SLEEP APNEA SYMPTOMS

[chadster]

IM 45 HAVE SLEEP APNEA AND IM LOOKING INTO THE CPAP , BUT MY QUESTION IS HAS ANYONE EVER HAD POOR MEMORY OR LACK OF CONCENTRATION FROM SLEEP APNEA AS THEY CLAIM IS A SYMPTOM AND ONCE YOU GOT TREATED AND RECEIVED CPAP DID THIS SYMPTOM STRAIGHTEN OUT , AND WHAT OTHER SYMPTOMS DID ANYONE ELSE HAVE FROM THERE SLEEP APNEA AND ONCE TREATED DID SYMPTOMS GO AWAY , ALL RESPONCES WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED

[cijit]

Hi , I am 49 and started cpap late last year .Within days of starting cpap I found my concentration and short term memory improved .I had a drowsy
sensation almost permanently and this cleared in the first 48hours .
Other symptoms are well documented if you do a goggle search on sleep apnea .
The acid reflux stopped immediately, erectile problems take longer , about six weeks in my case . The number of trips to the toilet at night reduces .
If you have the opportunity to trial machines before you buy try an Apap as this takes up the variation from day to day in your body eg a cold vs a dry nose .

[capt]

Some people also suffer from severe depression. The bad thing about this is until sleep apnea is diagnosed, no medication or therapy helps.

[tommom59]

I have had horrible dreams, have awakened because i was not breathing, have felt beyond tired, could not remember anything. I have used CPAP one night and I already have more energy even though i have a cold!!! I will NEVER give up this machine.

[Gidgie]

Its like being supercharged. Tho for some it seems to take a while to kick in. Me an' that energizer bunny have something in common!

[Gunnie]

I still have memory issues, but I am under tremendous stress 24 hours a day. My lifestyle needs serious tweeking which I have been working on for months. I have been using my CPAP machine since 2001 and will not be without it. I felt immediate relief after the first night of using a machine! Also keep in mind that other issues may impact some of the "sleep apnea" symptoms, and may not disappear. Type 2 diabetes, PCOs, etc. could impact having a weight problem and being overweight could tend to cause you to still be tired even though you are getting a good night's sleep.

[Ritap1965]

I had a horrible short term memory. It caused severe problems because I am in school. I thought it was the Nutrasweet in Diet Coke, so I switched to Pepsi One with Splenda, no improvement. Finally I was put on CPAP in December, and now my short term memory has come back. I can't tell you how happy I am about it, since I am taking an anatomy class right now and all we do is memorize muscles and bones. I wouldn't have had a chance of passing this class without CPAP.

[WAFlowers]

BUT MY QUESTION IS HAS ANYONE EVER HAD POOR MEMORY OR LACK OF CONCENTRATION FROM SLEEP APNEA AS THEY CLAIM IS A SYMPTOM AND ONCE YOU GOT TREATED AND RECEIVED CPAP DID THIS SYMPTOM STRAIGHTEN OUT , AND WHAT OTHER SYMPTOMS DID ANYONE ELSE HAVE FROM THERE SLEEP APNEA AND ONCE TREATED DID SYMPTOMS GO AWAY

First, please turn off Caps Lock -- it looks like you are yelling at us.

To answer your questions: yes to those symptoms and others, and yes, they went away with treatment.

Here is an excerpt from an email I wrote to family and friends last summer after having my polysomnograph and titration studies:

For quite some time I've been absolutely exhausted. No matter how much sleep I got, I was still tired. I'd wake up tired every day and just go downhill from there. It was affecting my work -- I wasn't able to concentrate well and my productivity had dropped almost to zero. I was falling asleep through the day, although luckily not behind the wheel.

I was also experiencing frequent and increasing periods of temporal disorientation (like the world around me was being played on a video running about 10% faster than normal) and periods where I would just "blank" -- probably microsleeps. Both of those are symptoms of extreme sleep deprivation, but can slso indicate neurological disorders such as epilepsy.

Eventually I also started to notice memory problems. Long term memory wasn't a problem, but I'd have trouble remembering new things. For example, if I took a phone call I'd later have trouble remembering who I talked to or what it was about. In some cases I'd forget the call completely. Actually I noticed this was mostly true with short calls but longer calls weren't as much a problem.

Similarly, when I went for lunch I'd have trouble remembering the details of what I was working on just before lunch.

My thought processes felt dulled, diminshed. The frustrating thing was I could remember having been "smart" and now I felt "dumb" almost as if I'd suffered some minor brain damage. I'd look at code I'd written in the past (I could recognize the style as mine) and not understand how it worked! I got in the habit of making notes to myself to jog my memory, but I was worried.

All that is now in the past. I'm active, alert, productive and very creative again.

I also had other symptoms as well that I didn't fully recognize at the time as being connected to my OSA, such as hypertension (now mostly gone), type 2 diabetes (improving), weight gain (going down), nocturia (frequent nocturnal urination -- gone) and nocturnal acid refulx (complete gone).

Note that this is far from being a complete catalog of all possible symptoms and side-effects.

I hope this helps.

[Aswab]

Yes, after 31 days my short term memory has improved, concentration has improved, reflux is virtually gone (still medicated though and have a little heartburn), trips to the loo are during the night are generally zero, but if at all, only once(except last night for some reason).

None of these symptomatic improvements, except for reflux, are dramatic and tend to be subtle but they are definitely there. Energy levels are still depressed but I am very overweight so that is the reason for that. My irritabilty quotient has gone up unfortunately. Now I am rested enough to get really P.O.'d at some things I didn't have the emotional energy for before. Sedentary joint and muscle pain got a lot worse in the first two weeks of treatment but have diminished to almost nil now. Daytime drowsiness is gone but evening fatigue levels are the same. I know I am not getting enough exercise and suspect that, when the weather improves, I will have more energy for walking and cycling.

[quote="cijit"]
erectile problems take longer , about six weeks in my case .

[hecate]

... trips to the loo are during the night are generally zero, but if at all, only once(except last night for some reason).

I was very surprised at this. Since I have been sleeping with my APAP I haven't needed to go in the middle of the night althoug I have no idea why sleep apnea would make me want to go to the bathroom in the night.

Liz

[WAFlowers]

I was very surprised at this. Since I have been sleeping with my APAP I haven't needed to go in the middle of the night althoug I have no idea why sleep apnea would make me want to go to the bathroom in the night.

If your body remains active due to not getting into deeper sleep stages and especially if it is stressed by adreniline release triggered by apneic episodes, your kidneys are more active producing more output.

Makes sense to me.

[Aswab]

I have read what Bill states as well, plus some other physiological gobbledy-gook about OSA and kidney function but there is an additional answer which is if your sleep is being disturbed and you wake, or are close to waking, a minor bladder irritation is much more likely to get you out of bed and to the loo. I was amazed that about 4 days into my therapy I slept 8+ hours without a bathroom trip and that was a first in over 10 years. I thought I was having prostrate problems but I now think those, and other, symptoms may be connected to OSA.

David

[Julie]

Hi, I do think it's important to point out that no one here can possibly guarantee that any particular symptom you have will magically disappear on CPAP. It's likely that the your symptoms will be helped, but there could be any number of other 'conditions' coincidentally present that have nothing to do with apnea, and until you try CPAP properly, you cannot judge what percentage of what symptom is 'cured'. People here are trying to help, but they cannot possibly assure you (a stranger whom they've never even met, let alone 'examined' or diagnosed) that every symptom will just go away.

[Aswab]

I do not disagree with Julie that no one here can assure "a stranger whom they've never even met...) but I do not believe anyone did. I know I just reported what it has done for me and what it has done for me is consistent with what other folks have reported that it has done for them and is also consistent with what I have read about the therapy in general. So, if OSA is a diagnosed problem and if, OSA has existed for some time and if, many or all of the problems reported by folks here are in your life and have been for sometime then, while there is no assurance that treatment will make them go away, or even necessarily alleviate them significantly the odds are good that it will certainly help, good enough to take a chance on the therapy and to commit to giving it a really solid try, and it can be a pain in the patootie to get going and stay going but, for me, it has been worth it.

So, all that is to say, the results that other folks have experienced should be encouraging to you if you are diagnosed with OSA and share those symptoms/problems.

David

[NightHawkeye]

Here's a short list of documented symptoms of sleep apnea:

Fatigue
Headache
Choking
Myocardial infarction.
Hypertension
Stroke
Arrhythmias/Dysrhythmias
Bradycardia/Tachycardia
Heartburn/GERD
Poor memory
Depression
Insomnia
Snoring
Night Sweats
Nocturia – Frequent nighttime urination
Erectile dysfunction

There are others as well. These are some of the most common. Apnea is truly a systemic malady which produces such a vast array of symptoms that physicians have neither fully documented nor fully explored the extent of its involvement with these and other symptoms.

Some people have very few symptoms, some have quite a few. Rest assured that folks here will be willing to listen and help.

Regards,
Bill