What wakes me
The first time I died in my sleep, I was 26 years old. I was in bed in my St. Louis apartment when my girlfriend shook me awake to say: “You stopped breathing!” I died in my sleep this way many times — 20 to 30 times a night, my snoring was cut short with a gasp — before I saw a specialist who told me what was wrong. I have obstructive sleep apnea, which affects 12 million American adults, according to the National Institutes of Health — 20 percent of adult men and 9 percent of women. Apnea is defined by blockage of the airway during sleep. This causes breathing to stop for seconds at a time, up to 30 times per hour: my nightly “deaths.” “In sleep apnea, your life is saved by awakening,” said Clifford Saper, chair of neurology at Harvard Medical School (HMS). When you stop breathing, the brain...