Posted by Molybdenum on May 17, 2008, at 2:25:00
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects?, posted by undopaminergic on May 16, 2008, at 10:05:27
> What if you were to replace your bedroom atmosphere with a mixture identical to air except for the substitution of CO2 with a non-panicking gas - such as nitrous oxide?
Well if you're talking about suicide, then that's essentially what you do when you stick the tube from the nitrogen bottle into the bag over your head. I don't think it matters too much what the gas is, so long as the CO2 level in the "bag mix" you're breathing in is kept low enough, you'll not have the hyperventilation / panic response. So you'll apparently die of O2 starvation "quite peacefully". In practical terms, there's a handful of Xanax involved too ;)
If you're suggesting this as a treatment for CSA, then you're also on the right track undopa. There's actually a new approach that's under investigation that involves a normal CPAP machine but instead of just fresh air being forced in under pressure, there's another tube coming out of your mask that is used to feed some of your expired CO2 back into your fresh air tube. Either that or there's just a length of tubing that acts as a "dead space" where some of your exhaled C02 can act as a reservoir for re-breathing.
The idea of re-breathing some CO2 is to stop you from waking up too much when you hyperventilate. Which "could" mean that you don't get pulled out of the deeper sleep phases so much.
As far as I know the results are mixed. Some studies say it reduces the number of apnoeas but I don't think it's been shown to necessarily improve overall sleep quality.
Turns out that breathing is a complex system of feedback loops. If one of the elements is not working properly, the whole system can become unstable as we humans try to compensate or overcompensate for too much or too little CO2 in our blood. One of the patterns of breathing this produces is called Cheyne-Stokes respiration where you stop breathing, then over-breathe, then stop again, etc, etc. Mine looks like that.
I'm just hoping for a chemical treatment one day - whether that reinforces or regulates the drive to breathe, or adjusts my sensitivity to CO2, or suppresses one of the feedback systems I don't know.
In the meantime, I wouldn't be buying shares in a CPAP machine company. Some people can tolerate it but many have trouble & some can't stand it at all - that's me. IMHO, CPAP is definitely a treatment that is crying out to be made obsolete..!
There - I'll shutup now. And I hope Pluto isn't reading this....
poster:Molybdenum
thread:829181
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080510/msgs/829619.html