Poll: Length of time on xPAP before feeling 90-100% restored

[InsomniacGuy]

Curious to learn about others' experiences. I did a search and did not see a similar poll in the past 3 years. Thanks!

[Guest1]

140 days:
1)First making sure leak rate was within limits (+10 days).
2) Dialing an APAP pressure to get AHI below 1 always (+30 days).
3) Dialing the APAP to chase the "feel refreshed in the morning feeling". (+100 days).
4) Still not feeling refreshed so finally going to a straight pressure on my 141st day did the trick for me.
Its been 155 days on a machine and I have been feeling good for the last 15 days consistently.

[SGearhart]

Could you add a "Still Waiting" category?

[InsomniacGuy]

Could you add a "Still Waiting" category?

Done.

To whomever cast the first vote: updating the Poll with additional choices wiped away your response. Please vote again.

[spmccord]

A really hard question to answer because I suspect that I've had a problem for years, so I really don't have anything to compare it to.

I'm sure it's better, but restored?? Hard to say.

[Krelvin]

The answer for me is simply never. I will never get back to where I was before Sleep Apnea started to take effect. That would be sometime in my early 20's. As you get older, things change, and there are many things you may no longer do that you used to do.

However, if you changed the poll to how long it took before I started to feel good again, that was a couple months after I figured out the mask, sleeping position, etc... For more than 8years I have had decent sleep, and feel well rested most of the time. Of course there are now other issues that come with age, disability etc...

Oh and I am not waiting for it to get better... I am quite content with where it is now. So no way to answer the poll.

[Goofproof]

Oh if life was so simple it's not! Until you get your treatment correct, you are NOT going to get the best out of it. No easy answer, it's a work in progress, even if you get it right, you are aging and your other problems are getting worse.

Fix what you can, the best as you can, work on the rest. Life is what we make of it. Jim

XPAP can't be blamed for your life, only for prolonging it.

[wildboar]

4) Still not feeling refreshed so finally going to a straight pressure on my 141st day did the trick for me.

Same here, was thinking the APAP was doing me some good but going to the straight pressure made me feel more refreshed. Just going from 11 to 11.4 in pressure made a noticeable difference in my AHI.

[Goofproof]

4) Still not feeling refreshed so finally going to a straight pressure on my 141st day did the trick for me.

Same here, was thinking the APAP was doing me some good but going to the straight pressure made me feel more refreshed. Just going from 11 to 11.4 in pressure made a noticeable difference in my AHI.

Ha! Ha, thar .4 cm must have been making your mask hover over your face. Jim

[chunkyfrog]

Since I have no idea how long I have had apnea, I have no point of reference.
My guess would be over 40 years--I was so horribly tired when my youngest was little, and it never
went away completely. I have more energy now than in my 50's, 40's, and possibly earlier.
I felt like crud for a long time. Now, I'm getting old, achy, and shaky. Yet I feel a lot less cruddy than I used to.
Too late for 100%, though.

[JoeWingrove]

I haven't been using mine a month yet and it already has made a world of difference.

[Heather R]

I've used mine for a little over a month and I still feel tired.

Heather

[Hosehead4ever]

I have other health problems that the sleep apnea only exacerbated. I found that xpap therapy didn't make me feel awesome. It just made me feel a lot less like crap. If you're expecting to sleep like a baby, you may be disappointed. Some people do feel great after they get therapy optimized. All I know now is that the difference between sleeping with and without my xpap is like night and day.

[footballgirl13]

Curious to learn about others' experiences. I did a search and did not see a similar poll in the past 3 years. Thanks!

I find it interesting you made a vote. For me I can't use only sleep apnea as a indicator of me being "fully restored" since I have multiple issues going on in my life and one of them is the biggest life stressor of all - for me that is unemployment. Since I was out of work from 2007 - 2011 (that is a long time) I got very depressed. I remember being tired all day long during 2010. But I'm also somewhere around 200 pounds (60 pounds overweight). I was 215 pounds in 2010. I know in 2004 I weighed about 170 pounds and I was still 30 pounds overweight then. I remember gaining weight after my step dad passed in 2004 and I gained more weight after I stopped smoking in 2008. Gaining weight isn't good for anyone that is already overweight.

I remember staying up to 3am not sleeping much between 2008-2009. I attribute that to both situational depression (from being out of a job - but still looking - for such a long time) and due to my sleep apnea. Even though I was diagnosed with SA in 2011, I didn't use cpap since my DME was stupid and didn't titrate me correctly and used a wrong sized mask for the test (it created a false positive in me and my pressure was too high). I started cpap in 2013 and it took me a month to get used to the headgear on my head. I noticed a difference in my sleep in three months. I began to enjoy going to bed - I remember in 2013 I used to crawl into my bed like a little child since I loved how my mask gave me the air that I needed. No wonder I wouldn't go to bed until 3am in 2008!

I'm still not "100% restored" since each time I'm unemployed I go into a funk again and I don't feel very good. I do best when I'm employed and I think if I was employed right now, I'd answer differently. I also have seasonal affective disorder so my spirits are down between November - March. At least our winters are not that harsh here.

[SteveGold]

Got an immediate boost, now I'm chasing consistency and predictability. After 2 years I've finally figured out my main problem is probably centrals. AHI has always been enviably low (average 0.5) but I still feel like pure death half the time.

I doubt I'll ever be "fully restored," but knowing what kind of brain I'm going to have day to day would be life changing.