Cpap Causing Daytime Generalized Anxiety?

Hi there,

Has anyone experienced an increase of daytime anxiety after using CPAP?

I've been using Cpap therapy for about 2.5 months now. I am still getting adjusted to everything, but within the last week I have noticed that I have been feeling a generalized anxiety while I am awake. The anxiety is not severe, but it is significant enough to negatively affect my day to day activities. My experience with anxiety previous to this has been 'normal' - meaning the anxiety comes and goes with the ebb and flow of life - but what I have been feeling for the past week seems persistent and does not seem to subside much. I don't recall ever feeling this way before.

I have a gut feeling that my Cpap pressure (9) is too high, and this may somehow be contributing to this. In addition to the anxiety, I also feel rather light headed - like I have excess air in my head/brain. My ahi's in the past week seem normal: 1 to 9 per hour.

Searching online, I don't find much answers to this other than mask/machine panic attack type of issues. This is not my problem, as I have had little problems with the mask/machine. Can someone give me some answers/ideas here?

cpaptrini wrote: . . .
Has anyone experienced an increase of daytime anxiety after using CPAP?

No. Quite the opposite.
Why?

cpaptrini wrote:Hi there,

Has anyone experienced an increase of daytime anxiety after using CPAP?

I've been using Cpap therapy for about 2.5 months now. I am still getting adjusted to everything, but within the last week I have noticed that I have been feeling a generalized anxiety while I am awake. The anxiety is not severe, but it is significant enough to negatively affect my day to day activities. My experience with anxiety previous to this has been 'normal' - meaning the anxiety comes and goes with the ebb and flow of life - but what I have been feeling for the past week seems persistent and does not seem to subside much. I don't recall ever feeling this way before.

I have a gut feeling that my Cpap pressure (9) is too high, and this may somehow be contributing to this. In addition to the anxiety, I also feel rather light headed - like I have excess air in my head/brain. My ahi's in the past week seem normal: 1 to 9 per hour.

Searching online, I don't find much answers to this other than mask/machine panic attack type of issues. This is not my problem, as I have had little problems with the mask/machine. Can someone give me some answers/ideas here?

I have a gut feeling that you're wrong.
If your AHI is varying that much, I doubt that your pressure setting is optimal.
What equipment are you using and what are all of your settings?
If you have a data-capable machine, I hope you're monitoring your therapy with software.......like Sleepyhead.

And, like the frog, that hasn't been my experience........and also the opposite.
It could be your therapy isn't optimized. It also takes time to feel some sort of recovery with this therapy. But, if your therapy isn't optimized, it could take lots longer to feel better.
Use the software to figure it out.


Den

.

please provide your age and gender.

avi123 wrote:please provide your age and gender.

avi...why would you ask that...looking for a date?

Cpap can lower blood pressure, which could explain the lightheaded feeling... but anxiety?

LSAT wrote:

avi123 wrote:please provide your age and gender.

avi...why would you ask that...looking for a date?

if he starts asking for location in addition to age and sex, we'll know he's on the prowl.

Newbie Alert!!

Actually I feel knowing age and gender, help a lot with identifying possible problems or assistance.
I would like to compare notes with those of similar age and gender to me, rather than comparing apples/pears.

This world has gone PC mad when asking for basic info is seen as prowling or other insidious intentions.

I respect some of you have been on this forum for years, but some responses I've seen don't encourage new joiners!

Just want to co-sign the suggestions to make sure your treatment is actually therapeutic.

Are you on any medications? It is not unusual for dosages to need adjusted after starting CPAP.

Hi cpaptrini,

I know it may seem to some regulars that I go on an on about it, but the doctor who came up with the term 'hyper-ventilation syndrome' was of the opinion that poor daytime breathing habits - and the effects that result from them - are much more widespread than most text-books say.

The central idea is that, just as feeling anxious - about some real or imaginary threat, for example - leads to rapid and deeper breathing, so rapid and deeper breathing (as an out-of-awareness habit) - can lead to the feeling of anxiety - even though there is no 'content', real or imaginary, to bring that feeling about.

'Rapid' means 'if you're an averagely-healthy person, with no lung or heart disease, and you haven't just run the 100 metres, then more the 15-to-18 resps per minute is a too much.

And 'deeper' means 'more than you need for the task at hand.'

If there are no other medical conditions which would affect your breathing, it might be HVS.

The symptoms of HVS are many - but they do include 'dizziness, unsteadiness or instability, faint feelings - but rarely actual fainting' and 'tension and anxiety'. (I'm quoting from said eminent doc.)

The treatment is both cheap and effective: (a) become aware of your breathing throughout the day, and if needed, move it into the optimum range (which is 8-to-12 abdominal resps per minute); (b) train yourself to more easily move into the optimum range by setting aside the time to do the breathing exercises every day.

As to: 'Can CPAP treatment cause or lead to HVS?' - as far as I know, that's an untested and unexamined possibility for regular patients. There are one or two scientific papers about the effects of CPAP and hyper-ventilation in patients who are already quite ill with heart failure. I take it that doesn't apply here.

I have wondered from time to time if the algorithms of my PR 561 do not in fact have a slight but-in-the-long-run bias to a resp rate of 15 - when as I mentioned above, the doctor said 8-to-12 abdominal resps per minute is the ideal.

But even if there were such a bias, what difference would it make? You don't say which machine you have, cpaptrini, but outside of pressure changes (and unless it's an ASV), you can't change what the machine does.

And it most probably will be harmful to stop XPAP treatment (if you have proper sleep apnea). What can you do even if this were some kind of side-effect?

Same thing, it seems to me, as if (c) there is no 'A caused B' connection at all, and (d) this generalized anxiety just started up all on it's own.

Give the breathing exercises a try. Like I said, they don't cost much.

PS. You mention searching the internet. There is one book available which covers this topic - Self-Help for Hyperventilation Syndrome by Dinah Bradle. Amazon has both new and used paperback copies. You're welcome.

cpaptrini wrote: My ahi's in the past week seem normal: 1 to 9 per hour.

AHI of 9 is like Yikes!

Think about it. If you sleep 7 hours with an AHI of 9, you have stopped breathing and been awoken 63 times during the night, and you may be getting very little REM sleep - there is your daytime anxiety!

Forget the gender and age. Start using Sleepyhead software and get your CPAP therapy optimized. This most likely will cure the anxiety.

Just ask if you need help with Sleepyhead.