Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

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

Post by chunkyfrog » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:32 am

Some doctors are experts, but what do you call the person who graduated last in the class at medical school?
Answer: Doctor
The same applies to the character who paid someone to take his exams for him.
Many doctors come from wealthy families. Cheating is affordable.
Still believe your doctor is an expert? He may be.
But I have known of some who should have chosen a different career, for the sake of their patients.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:33 am

49er wrote:
novatom wrote:
Julie wrote:Novatom - why don't you just increase it yourself like the rest of us do?
I'd rather not get a long lecture from my doctor at my next visit. I'm sure he would not be pleased. I'd rather wait until my next follow up in June to get his opinion. I just believe that my doctor knows best in this situation.
novatom,

Your doctor will get over it and if he doesn't, then it is time to find someone else. By the way, I don't think my current sleep doctor was happy with my changing the pressures initially. But she has come around.

And if you wait until June, that means you have to suffer through several more weeks of crappy therapy when with this board's help, you could start dialing in the right pressure now. Just saying.

49er
Thank you 49er. I'm still willing to wait.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by chunkyfrog » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:40 am

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!

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by palerider » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:52 am

novatom wrote:
palerider wrote:
novatom wrote:
Julie wrote:Novatom - why don't you just increase it yourself like the rest of us do?
I'd rather not get a long lecture from my doctor at my next visit. I'm sure he would not be pleased. I'd rather wait until my next follow up in June to get his opinion. I just believe that my doctor knows best in this situation.
so, how long have you been working for your doctor? does he pay you well to be his patient?
I knew I would get slammed over this. I don't care, I still believe the doctor is the expert.
you're welcome to your beliefs, but you do need to take charge of your own therapy, and not just leave yourself at the mercy of someone that cannot possibly care as much about you, as you do.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by robysue » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:56 am

novatom wrote: Thank you Robysue for providing some constructive advice. I try to practice good sleep hygiene on a nightly basis. I just went through a particularly stressful time at work (which involved some traveling and late nights) recently which may have contributed to some elevated AHIs (my highest was 25 on the first night of a big trade show). I'll take your suggestions under advisement. I already know what I'm going to discuss with my doctor. I'm hoping that an increase in pressure will result in better REM stage sleep.

I did actually bring this up in a separate thread but I didn't get much response. Perhaps because I had the word "insomnia" in the headline, something that I don't find much discussion about on this board, frankly.
Usually I'm pretty good about reading and responding to any thread with the word Insomnia in the title. But perhaps you posted during a time when I was on my latest cpaptalk sabbatical. I periodically take 3-6 long month breaks in reading stuff here.

At any rate, I'm sorry the other thread didn't get much discussion that was useful to you.

As for finding posts about Insomnia: I'm unofficial President of the CPAP&Insomnia club around here. I wrote extensively about my own dual battles with CPAP and insomnia back when I was a newbie. And I've written a lot in the last 4 years in response to other's posts about insomnia. You might want to click on my user name, and then do a search of my posts with insomnia as the search term. When I do that I come up with 66 pages of posts going all the way back to 2010.
novatom wrote:I try to practice good sleep hygiene on a nightly basis.
Let's start here: What does good sleep hygiene mean to you? And what kinds of good sleep hygiene practices seem to make a positive difference and what ones don't?

I'll end with one of my standard pieces of advice to folks dealing with insomnia: If you are wanting or willing to try significant self-help measures for taming the insomnia beast, a really good starting point is to work your way through Sound Sleep, Sound Mind by Dr. Barry Krakow. The first half of the book is all about insomnia: What it does to our bodies, what kinds of things cause it, and what kinds of behaviors we can use to tame insomnia without the use of prescription sleeping medication. Krakow is upfront in telling his readers that nothing works for everybody, but everyone should find some of his suggestions useful. It's a matter of figuring out which of his self-help tools are most applicable to your particular situation. The second half of the book discusses the connections between untreated OSA and chronic insomnia in some people and how PAP can help. Untreated OSA is a cause of insomnia in a lot of people, but it's also NOT the only cause for insomnia. And many people with both OSA and insomnia do NOT find that CPAP is a magic cure for their insomnia because the OSA is only one of several causes of their insomnia.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Wed Apr 29, 2015 9:02 am

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.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by robysue » Wed Apr 29, 2015 9:20 am

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.
Like any other profession: Some doctors are really great. Some doctors are really lousy. Most doctors are in between really great and really lousy. And most doctors are competent at what they do (in my opinion).

Add to that: Some doctor/patient combinations are simply not good "people relationships". For whatever reason, the doc and the patient don't get along well enough for the patient to benefit. Sometimes the doc just doesn't listen sufficiently closely to what the patient is saying. Sometimes the patient just doesn't listen sufficiently closely to what the doc is saying. Sometimes the doctor/patient relationship can be patched up well enough to function. Sometimes it can't.

I say this as someone who has had a lot of experience: I've been fired as a patient for not getting better fast enough and taking up too much of the PA's time. I've also fired multiple doctors for a variety of reasons. And in one particularly odd case, I fired the doc on the same day the doc fired me as a patient. We just were not able to communicate with each other about my problems.

As I said before: I understand where you are coming from and where you are at right now, novatom. Right now, you're comfortable with the idea of working with your doctor and you're patient enough to wait for your follow up appointment before playing with your pressure settings. That is a perfectly OK thing to do.

At the same time, I want you to understand that many of the folks who encouraging you to just change the pressure setting yourself have had long histories of working with either bad doctors or of working with doctors who simply had a bad relationship with them as a patient. And once a PAPer understands what s/he is trying to accomplish with adjusting the pressure on his/her machine, it's also a perfectly OK thing to simply make the pressure changes without waiting for the next doctor appointment.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Wed Apr 29, 2015 11:27 am

robysue 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.
Like any other profession: Some doctors are really great. Some doctors are really lousy. Most doctors are in between really great and really lousy. And most doctors are competent at what they do (in my opinion).

Add to that: Some doctor/patient combinations are simply not good "people relationships". For whatever reason, the doc and the patient don't get along well enough for the patient to benefit. Sometimes the doc just doesn't listen sufficiently closely to what the patient is saying. Sometimes the patient just doesn't listen sufficiently closely to what the doc is saying. Sometimes the doctor/patient relationship can be patched up well enough to function. Sometimes it can't.

I say this as someone who has had a lot of experience: I've been fired as a patient for not getting better fast enough and taking up too much of the PA's time. I've also fired multiple doctors for a variety of reasons. And in one particularly odd case, I fired the doc on the same day the doc fired me as a patient. We just were not able to communicate with each other about my problems.

As I said before: I understand where you are coming from and where you are at right now, novatom. Right now, you're comfortable with the idea of working with your doctor and you're patient enough to wait for your follow up appointment before playing with your pressure settings. That is a perfectly OK thing to do.

At the same time, I want you to understand that many of the folks who encouraging you to just change the pressure setting yourself have had long histories of working with either bad doctors or of working with doctors who simply had a bad relationship with them as a patient. And once a PAPer understands what s/he is trying to accomplish with adjusting the pressure on his/her machine, it's also a perfectly OK thing to simply make the pressure changes without waiting for the next doctor appointment.
Thank you robysue for putting my feelings into words better than I could. I'm still in the early stages of the relationship with my doctor. I just think it's too early to determine whether or not he is acting in my best interests. Right now I believe he is. Six months from now if things don't improve, maybe not.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Julie » Wed Apr 29, 2015 11:34 am

What about changing it just 2 cm for now, see how it goes for a week. If you feel better, leave it alone, and then long before seeing your doctor change it back so he won't be upset. Or do you not trust anyone else at all re this simple adjustment that 90 yr olds routinely do?

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by purple » Wed Apr 29, 2015 11:52 am

Cushings disease: Difficulty sleeping. Weight gain. Increase in Cortisol. Perhaps, growth of hair in new places, acne. I should have said Enormous weight gain. Caused by a tumor at the back of the head. Fatal unless the tumor is removed.

Parathyroid Tumor.

I believe that a lot of the Vets who have served in Iraq, Afghanistan, who have had concussions are likely to have neurologically based Apnea. Not much proof yet.

Some Lung ailments. Almost for sure, MS/MD.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Enchanter » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:13 pm

novatom wrote:
robysue wrote:
Thank you robysue for putting my feelings into words better than I could. I'm still in the early stages of the relationship with my doctor. I just think it's too early to determine whether or not he is acting in my best interests. Right now I believe he is. Six months from now if things don't improve, maybe not.

So no benefits Novatom? The Cpap hasn't made you feel better? If you didn't wear the mask, would you be able to tell the difference? What is your insomina like? When do u fall asleep?
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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:55 pm

Enchanter wrote:
novatom wrote:
robysue wrote:
Thank you robysue for putting my feelings into words better than I could. I'm still in the early stages of the relationship with my doctor. I just think it's too early to determine whether or not he is acting in my best interests. Right now I believe he is. Six months from now if things don't improve, maybe not.

So no benefits Novatom? The Cpap hasn't made you feel better? If you didn't wear the mask, would you be able to tell the difference? What is your insomina like? When do u fall asleep?
I noticed some benefits early on, such as remembering my dreams, for example. And I can say, on a handful of days, I did feel the difference in how I felt (with more energy). But as time went on, I think my body adjusted to things and went back to the same sleep pattern. I'm at the point now where I really don't feel any different than I did before CPAP and I'm certainly not sleeping any more hours. I try to go to bed around 10-10:30 every night and nine times out of 10, I can usually fall asleep within 15 minutes. But then I wake up 3-4 hours later and have real trouble falling back asleep. After about 2 hours of this (in which I usually just turn off the machine, go into another room to read a book), I get back into bed and if I'm lucky, I'll doze for an hour or two before it's time to get up. And I do tend to dream during that time.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by novatom » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:57 pm

Julie wrote:What about changing it just 2 cm for now, see how it goes for a week. If you feel better, leave it alone, and then long before seeing your doctor change it back so he won't be upset. Or do you not trust anyone else at all re this simple adjustment that 90 yr olds routinely do?
I didn't know I could do that. Thanks for the advice, I'll check out the Youtube video. So you're saying go from 6-8? Why not 7? Or is that enough of a difference?

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by Julie » Wed Apr 29, 2015 6:32 pm

I suggested 2 cm because it's just enough of a difference (still at the low end though) for you to appreciate if it works, but not nearly enough to matter to anything else much... don't bump it all at once by e.g. 5-10 as there's likely no need and your system may not adjust seamlessly as it will otherwise. Do 7 if you want... but do something - be proactive in your life, don't just hand it lock, stock and barrel to someone else... you'd be amazed at the number of doctors who, while they might know lots of theory re apnea, haven't a clue about equipment or how to work with it or much else. Diabetics have been making adjustments to their insulin on their own for decades, and no one blinks, and there's nothing sacrosanct about a tiny pressure bump of Cpap... it's just room air.

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Re: Is there any disorder similar to Sleep Apnea?

Post by jlaw3x7 » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:47 pm

I just started and have been reading a lot. I really enjoy the drama of enchanters posts. I read several posts about upping the minimum so I went from 5 to 6 but I woke up with a headache and felt the pressure was just too strong so I knocked it down to 5.5. That was still too high for me to be comfortable and the difference in AHI was minimal so I went back to 5 but just saying that for me minor adjustments we're quite noticeable. I have an auto machine and no uvula so I may be more sensitive.

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