General sleep apnea question

Wulfman... wrote:

Guest wrote:Just looked at min oxygen levels from the 3 sleep studies and they were 89%, 93%, and 89%. What does this mean?

I'm not taking any drugs or supplements now. One thing to note is that all sleeping prescriptions, muscle relaxers, antidepressants (I'm not depressed though), and antianxiety (I'm not anxious either) have all made my sleep worse.

Levels of 89% or higher are OK. The higher the better but 89% is the boundary line.


Den

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Given that the oxygen levels are 89% or above, is it safe to say that sleep apnea is not the root cause of my sleep disturbances?

Just to give a brief summary:

I have no problem falling asleep, usually within 5 to 15 minutes.

The first four hours of the night, I mainly do not wake up. It is only the last four hours that are the most destructive and cause me to wake up about 30 times. I’m conscious of all of these 30 wake ups, then change sleeping positions and fall asleep in two seconds, only to have this cycle repeat again in another 5 – 10 minutes later until I get out of bed feeling completely unrested.

When I wake up, I am not choking or gasping for air. My sleep studies also indicated that my total snore time is around 1 to 2%. To the best of my knowledge, when I am waking up, it feels as if my neck is numb is numb (no pain) and I have to reposition my neck on the pillow and/or roll over to the other side.

I’ve been through about 20 different pillows ranging from $30 to $120 over the past 3 years.

I don’t really remember any of my dreams possibly because of the interrupted sleep.

Any and all sleeping aids including prescriptions have made my sleep worse.

I’ve read sleep books on proper sleeping hygiene and have tried them all. Nothing even remotely has helped.

I have absolutely no problems staying awake during the day, driving, or other activities. My “Epworth Sleepiness Scale” is generally very low like a 1 or 2. However, my major major major problem is that I cannot last beyond 9 pm. This has severely impacted my social life over the past five years because I can’t hang out with friends or family past this time. I am just too tired and have to go to bed. I cannot live a normal life like this and I am looking for help.


The reason I believe I am waking up is due to a medical condition called thoracic outlet syndrome. I was diagnosed with this recently and I will be having surgery hoping that this will hit the root cause of my sleep disturbances and my mysterious numb neck at night time. Unfortunately, when I go to sleep doctors and describe this condition and how it might cause sleep disturbances, they all look at me cockeyed. After further reading on the forum, it is my opinion that since I do not wake up choking or gasping for air and do not snore (less than 2% of sleep time), the 30 sleep disturbances that I’m conscious of are unlikely to be due to sleep apnea. I just wanted to see what everyone’s thoughts were to help rule out sleep apnea to make sure it is not the root cause of my sleep disturbances.

Thank you!

You mentioned you sleep well for the first 4 hrs. Have you tried biphasic sleep. You can google this and read more about this. This is how people used to sleep before advent of electricity and artificial light. Maybe you should try this for a week:
1) Go to sleep at your normal time. Sleep for 4+ hrs or until you have your first event.
2) Wake up, do something else for an hour or more.
3) Go to sleep for another 4 hrs.

Maybe this will get you the rest you need without resorting to surgeries.

Guest wrote:Given that the oxygen levels are 89% or above, is it safe to say that sleep apnea is not the root cause of my sleep disturbances?

No. We mention O2 levels (SpO2) a lot because it's really easy to check. You just clip a sensor on your finger and it tells you if your blood O2 level drops.

However, sleep apnea varies a lot between different people. Some people wake up rather quickly after they stop breathing and catch their breath before their O2 drops very far. Some people don't wake up so easily, and show an O2 drop before they wake up. The "quick waker" still suffers from fragmented sleep, stress hormones, and some other problems from apnea.

Note that by "wake up," I mean you wake up enough to catch your breath. You may or may not consciously remember anything, but your sleep is disturbed.

The end result is that SpO2 may tell you that you probably have apnea, but it doesn't do a good job of telling you that you don't have apnea, especially if you are waking up a lot.

What CPAP machine did you use? Name and model? If you had a good CPAP machine, it ill record data that will show if you were having any apneas. Do you still have the machine?