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Not sure how accurate my Garmin watch is but on some nights I drop below 90% to like 88% or 89%. It fluctuates up and down during the night. But rises and stays above 90% during the day. I would assume my watch isn't as accurate since it is on my wrist where at hospitals they measure your fingertip.
From this support forum, it seems as though there is a negative 5% bias. Which is good my case. lol
Again, I’m not a doctor, but my guess is that if you regularly dip below 90% when you are asleep, it’s just your body’s natural rhythms. In the interview I listened to with the doctor talking about silent hypoxia and such, she never mentioned anything about how much our blood 02 changes when we’re sleeping, but it makes sense that it would drop at night. A lot of our waking functions drop off when we are sleeping. You could Google it just to be sure, but if it’s regularly dropping while you’re asleep and then coming back to 95% + during the day, I’m sure you’re fine.
I’ve been trying to get a pulse oximeter for a few weeks now, with no luck. They are sold out everywhere.
So, why not use Pulse Oximiters as a diagnotic tool?
It is used as a diagnostic tool. I was in the hospital for two weeks, back in early February after a serious kidney injury that almost put me in the ICU, and every time they took my vitals, they measured my blood O2. It’s a diagnostic tool that doctors and nurses use constantly.
I also think it’s a useful diagnostic tool for Covid and health care workers working with Covid patients use it for self-monitoring daily. I would get one for myself, but they are impossible to find right now. Sold out everywhere.
Yes when I was in college I got walking pneumonia. While walking regularly or sitting I had absolutely no problems. No fever, no cough, no sensation I couldn't breathe.
The first thing that let me know I had a problem was trying to go upstairs in the class building. I was literally crippled. I could only take two steps and had to stop for 5 minutes.
When the doctor told me it was pneumonia I didn't believe him. I had no symptoms. But once I took the antibiotics, it got better quick.
If you are worried, try walking up a set of stairs.
Same thing happened to me ten years ago. The first round of antibiotics didn’t clear it up and it spread to both lungs. In the end, they used a really powerful antibiotic to clear it up. Pneumonia is not fun. Everything takes so much effort and even sleeping is hard. I still sleep with my upper body at a 40* angle since then. After the pneumonia went away, I found that I liked sleeping propped up because I didn’t get sleep paralysis as bad as when I slept flat in bed.
It is used as a diagnostic tool. I was in the hospital for two weeks, back in early February after a serious kidney injury that almost put me in the ICU, and every time they took my vitals, they measured my blood O2. It’s a diagnostic tool that doctors and nurses use constantly.
I also think it’s a useful diagnostic tool for Covid and health care workers working with Covid patients use it for self-monitoring daily. I would get one for myself, but they are impossible to find right now. Sold out everywhere.
They vary a lot in quality. And do you know what your resting heart rate is normally? It can vary a lot. Mine is 53 which is lower than most. Most are above 60. Oxygen levels can vary too.
They vary a lot in quality. And do you know what your resting heart rate is normally? It can vary a lot. Mine is 53 which is lower than most. Most are above 60. Oxygen levels can vary too.
Unfortunately, I’ve had to take my blood pressure daily for a year since I have mild hypertension — an inherited trait that all the men in my family have — so I’m all too aware of my BP and heart rate. Throwing in a pulse oximeter would give me freaky medical powers that no mortal outside a walk-in clinic has ever experienced.
to be clear, when you say "nail polish", you mean the finger that you put the PulseOx on, not wearing nail polish in general is bad. Yes? Otherwise, there are fearful people all over the globe rushing to remove their nail polish.
I am not sure precisely what you are saying or asking or why nail polish is fearful.
PulseOx works on the principle of reflected light. There are several designs, one of the most common being a clothes pin like device that clips on a finger tip. The light is reflected through the finger nail, into the capillary bed. If you should have nail polish on, the light is reflected off the polish instead of the capillary bed and the reading is off or non functional. Most medical people that use these regularly have small foil packets with a pad impregnated with nail polish remover if needed.
Back to capillary beds. These are the smallest blood vessels where oxygen is off loaded to the cells and CO2 is removed from the cells so it can eventually be exhaled via breathing. Assuming you do not have nail polish on, look at your fingernail. It has a pink color. Squeeze your finger tip and that pink color blanches out to a white color. You just squeezed the blood out of the capillary bed. When you turn loose, the pink color should return in less than 2 or 3 seconds. If it takes longer than that, you may have a circulation or oxygenation issue. That is capillary refill. This is a quick assessment technique used by medical personnel. Its not definitive but it is an indicator when used with other signs and symptoms.
I read about this in the Health and Wellness forum this morning. This device is an early warning system for drops in oxygen levels in your blood that you might not even realize has occured due to C-19. The drop in Oxygen can preceed the difficulty in breathing.
Knowing WHEN to seek medical help is the problem this device might solve.
I'm not sure at what level of Oxygen would call for a trip to the doctor/hospital...still learning on the fly here, but wanted to get this out to a wider audience w/o delay.
AnasthesiaMD...you out there? What Oxygen level in blood is so low it is considered "seek professional medical attn?"
I read that article the other day. Very interesting, and I recommend to all. One snippet:
"A vast majority of COVID pneumonia patients I met had remarkably low oxygen saturations at triage — seemingly incompatible with life — but they were using their cellphones as we put them on monitors. Although breathing fast, they had relatively minimal apparent distress, despite dangerously low oxygen levels and terrible pneumonia on chest X-rays".
Indeed, I read a blog in early March in which another ER doctor also recommended getting one of those devices; I picked one up on Ebay for $20.
The article also explains a phenomenon noted during the Spanish Flu: seemingly healthy people dropping dead. No doubt, they were experiencing the same thing as COVID 19 pneumonia patients today (again, from the article):
"Silent hypoxia progressing rapidly to respiratory failure explains cases of COVID-19 patients dying suddenly after not feeling short of breath."
I recommend The Great Influenza by John Barry. It is a chilling book about the 1918 pandemic. It also has served as an accurate guide to today. After the 'first wave' of the influenza (which was rather mild), cities began to relax the social distancing (yes, that phrase was used back then) guidelines, reopening businesses and the like. When the second (and deadliest) wave struck in October 1918, it caused massive deaths.
Interesting tidbit: the only significant American city to avoid the Spanish flu was Gunnison, Colorado. At the beginning of the outbreak in April 1918 they literally shut down all access to the town. No one could enter the town; any person that left, was not allowed back in. Food and supplies were left at the roadblocks. It worked. Not one person became even ill. Of course, it helped that only one road entered the town from one side, and exited from the other.
The chapter devoted to the Liberty Bond Parade in Philadelphia was itself worth the price of the book.
Wow you sound pretty knowledgeable. What do you know about the flux capacitors?
Go to O'Reilly's Auto Parts, I assume you'll have to use the website, their stores probably aren't open, and ask for/search for part # 121g. You'll need plutonium for it to work though, I'm not sure how you'd get any. You can buy small amounts of uranium on Amazon, but I don't think that would work.
Also, why do you assume that most people over 70 are technologically clueless? Any of us who worked in an office were using some kind of desktop computer by 1985 (IBM PC introduced in 1981). And we were still working when we ditched our sat phones and started using cell phones instead. We were pretty damned used to them by the time we began to be interested in our blood pressure readings and whether we were walking enough.
Now if you had said 80+, you might have a point. But still, people who are 80 this year were born in 1940, which means many of them were still in the workforce by 2002, still plenty of time to have accumulated computer experience.
Last edited by jacqueg; 04-25-2020 at 10:32 AM..
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