Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by robysue » Sun May 03, 2015 9:42 pm

novatom wrote:I almost raised my pressure the other night. I reviewed the Youtube video and stared at the machine for a minute and then chickened out. I'm still torn between being influenced by my peers on this board and still feeling intimidated by my doctor (I am not intimidated by my DME, btw, they don't bother me).
Do what you are most comfortable with. If that means giving the doctor a bit more time and patience, allow yourself that time and don't just "up the pressure" because you feel some peer pressure coming from here to do it.

The first time I changed my pressure settings by myself was after 6 months of PAPing. It was clear that the third titration's prescribed pressure of 7/4 was not doing the job in terms of keeping my snoring under conrol and my AHI was higher than I wanted, but still below 5.0. But bumping the pressure up to 7.5/4.5 didn't really do any good and since I'd already had a lot of experience with serious aerophagia at 8/6, I was reluctant to go any higher than that. I had another meeting with the PA scheduled in less than a month, and at our next meeting she gladly agreed to the idea of switching me to Auto BiPAP at the range I still use. I've played with increasing the pressures every now and then, but I typically wind up right back where I am now because increased pressure = increased discomfort because of aerophagia, and it doesn't really do anything for my AHI.
Meanwhile I had an AHI of 6.16 last night, which disappoints me of course. At the same time, I have not been able to connect a lower AHI to feeling any better, as my insomnia seems to be masking any real effects, at least I think so.
The summary data you posted shows that your CAs are more numerous than your OAs. And increasing the pressure is not going to fix the CAs, and it might just increase the number of CAs. (Or not.) If you "subtract" off the CAI from your AHI, the result is an obstructive event index that is less than 5.0. So from a technical point of view, more pressure may not bring your AHI down much further anyway.

It would be very useful if we could see some sample Daily Detailed Data. In order to figure out whether a pressure increase might help, might hurt, or not do much of anything, we need to see when those CAs are happening and whether there are significant clusters of OAs and Hs.
In light of this internal debate I have going on in my head, I thought I would at least share these stats from Sleepyhead. Are these the stats of someone who should change their pressure? Could an increase help reduce my AHI? I know the answer, now I just gotta summon up the courage to do it.
Given the fact that you've got almost as many CAs as Hs and many more CAs than OAs, I would encourage you to NOT increase the pressure based on just the statistical data you've shown us.

If I had the daily detailed data for the last week or so, it's possible that I might change my mind. But until I see some daily detailed data, I would NOT be increasing the pressure given the sizes of the CAI relative to the AHI, HI, and OAI.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by zoocrewphoto » Sun May 03, 2015 9:47 pm

novatom wrote:
chunkyfrog wrote:Your doctor is not the one wearing the mask.
If it were me, I'd FIRE him. The doctor works for YOU, not the other way around!
Taking your suggestion to its logical conclusion then why do we even go to doctors at all then? I'm still new at this and still believe he is the expert. If things continue to go downhill 6 months from now, I'll reconsider.

Doctors are really good at diagnosing the problem. But most of the doctors have never slept a night with a cpap machine. They have no idea how to make different masks fit well, how to deal with too little or too much pressure (or even how to recognize the problem). They don't know how to make it more comfortable so that a person can actually sleep with it. Many do not understand that there is more to it than ahi. For example, my mom had a treated ahi of 3.4 which is clinically good. Most people feel better under 2, not just under 5/ But to make things worse, she was having clusters of LONG events, some over a minute long. So, while the ahi number was good, she was still experienced severe sleep apnea. A simple change from straight pressure of 10 to a range of 10-15 solved her problem. No more clusters, lower ahi, and she feels so much better. It was a simple change that her old doctor would never have considered. A new doctor did change the settings after reviewing the data from two partial nights with my full data machine.

Keep in mind that some doctors do prescribe machines with data, so they never have any data to even look at. They have no way to even know if the person has successful treatment. Others have access to data, but choose not to look at it.

There are great doctors and lousy doctors. Sometimes, it takes awhile to know which kind you have. I was lucky. I got a good one who prescribed a machine with full data so that he could use that data to refine his prescription. My mom was NOT lucky her first few times, and she spent years with lousy sub-par treatment.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Mon May 04, 2015 9:04 am

zoocrewphoto wrote:
novatom wrote:
chunkyfrog wrote:Your doctor is not the one wearing the mask.
If it were me, I'd FIRE him. The doctor works for YOU, not the other way around!
Taking your suggestion to its logical conclusion then why do we even go to doctors at all then? I'm still new at this and still believe he is the expert. If things continue to go downhill 6 months from now, I'll reconsider.

Doctors are really good at diagnosing the problem. But most of the doctors have never slept a night with a cpap machine. They have no idea how to make different masks fit well, how to deal with too little or too much pressure (or even how to recognize the problem). They don't know how to make it more comfortable so that a person can actually sleep with it. Many do not understand that there is more to it than ahi. For example, my mom had a treated ahi of 3.4 which is clinically good. Most people feel better under 2, not just under 5/ But to make things worse, she was having clusters of LONG events, some over a minute long. So, while the ahi number was good, she was still experienced severe sleep apnea. A simple change from straight pressure of 10 to a range of 10-15 solved her problem. No more clusters, lower ahi, and she feels so much better. It was a simple change that her old doctor would never have considered. A new doctor did change the settings after reviewing the data from two partial nights with my full data machine.

Keep in mind that some doctors do prescribe machines with data, so they never have any data to even look at. They have no way to even know if the person has successful treatment. Others have access to data, but choose not to look at it.

There are great doctors and lousy doctors. Sometimes, it takes awhile to know which kind you have. I was lucky. I got a good one who prescribed a machine with full data so that he could use that data to refine his prescription. My mom was NOT lucky her first few times, and she spent years with lousy sub-par treatment.
Thanks zoocrew and I hope my statement wasn't too snarky. It's very possible that I have a good doctor, but that he's just not as good at communicating the reasons why he's doing what he's doing. Based on what robysue said earlier, it's possible that raising the pressure won't improve my AHI anyways, and maybe the Dr. knew that and that was why he decided not to raise the pressure yet (and he didn't want to take the time to explain why).

Robysue, thank you for your response. I will post more details tonight. I don't understand exactly what CAs are but your response was very helpful.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Julie » Mon May 04, 2015 9:59 am

CA's are 'clear airway' events, or centrals - which means you don't breathe at all - your brain doesn't generate the signal for you to breathe, unlike apneas which in fact are generated, but blocked by obstructions in your throat, etc. Clear airways are not picked up by ordinary Apap machines, but can be by sleep study monitors. And if you have a large enough number of CAs you'd use a different machine to deal with those rather than a regular C or Apap. But most of us have a few CAs on going to sleep and waking up... those are not problematic. It would only be a problem if you had many throughout the night.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Mon May 04, 2015 10:38 am

Julie wrote:CA's are 'clear airway' events, or centrals - which means you don't breathe at all - your brain doesn't generate the signal for you to breathe, unlike apneas which in fact are generated, but blocked by obstructions in your throat, etc. Clear airways are not picked up by ordinary Apap machines, but can be by sleep study monitors. And if you have a large enough number of CAs you'd use a different machine to deal with those rather than a regular C or Apap. But most of us have a few CAs on going to sleep and waking up... those are not problematic. It would only be a problem if you had many throughout the night.
Thanks Julie. I guess that begs the question then, "is my sleep apnea caused more by signals to my brain (mental) rather than physiological?" I'm average weight for my age and height.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by robysue » Mon May 04, 2015 5:24 pm

novatom wrote:
Julie wrote:CA's are 'clear airway' events, or centrals - which means you don't breathe at all - your brain doesn't generate the signal for you to breathe, unlike apneas which in fact are generated, but blocked by obstructions in your throat, etc. Clear airways are not picked up by ordinary Apap machines, but can be by sleep study monitors. And if you have a large enough number of CAs you'd use a different machine to deal with those rather than a regular C or Apap. But most of us have a few CAs on going to sleep and waking up... those are not problematic. It would only be a problem if you had many throughout the night.
Thanks Julie. I guess that begs the question then, "is my sleep apnea caused more by signals to my brain (mental) rather than physiological?" I'm average weight for my age and height.
The answer to whether your particular apnea is more due to your throat collapsing (OSA) or due to a problem with the regulation of your breathing (CSA) is in the data from your diagnostic sleep test.

But it's also important to understand that the problem in in central sleep apnea is a physiological problem that is rooted deep within the brain. In central sleep apnea, the part of the brain that is responsible for night time breathing misinterprets the CO2-level trigger and "forgets" to send a signal to breathe OR there is something that messes with the CO2 levels in the blood and the trigger itself becomes unreliable, and the brain doesn't send the signal to "Inhale Now" because the CO2 trigger is messed up. Complicating matters further is the fact that many people (including those without any form of apnea) can have a few centrals when they are just transitioning to sleep; these sleep transitional centrals are caused by the fact that the CO2 trigger for "Inhale Now" has to be reset and getting it reset can involve skipping a couple of inhalations. In a sleep lab, these sleep onset CAs are not scored because they are considered perfectly normal. But our machines don't know if we are awake or asleep, and so if a sleep onset central happens, the machine is likely to score it as a CA.

The data you posted doesn't have enough CAs for a sleep doc to really be interested in them---your CAI < 5.0. I brought it up only because the machine ain't going to do anything about the CAs it scores. And they may or may not be real anyway. That's why I said that it would be useful to see what the Daily Data graphs look like. If the CAs are clustered around times when you were likely awake or lightly dozing, they may just be misscored sleep-wake-junk (SWJ) that would not be scored on a sleep test. But if the CAs are occurring throughout the night and at times when you are most likely asleep, they may be worth keeping an eye on. A small minority of PAPers develop problems with CAs after starting PAP therapy. For many of these people, the problem is self-limiting. In other words, after the first several weeks or months of PAP therapy, the body figures stuff out and the CO2 trigger for breathing is normalized and the CAs disappear on their own. For a minority of that small minority of PAPers, however, the problems with CAs persists and reaches the level where it is clinically significant (the CAI > 5.0). For this very small minority, increasing the pressure can make the CAs worse. But because I tend to be cautious about such things, until I have a better understanding of when your machine scored CAs are occurring, I'd be reluctant to increase the pressure---just in case you are in that tiny minority of folks who have serious problems with pressure induced central apneas.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Woody » Mon May 04, 2015 6:02 pm

In my reading I found that some people have apnia like events during exercise. And
a strange thing about this condition is that using CPAP at night seems to help this
condition some the following day.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Mon May 04, 2015 7:09 pm

robysue wrote:
novatom wrote:
Julie wrote:CA's are 'clear airway' events, or centrals - which means you don't breathe at all - your brain doesn't generate the signal for you to breathe, unlike apneas which in fact are generated, but blocked by obstructions in your throat, etc. Clear airways are not picked up by ordinary Apap machines, but can be by sleep study monitors. And if you have a large enough number of CAs you'd use a different machine to deal with those rather than a regular C or Apap. But most of us have a few CAs on going to sleep and waking up... those are not problematic. It would only be a problem if you had many throughout the night.
Thanks Julie. I guess that begs the question then, "is my sleep apnea caused more by signals to my brain (mental) rather than physiological?" I'm average weight for my age and height.
The answer to whether your particular apnea is more due to your throat collapsing (OSA) or due to a problem with the regulation of your breathing (CSA) is in the data from your diagnostic sleep test.

But it's also important to understand that the problem in in central sleep apnea is a physiological problem that is rooted deep within the brain. In central sleep apnea, the part of the brain that is responsible for night time breathing misinterprets the CO2-level trigger and "forgets" to send a signal to breathe OR there is something that messes with the CO2 levels in the blood and the trigger itself becomes unreliable, and the brain doesn't send the signal to "Inhale Now" because the CO2 trigger is messed up. Complicating matters further is the fact that many people (including those without any form of apnea) can have a few centrals when they are just transitioning to sleep; these sleep transitional centrals are caused by the fact that the CO2 trigger for "Inhale Now" has to be reset and getting it reset can involve skipping a couple of inhalations. In a sleep lab, these sleep onset CAs are not scored because they are considered perfectly normal. But our machines don't know if we are awake or asleep, and so if a sleep onset central happens, the machine is likely to score it as a CA.

The data you posted doesn't have enough CAs for a sleep doc to really be interested in them---your CAI < 5.0. I brought it up only because the machine ain't going to do anything about the CAs it scores. And they may or may not be real anyway. That's why I said that it would be useful to see what the Daily Data graphs look like. If the CAs are clustered around times when you were likely awake or lightly dozing, they may just be misscored sleep-wake-junk (SWJ) that would not be scored on a sleep test. But if the CAs are occurring throughout the night and at times when you are most likely asleep, they may be worth keeping an eye on. A small minority of PAPers develop problems with CAs after starting PAP therapy. For many of these people, the problem is self-limiting. In other words, after the first several weeks or months of PAP therapy, the body figures stuff out and the CO2 trigger for breathing is normalized and the CAs disappear on their own. For a minority of that small minority of PAPers, however, the problems with CAs persists and reaches the level where it is clinically significant (the CAI > 5.0). For this very small minority, increasing the pressure can make the CAs worse. But because I tend to be cautious about such things, until I have a better understanding of when your machine scored CAs are occurring, I'd be reluctant to increase the pressure---just in case you are in that tiny minority of folks who have serious problems with pressure induced central apneas.
What you say about having CAs while awake makes so much sense because since my insomnia has gotten worse recently, I have spent a lot more time awake with the mask on. I can't always remember when I was awake or not (I purposely avoid looking at the time per the sleep hygiene gods). Anyways, here's my last 5 nights with my CA data. Hope you can discern some pattern from this.

BTW, I feel like I've hijacked this thread so I'll be glad to start a new one...
Thanks again.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by chunkyfrog » Mon May 04, 2015 8:02 pm

Upon extensive reflection, I have realized the REAL answer to the primary query of this thread.
Yes, there is indeed a disorder similar to sleep apnea. This particular "disorder" seems to be
indistinguishable from a plethora of conditions. It is--wait for it--MENOPAUSE!
Ladies, are we in agreement?
The medical profession has been singing this same tired refrain for GENERATIONS!
FYI; I, for one have had ENOUGH of it!

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by robysue » Mon May 04, 2015 8:11 pm

I'm sorry that instead of telling you something I'm asking more questions.

1) Two of the last five days have large gaps in the data: On 4/29 there's an hour long gap from roughly 1:20 to 2:20 and on 4/30 there's a 2.5 hour gap from 0:30 to 3:00. Presumably you woke up at the beginning of these gaps. Did you take the mask off and return to sleep? Or did you get out of bed and do something else until you felt sleepy enough to go back to bed?

2) On four of the nights it looks like you got at about 2 solid hours of sleep at the beginning of the night. Then there's a cluster of events. Is that a likely wakeful period? Or do you think you are waking up later than that? The exception is on the night of 5/1, when there's a pretty dense set of H's that kick in at right around 90 minutes after you go to bed, which has got the right timing for a REM related cluster.

3) On four of the nights there's a really busy hour long period late in the night. On 5/1 and 5/3, the busy hour is around 3:30-4:30; on 4/30, the busy period is 4:30-5:00, and on 4/29 the busy period is 4:00-5:30. All of these busy periods are made up of a mixture of Hs and CAs. It's possible that some of them might be REM related, but I don't think the number of CAs tends to increase during REM the way the number of OAs and Hs do. And some of these clusters do have a fair number of Hs. Any chance these periods correspond to the wakeful periods you remember?

This is a tough call in my opinion. I was really hoping that those CAs were clusterd near the beginning or closer to the end of the time the PAP was running since it would be easier to dismiss them as SWJ. But it looks like you are getting to sleep at the beginning of the night in a reasonable fashion (even if it doesn't seem that way), but the flow rate graph has a lot of spikes in it that are visible even at the "full night" resolution. Arousals and awakenings are often accompanied by a change in breathing---you will often see a couple of big inhalations that are not immediately following a respiratory event if you zoom in on the flow rate curve. And sometimes these are indicators of an arousal or an awakening. Looking at the flow rate is not a 100% failproof way to determine awakenings or arousals, but these larger than normal breaths that are not following an event have a higher than average chance of being associated with an arousal or an awakening. And you say that you have a long standing insomnia problem. So zooming in on some of those "busy" periods in your data to the point where it's possible to see the individual breaths may be useful.

I've also gone back and taken a look at your other threads. Other than mentioning a long standing insomnia problem that predates your starting CPAP, you don't really talk much about how your insomnia manifests itself, or if you did, I didn't happen to find it.

So let's start there: Can you tell me how your insomnia works? In other words, can you tell me if any of this is accurate:

A) You don't have too much trouble getting to sleep at the beginning of the night.

B) At some point you wake up and once you wake up you tend to have trouble getting back to sleep. You may do some dozing or you may feel like you're drifting in and out of a very light sleep, but you don't really feel like you get solidly back to sleep for quite a while.

C) On a some nights you might take as long as 40-60 minutes to finally really fall back asleep. On some nights once you wake up, you're tossing and turning for most of the rest of the night and you feel (subjectively) like you get very little sleep when that happens. On the worst of the nights, do you get out of bed for a while? And then return to bed when you think you are sleepy enough to get back to sleep?

Have I painted an accurate picture of your insomnia?

Finally, since there does seem to be some evidence of possible REM-related clusters of Hs, you might want to increase the pressure from 6cm to 7cm. I would not go any further than that right now since a bigger jump in pressure may cause more problems with the insomnia issues.

Finally, I'm going to make a suggestion that you may or may not be willing to do. You've ditched the clock (which is a good thing), so you aren't consciously aware of when your wakes start or how how long they last. You can use the PAP machine to track those wakes if you want to. If you can easily turn the machine OFF and back ON without a huge amount of effort, then you can use that to track when the wakes are happening. In other words, when you realize that you are awake, reach over and turn the machine OFF and right back ON. That will show up in the data as a break in the Flow Rate curve, but it won't affect the data for the purposes of evaluating the efficacy of your data. And if we knew when the wakes were definitely happening, we might have more of a clue as to whether the "busy" parts of the graph are being caused by SWJ or whether they are occurring when you are more sound asleep (and hence may be REM-related clusters of H's with some "post H-related arousal" CAs thrown in)

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Tue May 05, 2015 6:12 am

robysue wrote:I'm sorry that instead of telling you something I'm asking more questions.

1) Two of the last five days have large gaps in the data: On 4/29 there's an hour long gap from roughly 1:20 to 2:20 and on 4/30 there's a 2.5 hour gap from 0:30 to 3:00. Presumably you woke up at the beginning of these gaps. Did you take the mask off and return to sleep? Or did you get out of bed and do something else until you felt sleepy enough to go back to bed?

2) On four of the nights it looks like you got at about 2 solid hours of sleep at the beginning of the night. Then there's a cluster of events. Is that a likely wakeful period? Or do you think you are waking up later than that? The exception is on the night of 5/1, when there's a pretty dense set of H's that kick in at right around 90 minutes after you go to bed, which has got the right timing for a REM related cluster.

3) On four of the nights there's a really busy hour long period late in the night. On 5/1 and 5/3, the busy hour is around 3:30-4:30; on 4/30, the busy period is 4:30-5:00, and on 4/29 the busy period is 4:00-5:30. All of these busy periods are made up of a mixture of Hs and CAs. It's possible that some of them might be REM related, but I don't think the number of CAs tends to increase during REM the way the number of OAs and Hs do. And some of these clusters do have a fair number of Hs. Any chance these periods correspond to the wakeful periods you remember?

This is a tough call in my opinion. I was really hoping that those CAs were clusterd near the beginning or closer to the end of the time the PAP was running since it would be easier to dismiss them as SWJ. But it looks like you are getting to sleep at the beginning of the night in a reasonable fashion (even if it doesn't seem that way), but the flow rate graph has a lot of spikes in it that are visible even at the "full night" resolution. Arousals and awakenings are often accompanied by a change in breathing---you will often see a couple of big inhalations that are not immediately following a respiratory event if you zoom in on the flow rate curve. And sometimes these are indicators of an arousal or an awakening. Looking at the flow rate is not a 100% failproof way to determine awakenings or arousals, but these larger than normal breaths that are not following an event have a higher than average chance of being associated with an arousal or an awakening. And you say that you have a long standing insomnia problem. So zooming in on some of those "busy" periods in your data to the point where it's possible to see the individual breaths may be useful.

I've also gone back and taken a look at your other threads. Other than mentioning a long standing insomnia problem that predates your starting CPAP, you don't really talk much about how your insomnia manifests itself, or if you did, I didn't happen to find it.

So let's start there: Can you tell me how your insomnia works? In other words, can you tell me if any of this is accurate:

A) You don't have too much trouble getting to sleep at the beginning of the night.

B) At some point you wake up and once you wake up you tend to have trouble getting back to sleep. You may do some dozing or you may feel like you're drifting in and out of a very light sleep, but you don't really feel like you get solidly back to sleep for quite a while.

C) On a some nights you might take as long as 40-60 minutes to finally really fall back asleep. On some nights once you wake up, you're tossing and turning for most of the rest of the night and you feel (subjectively) like you get very little sleep when that happens. On the worst of the nights, do you get out of bed for a while? And then return to bed when you think you are sleepy enough to get back to sleep?

Have I painted an accurate picture of your insomnia?

Finally, since there does seem to be some evidence of possible REM-related clusters of Hs, you might want to increase the pressure from 6cm to 7cm. I would not go any further than that right now since a bigger jump in pressure may cause more problems with the insomnia issues.

Finally, I'm going to make a suggestion that you may or may not be willing to do. You've ditched the clock (which is a good thing), so you aren't consciously aware of when your wakes start or how how long they last. You can use the PAP machine to track those wakes if you want to. If you can easily turn the machine OFF and back ON without a huge amount of effort, then you can use that to track when the wakes are happening. In other words, when you realize that you are awake, reach over and turn the machine OFF and right back ON. That will show up in the data as a break in the Flow Rate curve, but it won't affect the data for the purposes of evaluating the efficacy of your data. And if we knew when the wakes were definitely happening, we might have more of a clue as to whether the "busy" parts of the graph are being caused by SWJ or whether they are occurring when you are more sound asleep (and hence may be REM-related clusters of H's with some "post H-related arousal" CAs thrown in)

Thank you Robysue, you are right on the mark with many of your conclusions. Let me answer then one by one:
1: Yes I turned it off and got out of bed. When I can't sleep beyond 30 minutes I get out of bed, go into another room and read a book until I get sleepy again
2: Most nights in recent weeks, I have only slept about 2 hours at first and then woke up and have not been able to return to sleep. Any sleep I have gotten after that has been very fitful and mostly dozing. I doubt I have gotten much REM sleep at all in the past couple weeks. That pretty much asnwers #3 as well. Several of those nights I have taken medication to get more sleep (30 mg of Temazepam).

Your conclusions:

A: Right
B: Bingo!
C: Correct

That's basically it, Robysue, My answers above have basically described my sleep pattern for the past couple weeks. I've even begun to doubt my original SA diagnosis. I've also wondered this: Most nights I don't have trouble falling asleep with the mask on. But then I wake up and can't get back to sleep. Could the mask be the problem then? Is all that tossing and turning and light dozing being caused by the mask? I've even debated doing a night without the mask (I have been 100% faithful with using the mask every night since Jan. 1, on the few nights I haven't met compliance, I still used the mask for a couple hours)

I like your suggestion. When I first started using the machine, I put a notepad and pen next to my bed to note when I woke up, but I wasn't diligent in doing that. In the past week, I've moved my machine back to the top level of my nightstand (I put it lower than my bed in the past couple months to avoid rainout but putting it back at bed level recently has not resulted in any rainout returning). So, in essence, it is much easier for me to just reach over and turn it on and off. I will follow your suggestion.

Can we move this to private messaging? Again, I feel a bit guilty about taking over this thread for my personal diagnosis.

I very much appreciate what you're doing, Robysue. I would never get this kind of analysis anywhere else (I would seriously consider paying for it, if someone ever wanted to set up shop doing this kind of thing!) But don't get any ideas

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poppi2
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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by poppi2 » Tue May 05, 2015 9:26 am

novatom wrote:. . . Can we move this to private messaging? Again, I feel a bit guilty about taking over this thread for my personal diagnosis. I very much appreciate what you're doing, Robysue. I would never get this kind of analysis anywhere else. . . .
As more of a lurker than as a poster (see my posts per year ratio), I learn mostly by reading the questions asked by other members and then the detailed explanations written by robysue, pugsy and many others. Earl

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robysue
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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by robysue » Tue May 05, 2015 11:31 am

novatom wrote:Can we move this to private messaging? Again, I feel a bit guilty about taking over this thread for my personal diagnosis.

I very much appreciate what you're doing, Robysue. I would never get this kind of analysis anywhere else (I would seriously consider paying for it, if someone ever wanted to set up shop doing this kind of thing!) But don't get any ideas
I'd rather keep it on the forum than in PMs. Poppi2's comment is exactly why I'd rather keep it on the forum.

However, I can see why you feel a bit guilty of high jacking this thread for your problems. So I'd suggest this: Start a new thread, but provide a link to your post in this thread for background reading. Title the thread something like: I need help with Insomnia AND Cpap. That way people will know that you are looking for specific help rather than just general information. If you start the thread, but you are unsure about how to link to this one for background information, I'll be happy to do that in my first response to your post.

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Hopefullady
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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Hopefullady » Tue May 05, 2015 4:18 pm

Hi Enchanter

I only read the first page of this thread so someone else might have posted something similar to what I have to add.

My experience is that my sleep disorder is multifactorial. I have been meaning to make a top-post about this and will do so shortly.

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Enchanter
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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Enchanter » Tue May 05, 2015 5:21 pm

Hopefullady wrote:Hi Enchanter

I only read the first page of this thread so someone else might have posted something similar to what I have to add.

My experience is that my sleep disorder is multifactorial. I have been meaning to make a top-post about this and will do so shortly.

Best of luck. Robysue is helping me explain what I'm going through better. She says I am tired 'behind the eyes.' It's a feeling of pressure in the head, not a sharp pain. Similar to when you are in the Mountains. Like a headache, but not quite a headache. I feel it the most right when I wake up and it lingers on throughout the day causing me to feel tired and fatigued.

I was never able to explain myself in an accurate way. Instead I would say things such as, ''I'm losing blood,'' or ''I'm choking internally and feel like I'm gonna pass out.'' None of these things made much sense to anyone. I was using inaccurate analogies. But Robysue helped me understand that what's going on is I'm tired behind the eyes. My eyes don't feel it, my head feels it a few inches behind the eyes. I used to think it was my brain losing blood, but she explained that I cannot feel blood or my brain, it's my head that I feel.
My Current Therapies
- CPAP + Humidifier
- Allergy Shots + nose Spray + Hepa Air Purifier
- Cardiovascular Exercise + Stretching