My UARS Story: Seven Years of Being Told I Was Fine

For seven years, I lived in a fog. Bone-tired no matter how much I slept. Anxious without knowing why. Watching everyone else live their lives while I could barely get through a day.

Doctors ran tests. Everything came back "normal." I was told it was anxiety. Depression. Stress. That I just needed to relax, exercise more, think positive.

I wasn't fine. I had UARS—Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome—a sleep disorder that doesn't show up on standard tests. My airway was partially collapsing at night, triggering my nervous system into constant alert mode. I was never getting real rest.

The Turning Point

It wasn't until I stumbled upon a forum post about something called Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS) that things started to click.

Unlike traditional sleep apnea, where your airway collapses and you stop breathing (apnea), in UARS, the airway narrows but doesn't fully close. Your body has to work incredibly hard to pull air through that narrow tube.

Imagine breathing through a straw while you run a marathon. That's what my body was doing every single night.

The Treatments

Since getting diagnosed, I've tried almost everything:

• CPAP / BiPAP: The gold standard, but hard to tolerate.
• MAD (Mandibular Advancement Device): A mouthguard to pull the jaw forward.
• Expansion: MSE/MARPE to widen the palate.
• Surgery: I've had double jaw surgery (MMA), a procedure to fix a floppy epiglottis, and my tonsils removed.

Some things helped. Some didn't. I'm still figuring it out.

But I'm better than I was. And I've learned things along the way that I wish someone had told me years ago.