Rebranding sleep apnoea

Available for over a year

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a condition where a person’s breathing stops and starts repeatedly while they sleep, possibly over 30 times an hour, leaving them exhausted on waking. It affects millions around the world and can lead to serious health problems if left untreated. Patients are often given a CPAP breathing device to keep air flowing into their lungs through the night. But the mask that covers the face can look and feel a bit strange. And there’s stigma too because although anyone can be affected by sleep apnoea, this is not the public perception. Enter, the ‘CPAP Baddies’, an informal online community who are on a social media mission to fight misconceptions around the condition and re-brand life with a CPAP machine. Cheryl Diamond is one of them. She was diagnosed at the age of 40, after a lifetime of poor sleep. “Any time I've seen a CPAP machine represented in a movie, it has always been as the joke. And the usual point of that joke is that someone is old, or that they're overweight and they're usually a man. So I just feel like it's good to normalise this.” We also hear from two doctors who work with patients like Cheryl, and agree that the condition needs to be more widely understood and embraced. Presenter: James Reynolds BBC producer: Megan Lawton Boffin Media producer: Anne McNaught Editors: Arja Haikonen and Harriet Oliver A Boffin Media production in partnership with the BBC World Service Outside Source team. (Photo/credit: Taylor Kane who features in this week's programme)