by Yuval Levental

It has been a long time since I have posted on Cortical Chauvinism. Recently, I was at the dentist getting a check-up when she noticed that the back of my mouth is clogged. As a result, she referred me to her husband, who is a MD in sleep medicine. He gave me a home sleep study kit to use overnight. The results were very astonishing:

On my left and right side, my sleep apnea AHI (severity score) is almost mild. However, sleeping on my back, the AHI is 55! To put this in perspective, the minimum number for severe sleep apnea is 30, so this is twice the minimum number. This level of disparity in sleep apnea scores is rather rare. Surely, this major issue causes symptoms of my form of autism.

In fact, my first essay on Cortical Chauvinism is titled Visualizing Neurodiversity: Breathing for Treatment (https://corticalchauvinism.com/2015/01/14/visualizing-neurodiversity-breathing-for-treatment/). I didn’t write about this back then, but I believe I was tested for sleep apnea at a hospital back in 2013. However, I remember that they didn’t find anything unusual. I might have been sleeping on an inclined bed instead of a flat mattress. This could have made the sleep apnea score from lying down on my back harder to detect.

Other than that, I am astonished that many NDs were saying all these years that autism is unconditionally a positive. These results clearly say otherwise. To deny treatment for this issue based on political views would be illegal.

For now, I have been forcing myself to sleep on my sides. Additionally, I believe that consumption of HFCS sugar and processed vegetable oils is contributing to this issue (https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/03/22/sweet-problem-princeton-researchers-find-high-fructose-corn-syrup-prompts and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox), so I have stopped these. The first major medical treatment I will undergo is CPAP, which is a machine that makes breathing easier during the night (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sleep-apnea/in-depth/cpap/art-20044164).