Managing Sleep Apnea: Learning to Get a Good Night’s Rest
Key takeaways:
Kajsa Bradley got diagnosed with sleep apnea when she was in her 20s. At the time, she was also dealing with depression and anxiety.
She says getting better sleep has improved her overall health.
She uses knowledge and humor as an advocate for mental health and sleep issues, which includes posting videos of her CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine on TikTok.
Before she discovered she was a 20-something with sleep apnea, Kajsa Bradley was dealing with health conditions more typical for someone her age: depression and anxiety. Her mental health symptoms were so much a part of her life that she regularly blogged about them.
In 2017, when Kajsa was a college sophomore, she was sleeping 12 hours at night and napping a lot during the day. She felt unmotivated and depleted. She was failing classes and no longer saw herself as a go-getter. So she made the difficult decision to withdraw from school.
She moved back home with her parents. Although she was going to therapy three times a week and taking medications for her depression and anxiety, nothing seemed to be working. Then, her nurse practitioner suggested that she get a sleep study.
At first, Kajsa scoffed at the idea. But the results found she had disrupted sleep. And, ultimately, she was diagnosed with sleep apnea, pauses in her sleep that meant she wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
Kajsa says her diagnosis came as a shock because she was a relatively healthy young woman. But someone her age having the condition was not completely unheard of.
All this time dealing with depression and anxiety, and the problem really was sleep. “That was something that was hard to have sink in,” Kajsa, now a 29-year-old content creator in Portland, says.
“My brain definitely wasn’t working to full capacity,” she says. “I mean, I was off the rails when it came to depression and anxiety. I’m so, so grateful that I was in a situation where my family was able to take care of me.”
Adjusting to a new normal
Once Kajsa was able to process the difficult news that she had sleep apnea, she started making changes. She got a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to help keep her airway open so she could get more oxygen while she was asleep.
She not only felt more rested but also saw her mental health improve. “It felt like my body actually started working and waking up for the first time in my life,” Kajsa says.
After a few months of making adjustments, Kajsa felt healthy enough to return to school in fall 2017.
“I had already lost a few years to this thing,” she says. “And I was very much eager to get back to my life.”
This renewed sense of motivation also came with conflicted feelings about her condition. Kajsa remembers hiding her CPAP machine from her roommate and hoping no one would find out she had sleep apnea.
“The majority of those years I spent feeling ashamed,” she says.
Even though she had found a way to escape the cycle of sickness, she had to discover ways to cope with her new reality. She wanted to find people who shared her experiences.
Finding an outlet and acceptance
After her diagnosis, Kajsa decided to expand the kind of mental health content she was blogging about. She wanted to show her reality of mental health with sleep apnea.
“For the longest time, it was just me deciding, you know what, I got to accept this about myself,” she says. “I have to own this.”
She decided she wanted to share her experiences in video form. TikTok felt like the perfect platform to help her achieve that goal. So Kajsa started posting videos with her CPAP mask on and had many of them go viral.
Now, her TikTok channel is a healthy mix of jokes about cleaning her CPAP machine and videos in which she talks about her sleep apnea symptoms. By posting about her experiences with her condition and her CPAP machine, she has been able to find a community and feel less alone.
“I can either be sad about it, hide it, let that eat up my depression and anxiety, and just shut myself away, or I can just own the fact that I have a sleep disorder,” Kajsa says. “I need a mask when I sleep. And to make myself feel better, I’m gonna laugh about it.”
Dispelling myths about sleep apnea
Becoming a content creator has helped Kajsa see how important education is.
There are two common myths about sleep apnea that she comes across. One is that young people don’t have sleep apnea, and the other is that a sleep apnea diagnosis means you carry too much weight.
“I don’t get the body shaming aspect of sleep apnea, because when is that ever OK?” Kajsa says. “And I’m definitely old enough to breathe while I sleep.”
She’s dealt with hurtful comments and has tried to educate people in response. She knows there are many potential causes for sleep apnea and that it can affect people across a spectrum of ages and sizes.
Kajsa has had surgery to remove her tonsils, adenoids, and extra tissue in her nose and throat to make room for her to breathe. Since she has narrow airways, she had to find additional ways to make her sleep apnea manageable.
“I’ve had bodybuilders message me asking for CPAP advice, because they build muscle around their neck and that gets in the way,” Kajsa says.
She feels good about the community she’s built and about helping others, she says. Dealing with stereotypes has pushed her to create more content. Even though wearing the mask isn’t glamorous, she says, she wants to help put a face to sleep apnea.
Changing the narrative around sleep
Kajsa’s experience has made her rethink the importance of good sleep.
“There needs to be a push for sleep health,” she says. “Sleep is where the body repairs itself. If you’re only giving yourself 3 hours [of sleep] and you have a sleep condition, those hours are not going to be good enough.”
Getting a sleep apnea diagnosis at a young age has made Kajsa an advocate. “If you have some kind of mental health issue, check your sleep just to make sure. You might be surprised,” she tells people.
Above all, she adds, “Don’t underestimate the power of sleep.”
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