Sleep apnea without the apnea.

[pee_jay]

I have a CPAP machine I bought on Craigslist several months ago. At the time, I took it apart and wired it to my computer so that I could monitor my breathing while asleep, and I noticed that I'll breathe normally at first, then over several minutes my breathing will become weaker and weaker until it is almost nothing, and then I'll wake up. I wasn't sure what to make of that, but since the machine didn't seem to be helping with anything, I gave up after a trip to the hospital diagnosed me with an anxiety attack, and I subsequently wondered if all of my sleeping problems weren't simply anxiety.

Then yesteray, after several days of sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day, I was incredibly tired, sitting in a chair, staring at the floor, with my head leaning on my sholder, hardly thinking at all, pondering the vague and smudgy appearance everything had, and wondering what the problem could be. Being so tired certainly didn't seem like anxiety. I was so tired I couldn't hardly think, let alone worry about things. I thought again of sleep apnea and decided that must be the problem, since rather than being mentally disturbed, I instead seemed almost dead, or perhaps almost catatonic. Not anxiety, for sure.

So I tried the CPAP machine again last night. I was having a lot of problems making it comfortable enough to wear. At first air leaked a lot, so I shaved, and the mask made better contact with my face. Then my mouth was drying out, and it was kind of cold, so I covered some of the holes in the mask with tape to reduce the air flow. Then I found it was really difficult to breathe, but I was really tired, so I didn't care to fuck with it if it wasn't a major problem. Instead I just put extra effort into inhaling and exhaling for one breath, and then I felt better for a moment, only to soon feel as if I wasn't getting enough air again, and so I tried another deep and difficult breath. Finally I decided I had to remove the mask and figure out what the fuck the problem was, and at that point I woke up! I was asleep, dreaming about the mask preventing me from breathing, but as soon as I woke up I could breathe just fine, and so it wasn't the mask at all.

Unfortunately I don't still have the machine connected to the computer, so I have no record of the event, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't exactly as I experienced it in my dream.

With that I'm rather convinced that I do have sleep apnea, just without the apnea. That dream matches exactly what I was seeing on the computer data, which is that my breathing just becomes more difficult until I finally wake up, at which point it returns to normal.

I don't think it's entirely impossible that my $1200 sleep study missed this.

Long before my sleep study, I had already considered that I might have sleep apnea, and so to find out for myself, I used a temperature sensor to record the temperature of air traveling through a tube that I taped to a plastic bag that I taped to my face. I looked at the data on my computer the next day, and it looked almost entirely normal. Most of the data showed regular breathing, and the only interruptions were two second periods where I would stop breathing, followed by a deep breath. I figured that might just be normal, and the internet seems to indicate that sleep apnea is when people stop breathing for at least ten seconds, and so I decided I didn't have sleep apnea.

Years later, when I finally scored some health insurance and could see a real doctor, he looked in my mouth and immediately decided I must have sleep apnea because something was the most swolen he had ever seen. When the sleep study was performed, they too used temperature sensors to monitor airflow. So it's little surprise they came to the same conclusion that I did, particularly since during preperation, the technician told me about how sleep study technicians are so in-demand that she didn't have to go to college or anything, they just trained her on the job. I can easily imagine she didn't notice something that the computer didn't record, let alone pop up a box that read "sleep apnea detected." ...and given the "ten second" definition, I imagine it's possible that it isn't even standard pratice to consider that people might simply have difficulty breathing that awakens them, rather than a complete apnea.

So I'm curious what other people think of this. Do I have sleep apnea, or something related? Is it treatable with CPAP? (Last night's dream was with it set to 12 cm of water. The machine will only go up to 20, and I'm having enough trouble adjusting to 16.) On the other hand, maybe the event that led to that dream was simply the result of treatment almost working, and it was just dumb luck that real apneas didn't show up during the test, and so I only need to try a pressure that is a little higher. I don't know.

Also, after successful CPAP treatment, how long does it take to begin feeling normal again? I think I only slept with it for about four hours last night, and then I slept without it for another eight. I feel a little better than yesterday, but not enough that it couldn't just be random chance. I also don't recall ever feeling better when I was trying it when I first got the machine, but then a lot of that was with lower pressure settings, since I was trying different settings to see what effect they had on the data recorded overnight. If I do find a way to make this correct my problem, how soon can I expect to know?

One other thing I just noticed is that, in my dream, I think I was having difficulty with both inhaling and exhaling. Is that consistant with the type of breathing obstruction created by the cause of sleep apnea? I seem to recall having once read something that indicated that was how it works (and that CPAP forces open the airway to help with the flow of air in both directions), but if it isn't, then maybe I need a different pressure setting, or perhaps I should try the CFLEX setting.

(I tried the CFLEX once, but it's mostly just annoying. It only lowers the pressure for a moment, meaning that while exhaling you suddenly find that you have to put much more force into it, which makes you tempted to just stop right there and begin inhaling again, which leads to really short breaths, which doesn't work. Normal CPAP seems to be harder at first, but after an hour it seems preferable.)

[Bons]

If you cover the holes on your mask you are going to have trouble breathing. Those are exhaust holes to let air out - no air out means no new air can come in. You really should have a sleep study to see whether you have OBS and/or other issues.

[pee_jay]

If you cover the holes on your mask you are going to have trouble breathing. Those are exhaust holes to let air out - no air out means no new air can come in. You really should have a sleep study to see whether you have OBS and/or other issues.

Don't worry, I know what the vent holes are for. There are three in the mask, and when I bought it, one of them was still sealed, sort of like "if you need it, then punch it out." Once I tried the machine set to 4, at which point I definately did need that hole, since over a few minutes I'd continuously take deeper and deeper breaths, which indicated to me that I was rebreathing a lot of the same air with each breath, so I punched it out. Since I was now using it at 12, I decided I didn't need them all, and covered that one back up and sort of mostly covered another. (I meant to cover two, but that's how the tape ended up, and it was close enough.) There's definately still a lot of air coming out of that one hole, and I know what lack of air flow does since I've experienced it before, so I think I'm good.

Throughout my life, I've suspected two possible problems, both before I actually knew that they were common sleep disorders: Sleep apnea, and whatever that limb movement thing is I can't remember the name of, the one that isn't restless leg syndrome...or maybe the one that is restless leg syndrome. They're both so similar.

It started when I was a teenager and I realized that whenever I was having difficulty going to sleep, I was constantly moving my feet, usually in rhythm with whatever music might be stuck in my head. So I tried to simply stop, but it wasn't that easy. That made me wonder if I might continue to move my feet while asleep. To find out, I took the finger sensor from a Nintendo PowerGlove and connected it to the joystick port on my computer, and wrote a little program to record data overnight. However, due to noise in the signal, the data was rather inconclusive. Either I wasn't moving my feet much, or I wasn't moving them at all. I couldn't tell which, and I didn't know how to reduce the noise.

Later as an adult, one night while having difficulty falling asleep, I noticed that I would frequently fall asleep only to wake up only seconds later, and that every time I was in the point of my breathing cycle where I needed to inhale, never where I needed to exhale. This made me suspect that I stopped breathing when going to sleep. I eventually figured out that it only happened when I was trying to go to sleep on my back, and so from then on I always made it a point to go to sleep on my side or on my stomach.

Some time later when I learned of the existance of sleep apnea, the fact that my body position made a difference made me pretty sure that I didn't have central apena, since I would expect that to be a problem regardless of sleeping position.

Even later as an adult, again while having great difficulty sleeping, I began to believe it was because of limb movements while I slept, and as time went on, it only became more obvious that that was the problem.

That was the point where I went to see the sleep doctor.

Naturally I was confused that he seemed to think I must have sleep apnea, especially since my own test with my computer and a temperature sensor indicated that I don't stop breathing while asleep. I bought a tape recorder since he seemed almost certain that I must snore, even though no one had ever told me that I did, but I didn't record any snoring, just something that sounded like a dying animal. I took the recording to his office on my next visit, he told me it was simply snoring.

However, then the sleep study was done, and it concluded that I don't have sleep apnea, and the worst thing he could find was what he called an "increase" of leg movements, something like 20 per hour. He didn't seem to think it meant anything, though. I was just annoyed that, with all the emphasis I put on the fact that most of the movements that were disturbing me were in my arms and hands, that the only limb movement detection they wired up for the test was for my legs.

He gave me some medication for it, which only made things worse, then he gave me some different medication which went at the problem from the same angle, and it didn't do any better. Then he gave up and suggested I return to the psychologist. (Never tell a doctor you've seen a psychologist, otherwise that's where they go whenever they can't figure something out.)

Some months later I discovered that the limb movements and a few other symptoms were the result of magnesium deficicency. I just take some magnesium supplements every day and it hasn't been a problem since.

However, the magnesium wasn't my only problem. I still sleep way too much, and I'm still way too tired. I'm just no longer tourmented by blatently obvious random limb movements.

So I kind of forgot about it all for a while until one night when I had a dream where for some reason all of my neices and nephews decided to gang up on me and suffocate me. After one of them had held their hands over my mouth and nose for about a minute, I felt as if I was about to pass out, and then another comes along only to kick me in the chest. At that point I woke up. I was sleeping on my stomach, and strangely I actually came up of the bed as if a result of being kicked in the chest. ...and I was really out of breath. I thought maybe I should look into the sleep apnea thing again, and so that's when I bought the CPAP machine.

I could have tried building more testing devices, but doing that sort of stuff requires mental skills like memory and concentration which I simply don't have most of the time. It was far easier to simply pay for the treatment and see what happens.

[jules]

the one hole that was covered was probably an O2 port

why don't you post what machine and mask you are using so people can help you

but

TAKE THAT TAPE OFF BEFORE YOU KILL YOURSELF

[pee_jay]

the one hole that was covered was probably an O2 port

why don't you post what machine and mask you are using so people can help you

Machine's a RemStar Pro 2.

I first took it apart, to look for a suitable point with a voltage that indicated some useful information. I first thought I might have to connect to the wires which drive the motor, but then I noticed a lot of "test points" on the board. ("test points" are points in the circuit which are intended to be used when manufacturing or repairing the device in order to calibrate it or to determine which parts of the circuit aren't functioning correctly) One of the test points turned out to be incredibly useful. It was normally a constant voltage, but inhaling through the hose made the voltage go up, and exhaling made the voltage go down. It even worked when the machine was turned off (although still plugged in, obviously). So I connected a wire to that test point, and another to the ground of the circuit, and ran both wires out the back of a small hole I drilled in the back of the machine, and then I reassembled it.

I then ran those wires across the room to my electronics workbench, where I fed the signal into an analog-to-digital converter, an ADC0804, which takes analog voltage levels and converts them into a number for a computer. That was then connected to a general-purpose Z80 microcontroller I had built, which I loaded with a program that continuously read the analog-to-digital converter and wrote the value to a UM245R USB chip, which was connected to my PC. From there I used a Perl script to read the values and plot them into a postscript document, which I later viewed with ghostscript, and also printed using cupsdoprint.

I have a full face mask. The machine came with a nasal mask, but I couldn't understand how it was supposed to work. My problem seems to be that when I go to sleep, some muscles in my throat relax and my airway becomes blocked, yet somehow I'm supposed to continue to use other muscles to prevent air from escaping through my mouth? It makes no sense if you ask me.

I gave it a try, but every time I'd fall asleep, air immediately began coming out of of my mouth. I tried taping my mouth shut, but like I expected, my cheeks swelled up like a baloon, and I couldn't possibly sleep like that. I then tried wrapping up my head so that my cheeks couldn't swell up, and that kind of worked, but I wasn't too happy with my mouth taped shut and then wrapped over with a bunch of bandages, since if I awoke with a stuffed up nose, that could be a major problem. So I tried to build a full face mask, but being too tired to do such things, I couldn't make one that worked well (despite having done so before, when I first built my own CPAP machine, which is something else that was in that life story I didn't post), and so I just ordered one online. I found a store selling random junk which apparently just happened to have some CPAP masks and no idea that they were supposed to be prescription items.

[jules]

the pro 2 is data capable - I self titrated with one and software

[pee_jay]

the pro 2 is data capable - I self titrated with one and software

I trashed the smart card just as soon as I realized it wasn't some sort of digital key required to make the thing operate. I later found out they're some sort of standard data storage and so maybe I could have used that, but I would have had to buy a card reader, and the documentation led me to believe the machine doesn't write anything to the card other than how many hours it's been used and other really generic data like that.

The data I collected came from a test point inside the machine where a voltage reflected the air flow in and out of the machine. I just recorded that voltage into my computer, since it was the only uniquely useful data point I could find. Everything else was also just an indication of airflow but not in such an easy to interpret voltage reading.

Back when I built my own CPAP machine, I experimented by lying down and relaxing my throat, and seeing what pressure seemed to allow me to breathe again, and 12 was the number, but then it's an old number so maybe I should just try that again.

[GumbyCT]

To me sleep apnea less apnea = sleep

Or are you thinking Centrals?

[pee_jay]

To me sleep apnea less apnea = sleep

Or are you thinking Centrals?

Yes, I intended that as a bit of a joke, figuring anyone who knew what I was talking about would understand it. ...and indeed, I've since learned the word "hypopnea."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypopnea

So it seems that I'm looking for "sleep hypopnea" rather than "sleep apnea."

[jules]

viewtopic/t58410/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45 ... or#p406116

VERY INTERESTING

[pee_jay]

viewtopic/t58410/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45 ... or#p406116

VERY INTERESTING

A bit redundant, perhaps, but then redundancy is a facilitator in education.

Today I was reading about interpreting sleep data, and it seems that where I cycle between breathing well and not breathing well every minute or so, there should also be a similar cycling of the length of the intervals between each heart beat. If I decide to spend $350 or $199 or $70 on anything, I'm going to spend it reusable ECG/EEG electrodes and conductive paste plus some low-noise operational amplifiers and a high-speed 16-bit analog-to-digital converter.

I took the machine apart again yesterday in search of more data points. I eventually found the point which indicates air pressure after I discovered the analog-to-digital converter used by the machine's MCU. It only has two inputs. One was the signal I was already monitoring, the other was the pressure. The pressure signal is rather useless to me since the machine regulates to a constant pressure, and so the pressure never changes, and so it doesn't indicate anything other than the current pressure setting, which never changes during operation. (It'd be really useful if I had Auto-CPAP, but I don't.) As such, it seems that this one data point I've been watching is the very one and only that the machine uses when it makes determinations about when apnea and hypopnea events occur. So the only difference between what I'm doing and using the data card and software is that with what I'm doing, a human being interprets the data, and given typical qualities of software, I much prefer it that way, even if it means I have to educate myself on data interpretation.

[jules]

[pee_jay]

Ok.

Ideally, I would like to not use the machine at all, since what I would like to do is measure airflow volume while I sleep without doing anything to affect what naturally occurs. Since I have no such means, I am instead using the CPAP machine for it's airflow measuring capability, and I am setting it to four precicely because that is as close to no treatment as I can get.

...but at this point, I must say I'm surprised if anyone takes the time to read the entire thread. Perhaps I need to start an FAQ.

[Janknitz]

I am instead using the CPAP machine for it's airflow measuring capability, and I am setting it to four precicely because that is as close to no treatment as I can get.

Ever hear of a recording pulse oximeter?

...but at this point, I must say I'm surprised if anyone takes the time to read the entire thread. Perhaps I need to start an FAQ.

Great idea! While you're at it, how about a FAQ on how to do your own appendectomy--my guess is that if you have a stitch in your side you'll try that next.

[Little_Peep]

I'm curious. How do you know it's a troll and not a legitimate post? What exactly is a troll?