Talking about cpap machine, I did some research on it, and found that they are regulated medical device and cannot be purchased without prescription.
I suffer chronicle dry nose, moderate empty nose syndrome on the right side (due to surgery done 20 years ago in China), and Deviated Septum (due to injury as kid). One thing often happen to me is during middle of nigh sleep, my left nose duct will be extremely dry, causing me to wake up and switch side (it seems my nasal cycle is completely gone).
One idea I wanted to try to fix is to use a cpap + humidifier to pump moisturized air.
And I found that I have to get prescription, which I tried with one lab sleep study causing $3000+, and concluded that I do not have sleep apnea, which is one of the symptoms to qualify cpap prescription.
Then I started to look for off market cpap machine on Craigslist. No luck, the machines are often old, and beat up after long usages.
I did not seriously research if cpap has risks to normal people. But it does not seem harmful, unfortunately it has to be regulated and possibly also become very expensive.
Edit: Thanks for the good recommendations. Buying from Chinese site (I often forgot this), nebulizer, etc.
A case can be made that they are being regulated into being expensive to support the rather dysfunctional American health system's need for high insurance charges. At any rate - have a look over on the Chinese sites, you can pick them up new there for $600 or so. Obviously do your own research, and spend some time on the CPAP jailbreak forums as well - the community there is very supportive.
You can find CPAPs on eBay, but my understanding is that you'd want a sleep study to validate the correct pressure settings. Are you sure you can't just set up a room humidifier?
You can also get a home test for about $500 after insurance, get a Rx from your doc, and then buy a $200 CPAP unit with low hours off ebay, Craigslist, FB Marketplace, etc. Or skip the test / Rx and titer the machine yourself using Sleepyhead / OSCAR with the help of very capable folks on cpaptalk.com. It sounds hard until you look into it, and then it's not really that difficult.
I suffer chronicle dry nose, moderate empty nose syndrome on the right side (due to surgery done 20 years ago in China), and Deviated Septum (due to injury as kid). One thing often happen to me is during middle of nigh sleep, my left nose duct will be extremely dry, causing me to wake up and switch side (it seems my nasal cycle is completely gone).
One idea I wanted to try to fix is to use a cpap + humidifier to pump moisturized air.
And I found that I have to get prescription, which I tried with one lab sleep study causing $3000+, and concluded that I do not have sleep apnea, which is one of the symptoms to qualify cpap prescription.
Then I started to look for off market cpap machine on Craigslist. No luck, the machines are often old, and beat up after long usages.
I did not seriously research if cpap has risks to normal people. But it does not seem harmful, unfortunately it has to be regulated and possibly also become very expensive.
Edit: Thanks for the good recommendations. Buying from Chinese site (I often forgot this), nebulizer, etc.