4BC Interview - CPAP Bryce Perron.mp3
Feb 25, 2026, 8:44 AM • 7 mins
SPEAKERS
Carla Bignasca, Bryce Perron
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carla Bignasca • 00:00
Sleep apnea is one of those things that quietly creeps into people's lives. You're exhausted, everyone is exhausted, the relationships can get strained and half the time people don't even realise what's going on. Which is why I'm really glad that I'm talking about this today, particularly with my guest, Bryce Perrin. He's the CEO and managing director of CPAP Direct, Australia's largest independent sleep apnea provider. Bryce also sleeps with sleep apnea himself, so it's not just a job, it's very personal. Bryce, welcome to the show.
Bryce Perron • 00:25
Thanks for having me.
Carla Bignasca • 00:26
But you're not a big guy either and you have sleep apnea.
Bryce Perron • 00:29
Yeah. It can be genetic for a lot of people. In fact, my son was about four years old when he was diagnosed with sleep apnoea. And, like, he's super lean as well. So, yeah, there seems to be a stigma that it's for old fat men. That's not the case at all.
Carla Bignasca • 00:44
The other myth that I would love for you to try and debunk, if possible, is that women don't necessarily need to. To have a CPAP machine or women don't snore.
Bryce Perron • 00:54
That's not true one hundred percent. And it's. Especially when women get to the age of menopause. There's been some recent findings that sleep apnea is a very huge part of side effects that women experience with menopause as well. And they've got so much stuff going on during that period of their life. Right. So I feel really sorry.
Carla Bignasca • 01:13
Don't look at me like that, I'll hit you.
Bryce Perron • 01:16
It's such a great thing for them to actually go and address because it's often overlooked and they get given all this other stuff to do with all the symptoms they've got. But the underlying core issue is if our body doesn't get a good quality sleep, then nothing else really works properly. Yeah. Functions. Absolutely. And so if you're affected by sleep apnea, your sleep quality is so bad and we actually treat. I would say, out of one hundred percent of our patients, probably forty percent of them are women.
Carla Bignasca • 01:43
Wow.
Bryce Perron • 01:44
Anyway. And so. But eighty percent of people that are living with sleep apnea are still undiagnosed. So there's so many people out there that are suffering from this, that have no idea.
Carla Bignasca • 01:54
And it does put a strain on relationships. No, sleep is awful.
Bryce Perron • 01:57
I think that's the reason why most people do it. In fact, I came up with this. This really cool TV ad which we ended up filming, and it's on. It's on YouTube. It's actually on the. On the front page of cpap dot com if you scroll down. We did this thing with Merv Hughes and it was like an intervention type of video. And it was really to highlight the fact that most people do this because it's a partner that says, you need to do something about this or our relationship is over. Right? Yeah, yeah. And the partner's normally going, well, I never snore when I sleep alone. It's just when you're there, I just happen to snore. Obviously, we're asleep, so we don't know. And that was my story as well. So my wife said to me, you need to do something about it. I had a sleep test in Perth probably twenty years ago, well before I was in the industry.
Carla Bignasca • 02:39
Wow.
Bryce Perron • 02:39
And they told me I stopped breathing twenty eight times an hour. I'm like, how am I even alive if I stop breathing twenty eight times an hour in my sleep? Right. So I'm basically choking myself out because of the oxygen deprivation and going in and out of deep sleep so many times, so frequently is the reason why I was always wrecked. And I just thought I was busy and, you know, and tired, but I was tired and that because my body was just so fatigued. For not getting quality deep sleep. No. Restorative sleep, brain fog, all of the other stuff that comes with it. And you can't if you've got sleep apnea. It doesn't matter how long you sleep for the quality there.
Carla Bignasca • 03:17
Yeah. I love that you literally live and breathe your product and your business and that you're based here in Queensland. Bryce. The direct correlation between your health and sleep is nothing new, but there's been some amazing information about how important good quality of sleep is for your brain, particularly when it comes to things like dementia and Alzheimer's.
Bryce Perron • 03:40
One hundred percent. In fact, just recently, scientists have realized the glymphatic system, which is where your brain in the deep stage of sleep, because there's REM sleep and. And then there's non REM sleep. And in the. Non REM sleep is where your body heals and regenerates. But also what happens is your brain can shrink down to as much as sixty percent of its current sort of waking size. And this is to make more room inside your skull for the spinal cerebral fluid to flush out the toxins and beta amyloids in your amyloid. Sorry.
Carla Bignasca • 04:12
Beta amyloids. Yes.
Bryce Perron • 04:13
Out of your plaque. Yeah, the plaque, basically.
Carla Bignasca • 04:15
Yeah, the bad stuff.
Bryce Perron • 04:16
The bad stuff out of your brain, which then goes into Your normal wastage system. And this is super important for the body to stay healthy. And if you have a disturbed sleep of any sort, whether it's from sleep apnea, where you're physically fairly much waking up every minute or two minutes to just disturb sleep in general, then the body doesn't get the chance to do that effectively. And so over time, these plaques can add up in your brain. And this is why there's a massive link between disturbed sleep quality and dementia. And also, obviously, sleep apnea is a given as far as that's concerned. But it's super important to really maximize the sleep quality that we have. Cause quality is more important than time. And this is fascinating stuff. When Merv Hughes did his sleep test with us, he stopped breathing seventy six times an hour and his oxygen levels got down to sixty eight percent at the lowest part of the sleep test.
Bryce Perron • 05:10
Like that is full on, right? And now he stops breathing less than one time an hour. So he's a new man. That's why he's a best brand ambassador, because he's just, he's just so he lives and breathes it and he tells everybody about it. It's great.
Carla Bignasca • 05:24
If someone suspects that they might have sleep apnea or they're just really interested in getting a sleep test, what's the first step they should do today?
Bryce Perron • 05:30
First step is definitely go and see your GP and ask for a Sleep Testing Australia referral form to have and then just basically follow the prompts from there that'll get sent straight through to us or they can contact us and we'll book them in. When they have a sleep study, it is scored and reported on by independent sleep physicians and scorers, so that have got nothing to do with the business. So your result is your result completely. So when what happens is you come in with your appointment, they, our clinicians sort of set you all up towards the end of the day, wear loose clothing and stuff, then you go home and you sleep in your own bed, because it's best to get a good snapshot of what your own sleep quality is like in your own environment. So if you normally have a couple of drinks at night, then have a couple of drinks, go to sleep in your own bed in your own environment and then you pull the gear off, bring it back the next day, it gets scored and reported on and within a couple of weeks the report is ready and then we basically sit down and run through and explain exactly what the findings were and what the recommendations were by the sleep physician.
Bryce Perron • 06:31
And if they want to, then if CPAP or any other type of therapy like mass therapy or whatever is is recommended then you can just start a trial and so we do a trial first where you can hire a CPAP machine and a mask first for a month so that way you can get used to it and get used to the mask and find the right combination for you and then we give you a decent portion of that trial cost off the price of a new machine when you when you bring back the trial machine and buy your own and then we supply ongoing support.
Carla Bignasca • 07:00
That's cool. That's the important thing the try before you buy thing and also the ability to be able to try different masks all different configurations whether you're a side sleeper or front sleeper, back sleeper whatever. Thank you so much. All information that we can find we can find online.
Bryce Perron • 07:14
Yep at cpap. Com Perfect.
Carla Bignasca • 07:16
Thank you Bryce. Thanks for your time or afternoons.
Bryce Perron • 07:18
Thanks Carla.