a diameter of 2.8-3.2 mm. Acrylic didgeridoos are easier for beginners to learn on than conventional wooden didgeridoos."
When I used to make my own PVC didgeridoos, I would melt candle wax and then dip one end repeatedly into the wax to build up wax layers until it had the desired thickness and shape.
PVC works, but the acoustics do seem superior with actual plant material. Certainly the feel.
Update: I used beeswax for the gob hole.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNscQ3bGxNk
...along with various other videos on that person's youtube channel (he's an NHS Sleep and Ear Surgeon).
Of course, there are lots of underlying causes of sleep apnea that vary between people, so what helps one person may or may not be relevant for others. Seeing a doctor in the field should be your first step if you suspect you are suffering from sleep apnea.
Two wrongs can make a right.
Hope he sleeps well tonight!
You'll hear Charlie McMahon going at it with continuous circular breathing for five to eight minutes or so on the early Gondwanaland albums (along with sliding length didgeridoo effects and 'singing' down tube).
Check out the papers on Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) and bridge swallowing.
I probably couldn't listen to that on a regular, but I enjoyed it.
Thanks!
I had an AHI of 17 a few years ago and then I had deviated septum surgery and taught myself how to breathe through my mouth using mouth tape.
And had a love-hate relationship with CPAP and finally got consistent with it in the past year.
And now I found a new sleep medicine doctor who agreed to help me try out this claim in the study. (Previous sleep doctor had no interest in helping me with that).
So we took another sleep test and AHI is still about 17. I'm doing the didgeridoo for 3 months for 15 minutes a day, using the air didge, which is adjustable but I'm using it in the lowest tone which is A.
And we are going to test again after the 3 months is up!
It costs less and you get more data, every night, instead of just 2 samples.
I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect (probably stronger) to humming, which is known to dramatically (15-20x) increase the release of beneficial nitrous oxide in the nasal passages.
My gut says that there are some interesting discoveries waiting around the intersections of frequency of vibration, individual resonant frequency, and duration
Attention is magic stuff. Putting it on part of your body can make it better. Withdrawing it can make it worse. I suspect that much disease stems from such neglect.
I used to have a chronically stuffed nose. Then I started doing a kind of meditation where I put my attention upon my nose. My nose opened up and I almost never get a stuffed nose anymore.
A: Do you do requests?
Oh, did you make use of the central telephone service did you? You didn't send the list by carrier pigeons?