REM Sleep

[rwalker]

Because of a power cut last night I had to sleep for a couple of hrs without treatment, this is obviously not good but am on the case to make sure I have some kind of back up power. When I am asleep with treatment I am getting rem sleep, when I fell asleep without treatment I was still dreaming which I think means I am in rem sleep, is this normal for OSA sufferers to get rem sleep when not using CPAP.

Richard

[SharkBait]

Because of a power cut last night I had to sleep for a couple of hrs without treatment, this is obviously not good but am on the case to make sure I have some kind of back up power. When I am asleep with treatment I am getting rem sleep, when I fell asleep without treatment I was still dreaming which I think means I am in rem sleep, is this normal for OSA sufferers to get rem sleep when not using CPAP.

Richard

Yes it is. I was diagnosed with a AHI o4 74 but I often had dreams.

[mellabella]

I feel like I'm dreaming all night (with or without the mask) BUT....I get 0-5% REM sleep. Dreams can happen in other stages of sleep besides REM.

[TSSleepy]

I was very interested in this question too. I have always been a very vivid dreamer, and almost always awaken from dreams.

While I was trying to diagnose myself, I wore a pulse oximeter and camcorded myself while asleep. In the 9-hour graph below, the regions of poor O2 saturation (and correpsonding big black lumps of desaturations) were occurring when I went into REM sleep.

By zooming the camcorder onto my pillow, I caught myself facing the camera during one of those desaturation events one night. My eyes would start darting around under their lids (REM sleep), then I would gasp, and my eyes would stop. That pattern repeated over and over every 1-2 minutes, until I finally woke up and rolled over.

[rested gal]

TSSleepy, that is sooooo coool. Love the methodical way you went about diagnosing yourself!!

[TSSleepy]

Thanks rested gal! Based on the above data, I bought an old used M-series and have been on it for two weeks now. You can see I'm really helping those nasty oxygen desats below with my self-prescribed CPAP.

I finally get to see a real sleep doc on Tuesday 3/10. I'm hoping she'll write me a prescription based on this data, so I can buy a new M-Series Auto w/A-Flex and figure out my AHI and optimal pressure.

I'm still not completely satisfied with the graph below, but I feel soooo much better than I did a couple weeks ago. I still dipped below 90% a couple short times. But the excessive daytime sleepiness, headaches, joint/muscle pain, fog-headedness, hypertension, and lack of physical stamina are all starting to recede. Hooray!