Granted, it is somewhat less promising that my most recent ‘first’ was getting hooked up for a sleep study to see if there was something a bit more sinister than loud snoring going on.
I’m loathe to generalise, but my own experiences with anything health-related have always strayed more towards ‘put off until I physically can’t anymore’ rather than ‘preventative medicine is the best medicine’.
But finally, as some (my lovely wife) might say, I went to get a full check up — for the first time in well over a decade.
I went in with a long list of potential ailments and possible queries, but eventually they all boiled down to a few simple things — high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a high risk of sleep apnoea.
It meant that I was off to book in an at-home sleep study to see exactly what all the fuss was about.
But what is a sleep study?
I had heard of them, of course, and seen larger-scale studies with research budgets and the like, but never quite pictured what conducting one from the ‘comfort’ of home would look like.
I assumed many of you hadn’t pictured it either, so I took the opportunity to document the process.
My preconceived ideas all centred around something that looked like a GPS bib that footballers wear to track heart rates and movement, with potentially a wire or two poking out to find the relevant landing points for the study.
In essence, I wasn’t completely wrong — as you can see in the sneak-peek photo — but that’s a story to elaborate on in part two next week
Tyler Maher is the editor of the News.
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