Joe Biden now uses a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) breathing machine while sleeping at night, the White House admitted this week.
Biden, 80, was spotted with strange impressions or marks on his face earlier this week, prompting questions about the president’s health due to his advanced age.
Ultimately, two Bloomberg reporters delivered the “scoop” of the oldest president in history’s CPAP machine usage, declaring that Biden needed the medical device “to treat longstanding sleep apnea.”
Scoop: Biden has begun using a CPAP machine, per sources. The device is to treat longstanding sleep apnea, one of the people said. As Biden departed the White House this morning for Chicago, indentations from the CPAP straps could be seen on his face. Story by @jendeben and me. pic.twitter.com/U4Chkp16Pq
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 28, 2023
After, a White House deputy press spokesman noted Biden’s “disclosed” struggles with sleep apnea since 2008 and reported that the octogenarian “used a CPAP machine last night, which is common for people with that history,” reported Breitbart.
That publication also noted a report from Biden’s White House physician in 2021 that highlighted Biden’s “increasing frequency and severity of ‘throat clearing’ and coughing during speaking engagements” as an issue to monitor for the leader of the free world’s future exams.
A CPAP machine “uses mild air pressure to keep breathing airways open while you sleep,” according to the NIH, which also explains that those prescribed the devices should expect to use them “every time you sleep at home, while traveling, and during naps.”
Benefits highlighted by the government agency include “improving memory and other cognitive function,” “lowering your risk for stroke” and “helping to prevent or control high blood pressure.”
Ashashyou / Wikimedia Commons
Possible side effects include congestion, dry mouth, runny nose, nosebleeds, and irritation around the area where the CPAP mask sits on the face, as apparently seen with Biden. About 8 million Americans are thought to use CPAP machines.
Biden, who regularly suffers through PR disasters created by mumbling speeches, strange stories, or denunciations that must later be walked back – Biden recently called Chinese president Xi Jinping a dictator and called for regime change in Russia, only for the White House to correct him – could be using the CPAP machine to aid with his working memory.
According to an article from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, CPAP machines help “restore memory consolidation in adults with obstructive sleep apnea” according to an experiment that showed marked improvement for sleep apnea sufferers using CPAP machines over a control group of sleep apnea sufferers without the machines:
“The most surprising result of our study, thus far, is the noticeable improvement in memory that CPAP patients experience,” said lead author Ammar Tahir of the Memory Laboratory in the department of psychology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. “These results suggest the success of CPAP therapy in regenerating obstructive sleep apnea patients’ memory deficits.”
Biden recently snapped at a reporter when asked if he lied about his lack of involvement in the Chinese and Ukrainian business deals of Hunter Biden. The president repeatedly claimed he had no knowledge of Hunter Biden’s businesses, but now audio recordings, text messages, emails, and photographs seem to indicate otherwise.
