How do you know if you're sleeping well?

[DocWeezy]

I know this sounds like a stupid question, but how do you know if you're sleeping well? My AHI numbers continue to go down--last night I had ONE incident in 9 hours! But every morning I wake up not knowing if I've slept well or not. Is there any way to tell from the graphs?

I wish I could say that I can feel if I've slept well, but that just isn't happening. I think I've been sleep deprived for so long that I no longer know what good sleep feels like, and I'm still not feeling great. Energy is improving, although it is VERY slow and seems to be happening in increments so small that I can only see them in retrospect.

Does getting REM and slow wave sleep make you feel different the next day? Does it look different on any of the graphs? In both of my sleep studies, I had less than 1% REM and no sleep in stages 3 and 4 (I think this is sometimes called slow wave sleep?). In other words, I only slept lightly and never got any deep sleep. I think I've been that way for at least 30 years because I rarely ever felt like I had actually been asleep. Hard to describe, but I'm betting some of you know what I'm trying to say.

Any and all ideas are welcome! Thanks!

Weezy

[chunkyfrog]

At six weeks, I, too was not feeling a lot of difference yet, but I was not as sleepy quite so early the day after.
Such a subtle difference--it nearly escaped my notice.
Are you remembering any dreams yet?
It is still early and it sounds as though you are still in 'catch-up' mode.
Hang in there.

[brazospearl]

DocWeezy, if your numbers are good and you're feeling a tiny bit better each day, you're on the right track. A few new users feel tremendously better immediately, but for most of us it takes a bit longer. If you didn't get any deep sleep for 30 years, it's probably gonna take a while to notice if that is beginning to happen. For me, I felt a bit better the first morning, and continued to improve slowly. Then one Saturday,about six months into my therapy, I woke up and cleaned all the floors in my house--without stopping!--and WASN'T EXHAUSTED! For someone who's never been sleep deprived that might not be a big deal, but for me that was HUGE. Another change for me was that my chronic pain has been greatly reduced; while I'm not pain-free, the pain has gone from consistently being a 5 or so (on the scale they use in hospitals) to typically being a 1. Some nights I sleep better than others, but I think that's true of everybody, whether they have apnea or not. Try to practice patience--you're needing to restore health that's been compromised for a LONG time, so your recuperation is gonna take some time.

[jonquiljo]

It takes a while. I was lucky and felt better within a week. But the improvements are coming still and it's been about 4 months. And I wasn't that bad to begin with. The changes are subtle over time and you will notice them. If you keep your numbers low and you have patience, this therapy will really start to pay off. It took me a few months to sleep with the machine and not notice the fact that I was wearing a mask connected to a machine. Now I don't think I could sleep without it - not very long anyway. When you get used to your machine things improve as well.

After 4 months I can pretty much predict generally what my "report" for any particular night is going to be. I can feel it if I am too stuffed up and didn't breathe as well, etc. I can tell because I dream more than I ever have in recent memory and I wake up groggier at first then get to be really awake. The groggier at first was a bit of a surprise. Then I realized that I was just sleeping deeply and dreaming a lot. I guess I didn't do much of that before . So ... it's little things that all add up.

[dtsm]

It's a marathon and you're probably at mile 1 right now. Give it time.

Some folks feel better relatively soon; others can take up to months. As long as your leaks are under control, and your Ai numbers continue to drop [ideally less than 5, lower is even better], you'll slowly feel the difference. It took me 3 months to settle in, get the right mask and get solid numbers on a regular basis. I wish I had a flatter leak line [tape works but not perfectly] but after the first 6 months, definitely feel the difference.

Be patient....

[kteague]

For me, not sleeping well felt like being always on the verge of waking up. It took me a long time to experience a noticable difference in how my sleep felt. I think I'd been here several months when I woke up after a couple hours sleep feeling like I was waking from anesthesia, like I'd been "under" real deep. It was such a profound sensation I posted about it. Probably around the same time frame, I had ordered some sleep scents from a forum member, and when the sample pack of several scents arrived in the mail, I was sitting in my chair sniffing them over and over trying to decide which ones I preferred. Next thing I knew it was 2 hours later and I awoke still sitting upright but with the same sensation previously described. It seemed that once my brain remembered how to sleep deeply, it began to happen regularly.

It may take some time for your brain to break old habits and get used to all the new sensations of the mask and the treatment, but if you are seeing incremental progress, sounds like something good is going on when you sleep. It's probably hardest to tell when one didn't feel their sleep was bad even before diagnosis, and it took the sleep study to tell them. Sometimes the one with OSA is the last to know because they slept through it. I don't know how that person would know if they are now sleeping well except by improvement in their symptoms.

[christo]

It took me about 2 months to get accustomed to the mask and machine; And about a full year before I could notice an improvement in my quality of life. Over time, I discovered small things that helped get my numbers down: I don't use the water chamber of the machine, I only drink decaf coffee, I take it easy, I breathe deeply, I sometimes exercise after a long day at work and I take vitamin B6. B12, Calcium, magnesium and spirulina; And I try to limit the amount of meat in my diet. Melatonin also seemed to help at one point.

I do have dreams at night and I know what it is to feel refreshed when waking-up. Still, there are some days when I feel tired, but they are getting fewer and fewer. Along with the sleep-apnea, I have to deal with managing stress effectively. Due to the lack of sleep over the years, I may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. After two years now on CPAP, I learn to take it easy and look forward to an incredible future. I really have great plans. I am also giving myself nice gifts for Christmas.