Billy Mays- Another Theory On Cause Of Death

Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Cynthia Yockey says there may be an undiagnosed reason for Mr. Mays death.

Obstructive sleep apnea results in sleep deprivation, because it jars you slightly awake hundreds of times a night, usually without your being aware of it. But it also results in oxygen deprivation because the amount of time your airway is shut and you are not getting air can add up to almost half of every hour you are asleep. Oh, and by the way, the reason it doesn’t add up to a half hour OR MORE of every hour you are asleep is that once you reach that amount of time without air, you are circling the drain and could die any time. That’s because there’s a feedback system in the body between the level of oxygen and carbon dioxide and when the carbon dioxide level gets too high, the brain stops sending the signals to breathe.

When a person with undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea takes therapeutic doses of medications for pain and/or anxiety — which means the normal dose on the correct schedule, not an overdose — they can die because those medications make it just hard enough to wake up that it is easy to cross that point of no return in the level of carbon dioxide in the blood that stops the brain from sending the signals to breathe — that is, which causes central apneas. (This situation is ditto for alcohol consumption or using recreational drugs, even in small or moderate amounts.)

In addition to his hypertensive heart disease, one of the things that convinces me that Billy Mays had obstructive sleep apnea is his use of cocaine a few days before his death. If he really had a drug problem, it would have been in his system when he died. No, the deprivation of sleep and oxygen from obstructive sleep apnea make you sleepy and foggy during activity. Billy Mays was famous for his energy and enthusiastic sales pitches. Cocaine perks you up. I think Billy Mays was self-medicating with cocaine to treat the sleepiness and fogginess resulting from his undiagnosed sleep apnea.