Staying asleep / trazadone

Hello. I was recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea. My physician has me using a CPAP machine. I breath fine with it. It is comfortable. My problem is that I fall asleep in about fifteen minutes but I am then waking up again thirty minutes later. This does not happen for me without the machine.

Long story short, my doctor thinks a prescription of trazadone for a few weeks might help. The thought it that my body just cannot get used to the mask when I am asleep even though I have been trying for months. The doctor seems to think that the trazadone will "get me over the hump" for a few weeks.

So..... my question is does anyone have any experience with trazadone? If so, what was your experience? Did it assist you? Were you able to come off it safely? I have never taken a mediation like this before. It is for depression with an off-label use as a sleeping aid. I get the whole trust your doctor, etc., etc. That said, I seem to recall many, many doctors assuring people how non-addictive opioids were over the long haul about a decade ago.

Any comments or insights into trazadone would be appreciated.

Hi Josh.. I took 50mg Trazadone for over a year for sleep and had no problems with it. As you mentioned, it is often given to help with sleep. I stopped taking it recently bc I no longer had the problem which initiated the Trazadone. I can only tell you that it wasn't addictive for me and when doctor and I decided it was no longer beneficial, I just stopped taking it. IMO, if it gets you over the hump, that's a good thing. When you get past that point, you and doctor can decide when to stop taking it.

I've been on trazodone for 23 years or so. The dosage has varied from 50mg to 200mg per night. No problems taking it with cpap. If I take more than 100mg I seem to get muscle spasms. I also use 0.5mg of xanax at night to help fall asleep. I still wake up during the night though but I think that is mostly to do with stress.

There's a time and place for just about any medication out there and you might just be in that time and place right now.
With all medications we have to look at the risk vs rewards thing and determine if the reward outweighs any negatives.

I look at it this way...and I take a little something to help me stay asleep but it isn't trazadone....I have 2 choices
1...not take anything and not get decent quality sleep and feel like crap all day
2...take a little something and even if it has a couple of negatives to it they are far outweighed by the positives of getting some decent sleep and feeling fairly decent during the day.

A couple of years ago in the summer I decided to do without that medication for 3 months. Wasn't a real smart choice...I averaged and hour to an hour and a half less sleep and the sleep was much more fragmented with multiple wake ups.

There is a period of adjustment where the brain has to come to terms with it's new best friend the mask and machine.
I know it took me probably 3 months to stop waking up often just to feel the mask....and it was comfortable and not leaking but it was just there and the brain was wanting to let me know about it. This was prior to my getting any medication to help me sleep. That was added later because of other issues that were causing me to wake up...mainly pain. I wish I had mentioned it sooner to my doctor because between the pain and the brain...that 3 months was kinda rough.

Medication choices to take or not take something should be made with your doctor involved in the discussion...that old risk vs rewards thing. Now some people just don't believe in taking that type of medication because of some potential unwanted properties. If they bug you too much tell your doctor about it because there are other alternatives without the same properties.

xxyzx wrote:

josh hopkins wrote:Hello. I was recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea. My physician has me using a CPAP machine. I breath fine with it. It is comfortable. My problem is that I fall asleep in about fifteen minutes but I am then waking up again thirty minutes later. This does not happen for me without the machine.

Long story short, my doctor thinks a prescription of trazadone for a few weeks might help. The thought it that my body just cannot get used to the mask when I am asleep even though I have been trying for months. The doctor seems to think that the trazadone will "get me over the hump" for a few weeks.

So..... my question is does anyone have any experience with trazadone? If so, what was your experience? Did it assist you? Were you able to come off it safely? I have never taken a mediation like this before. It is for depression with an off-label use as a sleeping aid. I get the whole trust your doctor, etc., etc. That said, I seem to recall many, many doctors assuring people how non-addictive opioids were over the long haul about a decade ago.

Any comments or insights into trazadone would be appreciated.

============

just me being cautious but i would not take any medicine if i had apnea and a cpap
if i have an apnea i want to be able to wake up and start breathing
not be kept 'asleep' unable to breathe and made permanent if the cpap is not keeping me breathing or even stopping it due to centrals

your machine could be causing centrals
have you looked at the data printouts to see what is happening

did you have a full PSG at a sleep lab where you actually slept for the entire night
what did that data show

You are insane

xxyzx wrote:

TASmart wrote:

xxyzx wrote:

josh hopkins wrote:Hello. I was recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea. My physician has me using a CPAP machine. I breath fine with it. It is comfortable. My problem is that I fall asleep in about fifteen minutes but I am then waking up again thirty minutes later. This does not happen for me without the machine.

Long story short, my doctor thinks a prescription of trazadone for a few weeks might help. The thought it that my body just cannot get used to the mask when I am asleep even though I have been trying for months. The doctor seems to think that the trazadone will "get me over the hump" for a few weeks.

So..... my question is does anyone have any experience with trazadone? If so, what was your experience? Did it assist you? Were you able to come off it safely? I have never taken a mediation like this before. It is for depression with an off-label use as a sleeping aid. I get the whole trust your doctor, etc., etc. That said, I seem to recall many, many doctors assuring people how non-addictive opioids were over the long haul about a decade ago.

Any comments or insights into trazadone would be appreciated.

============

just me being cautious but i would not take any medicine if i had apnea and a cpap
if i have an apnea i want to be able to wake up and start breathing
not be kept 'asleep' unable to breathe and made permanent if the cpap is not keeping me breathing or even stopping it due to centrals

your machine could be causing centrals
have you looked at the data printouts to see what is happening

did you have a full PSG at a sleep lab where you actually slept for the entire night
what did that data show

You are insane

==============

idiots always say that about people who are geniuses

you can gamble with the odds you like
i will not gamble at all as i am totally risk averse

If you are risk adverse why don't you worry about the known harmful effects of sleep cycle disruption, as well as O2 desaturations. Oh yes, can you point out even one case of properly used trazadone combined with a power failure and a CPAP causing a death? I will not hold my breath waiting for this, because I sure do not want any unnecessary desaturations in my body.

xxyzx wrote:
idiots always say that about people who are geniuses

Don't your arms hurt from stretching to pat yourself on the back?

LSAT wrote:

xxyzx wrote:
idiots always say that about people who are geniuses

Don't your arms hurt from stretching to pat yourself on the back?

I'd think all the wind and stuff blowing out his butt would make that hurt more than his arms.

Back to Josh's concerns

Josh, many people like LH can take Trazadone for awhile and have no problems getting off it. But other folks, who are extremely med sensitive, can develop a dependency on it after taking it for a certain amount of since it is an antidepressant. That would mean you would need to possibly taper it.

You might want to consider asking your doctor if taking ambien or a similar type medication would be better suited for your purposes in helping you get over the hump. Personally, ambien has done bleep for me as far as sleep but as one who is quite med sensitive, I never had any problems with it. But again, everyone is different.

Best of luck to you.

49er

[/quote]why dont you get a life or let someone else be the troll today to annoy me

i worry about O2 saturation as taht is dangerous
VERY DANGEROUS

when my o2 went down my heart rate went up 30 beats over the max my cardiologist said was the maximum
i was lucky not to have died on the spot from a heart attack

the other issues take a long time to harm you and you have time to address them
but only if you worry about the BIG problem FIRST[/quote]

Because you keep making asinine statement and seem to think a public forum is all about you, even in threads you did not start. Not everyone has large or even significant desaturations as a result of sleep apneas. Plus since you effuse to actually talk science after you throw out what a genius you are I want to know what expert analysis you are using. For example, you should understand setting up a multi-compartmental model to understand the dynamics of blood oxygen concentration and the time it takes to see a response when not breathing, reservoir capacity and recharge rate as well us use rate, and the effects of blood ph and the bicarbonate buffer system on estimate blood O2 levels. That is the approach I would expect to see a Phd Professional Engineer who specialized in fluid dynamics take. When you start taking an analytical attitude commensurate with their claimed training and expertise, then I will leave you alone. Until then you blow wind out you butt and think nobody should notice.

chunkyfrog wrote:All signs of advancing DEMENTIA!

How does this post address Josh's concerns?