I know a number of people who have participated in a sleep study, and each was told they needed something (meds, CPAP, more tests, etc.). I’ve never heard of an “all is fine” result. I’m not saying they’re not legit, and I assume most participants have been helped by them. But I also wonder if there’s a scammy component to it.
There could be. OTTOH I had normal vision until I was fifteen or so. At that point, I suspected I was starting to get nearsighted. I got my eyes checked. I was right and I needed to wear glasses for certain things. Every few years, I think my vision is getting worse. I get my eyes checked. It is getting worse and I need new glasses. Of the many times in my life I thought I had an ear infection and went to a doctor, only once did it turn out not to be an ear infection. I still don’t know what it actually was.
My Dad had sleep apnea and needed a CPAP. My Mom had sleep apnea and needed a CPAP. For about a year, I had been waking up with a sore throat and a specific kind of headache. I felt exhausted all the time. For me it was not really a question of whether or not I had sleep apnea. It was just a question of whether treatment would be a machine or something else. It was a machine. I wake up without pain in my head or throat, and I feel refreshed.
My Mom lost 170 pounds after my Dad died. She has kept the weight off since. As a result, her sleep apnea is now so minor that her doctor told her she does not need to us a CPAP.
I use Leukosilk, easily available in Amazon but also in any pharmacy. It is not expensive, adhesive but doesn’t hurt when you remove it in the morning.
My Dad had apnea & she said I snored. (I called BS on that as only she heard it; I never heard me snoring! 
)
I wanted to get a sleep study years/decades ago. There was a lab in the hospital. We were on her insurance, which was from a national company based in IL. A case could made that I would be an inpatient at the hospital since I was checking in & staying overnight, it which case, the copay would have been about $100; conversely, a case could be made that it was an outpatient procedure, only happening to occur overnight, in which case my copay would have been multiple thousands of dollars back when we were young & poor & that was a lot more than at today’s dollars.
- I called my local Blue Cross - we can’t help you, we’re just the administrators, you need to check with BC/IL.
- I called Blue Cross of IL - we can’t help you, we just pay the bill, the charges are negotiated from BC/my state.
- I called the sleep center - we can’t help you, we just enter a code into the billing system; what you’re insurance company pays is in your employer’s contract with them.
In short, no one could tell me how much it would cost me until I got the bill after the fact (& therefore was responsible for the charges) so I never had it done.
We really need a better insurance model in this country!
Whoa! I had absolutely no idea. Ignorance majorly fought today. 
Take the rest of the day off, my friend.
Maybe a nap? 
The thing to realize is that you generally have to jump through some inconvenient insurance hoops to get a sleep study approved. No one does one that is sleeping fine.
In my case, I knew I had apnea; my wife observed it and I knew that I was waking up in the morning feeling like I had barely slept. There was no mystery to me as to what the study was going to say. I still had to do it so I could get coverage for my CPAP.
By comparison, I was just under 8. You have my absolute sympathy crowmanyclouds and Napier.
My apnea events were around 6, so not a big deal. My limb movements, however, were around 70. Surprising that with all that movement my average pulse rate was in the low forties.
I had one years ago. I forget why the doc wanted it done. It turned out I didn’t have sleep apnea, but I had periods of low oxygen during the night. The sleep doc said I would benefit from having oxygen while sleeping. I don’t use a mask, just one of those cannula things that hang in the nose. I tried the usual method with the hose in front and looped over the ears, but I always woke up without it. I just put the loop over my head, with the hose in the back. I use an oxygen concentrator, which is noisy, but I got used to the noise. I have good insurance which covers it.
I haven’t read the thread.
Don’t forget: CPAP is not the only treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnea:
That’s right, but I specifically told them my problem was insomnia and they prescribed a CPAP anyway.
I too am a long-time Ambien user. My doctor is hell-bent on weaning me off it (so far, unsuccessfully) and hopes a sleep specialist will come up with some behavioral modification or something else that she hasn’t thought of.
We tried every new medication or behavioral modification for years.
Doctor finally threw up his hands.
From my end the possible consequences, are far less concerning than the insomnia!
That is it own special hell.
I had a sleep study back in 2012 (I think). I had a lot of the apnea symptoms and my doc recommended it. It was at a sleep clinic w faux bedrooms, each with a glass wall for the clinicians to watch.
Got hooked up to a zillion wires and told to “sleep normally”. Eventually I drifted off and was awakened later by the techs and told I was having over 60 episodes per hour. They affixed a cpap and mask to me, and experimented with various settings. I didn’t feel rested but they claimed to have almost eliminated the episodes during the periods I was actually asleep.
I left with a prescription for a machine which I picked up a week later. It literally changed my life (after I finally got used to it). I had gone from the “golden boy” at work, to the bottom of the rack-and-stack list due to lack of sleep. After the machine I returned to the top rankings and career got much better. And my wife started sleeping better because I quit snoring. FTR: I fall asleep almost immediately now.
Doc said the machine was not optional and I should consider it a survival necessity due to other heart issues. I’m so dependent on it that I found a nearly identical used one online and bought it as a backup (it already had the same settings mine did). I literally met a stranger in a parking lot to deal on a used CPAP machine. It only had about 100 hours on it though, so was well worth it.
My original machine has rolled over and restarted at zero (after approaching 33,000 hours, I bet the programmers here can guess the exact number it reached. ). It’s now the “backup” machine, and I’m using the newer one I bought as my main. Also got online and bought several backup reservoirs (they’re plastic and occasionally get broken). I finally learned that Kroger sells masks a lot cheaper than the CPAP-Industrial-Complex. They’re about 60 bucks, come with a new head strap, and are sturdier than the CICs fancy ones.
I had one in the late 1990s after several episodes of waking up gasping for breath. The first time it happened I thought I was having a heart attack, so I ran out into the breezeway of the apartment at 2 AM. That way, if I ended up croaking, at least someone would find me soon and I wouldn’t end up a pool of decomposing soup.
Anyway, I didn’t get anything meaningful from the study, and I later determined that my gasping was due to reflux, most likely from having eaten big meals shortly before bedtime. So I just started eating earlier. It would happen very sporadically, but it has been a long time now.
When I switched to Kaiser, their preliminary “sleep study” was done as a take-home. It was a sensor that clamped onto a finger. It recorded pulse and oxygen levels. I qualified.
If I hadn’t qualified, they’d have had me come in for an actual sleep study where they would have counted events.
I was having multiple events per minute during my sleep study.
I had asked for the room temp to be as cold as they could make it for me because I sleep better in the cold; after the study the tech said they understood why I needed that, because sleep was a huge workout for me and my body temperature became elevated during it!