Newbie introducing myself

Hi,

Just spent the second night with my trial of a REMstar Auto A-Flex System One 60 Series. First night I lasted one hour with the probes up my nose: air too cold, sounding like I'm in a wind tunnel couldn't breath out through my nose so forced to breath through my mouth so couldn't get to sleep.

In the morning I discovered they hadn't given me the instruction book to go with the therapy unit. So hadn't known about the humidifier heating the air. Also exchanged the nose thing for a full face mask.

Second night (last night) much better. Warm air, discovered 'ramping' which is more kind and gentle to help me get to sleep. Had the mask on the entire night, though I think it was too tight. Will loosen tonight. Main concern was that when I woke up the air pressure was very low. Not the westerly wind that it usually is. Didn't feel as refreshed as I thought I might.

My local chemist has become a Sleep Apnea testing place where you take home a monitoring system and they send off the results to a doctor and you get the results back then work out a course of action.

My results are thus:

Apnoea Hypopnoea Index of 15.5
Oxygen Desaturation Index of 20.3
Blood Oxygen levels drop from 98 to 78% (most scary)

Thus I am most likely to have 'moderate OSA'.

Events:
Central Apneas = 0 across the board
Mixed Apneas = 0 across the board
Obstructive Apneas = 4.5/hr, 24 in 5.3hrs sleep, mean duration 33.1sec, max duration 90sec
Hypopneas = 11/hr, 59 total in 5.3hrs, mean duration 34.8sec, max duration 59.5sec, 10 supine, 49 non supine.

Sleep has got worse over the last ten years since I stopped doing a lot of hard exercise as a younger man (outdoor wilderness stuff). I'm only 60kg and 165cm tsll. Never been over 65kg.

I stumbled onto this because I am looking for reasons why all my life I have had electric shocks in my body every morning. The condition used to be called Petit Mal when I was a kid. I've tried everything bar the drugs to try and stop it. For the past few years I was feeling it might have to do with lack of air asleep at night, as the condition and accompanying anxiety attacks have got worse over the last five years as I am less aerobically fit and have snored all my life. So I finally took the test and voila! OSA. I'm looking forward to waking up with total vitality and these stupid electric shocks gone.

Am also interested to hear from anyone with a mouth guard that pushes the jaw forward to clear the airway. Wondering if that would work for me?

I suggest you see a neurologist re the shocks - they may well be from a cervical nerve problem and not related to apnea.

I've been through all that. They can find nothing.

SleepyGary, to answer your question about a mouth guard....

I'm a relative newbie myself, started cpap on Feb. 3. My initial reaction at the doctor's was "I don't want that thing" (cpap)and the doc said it's really the best option, but I should go home and consider the other options before deciding how to proceed. I did that, and here's what I came up with:

1. Mouth guard: pushes jaw forward, but in time it will affect my bite. Do I want to risk having to redo all my crowns, and change the shape of my face?
2. MMA surgery: the doc offered it as an option, but it involves breaking your jaw to advance your mandible and maxila - also changes the shape of my face.
3. Turbinate reduction: causes eating problems, does not have a good track record..
4. UPPP surgery: soft palate problems can emerge, and cause eating problems, does not have a good track record .

In the end, I realized that as the gold standard of therapy for OSA, it's also the best and safest way to treat it and really the only non-invasive treatment, and it was what I chose to do. I struggled for a while with mask issues, which is true of most cpap users... it takes a while to acclimate, and I had a rotten first week. I still have issues occasionally, but I sleep through the night with the mask most nights now. My AHI has gone down, but I'm still snoring mightily, and that's what I'm working on now.

Stick with it, continue looking for solutions to your issues with cpap and you will find them. You'll be glad you did.

SleepyGary wrote:Main concern was that when I woke up the air pressure was very low. Not the westerly wind that it usually is. Didn't feel as refreshed as I thought I might.

The feeling that the pressure is much less when we wake up than it is when we first turn the machine on is quite common.
The pressure really doesn't change as much as it is our perception of that pressure that changes.
What feels like a hurricane when we first go to bed becomes a gentle breeze by morning just because the body/brain has become accustomed to the pressure. Sometimes it's so much of a gentle breeze we even think the machine isn't even on...but it is. Just put your hand over the vent holes or pull the mask away from the face briefly and you will see what I mean.

Those people you read about who have the "miracle" and feel marked improvement pretty much initially with the start of cpap therapy are really in a minority.
It takes some time to become adjusted to having the mask on the face and all that goes with it. Even with optimal conditions...nice low leak, nice low AHI, 8 hours of solid sleep (not fragmented with multiple wake ups) and not even noticing the alien stuck on the face...it takes time to feel any improvements and that's assuming that the only issue is sleep apnea itself.
Often there's more to feeling better than just sleep apnea events and fixing them.
Heck, it took me a month to just get over waking up often to feel the mask on my face. My brain kept waking me up to alert me to the alien being stuck on my face and asking me if it was okay for it to be there.
Frequent wake ups for any reason will seriously impact our sleep quality and thus how we might feel the next day.
Hours of sleep also will hugely impact how a person feels....it takes more than 4 or 5 hours on the machine to expect to see any benefit.
Meds we take can affect how we feel and the machine can't change that.

So just be prepared to give it a bit of time. Most people need that adjustment time and the overnight miracles are really quite rare. Though I do envy those that get the miracle.

Gary welcome to the forum

You've come to the best place for help IMHO..

apneasupport.org Is another site that deals more with the oral appliances you asked about. I tried one of those before starting CPAP and did not get the results that cpap has brought. Some people here use both, and I feel there is a place for both, some will benefit from them and some will not.

I hope you find the best way for you and then adapt to it quickly. This, at least for me is still an ongoing struggle.