Repaying your sleep debt

[Paul Van Dyk]

In some instances, can it take more than several months to repay your sleep debt?


... or is any chronic fatigue after a few months no longer sleep debt but something else?


Let's assume your sleep debt starts being repayed when you get your leaks and AHI perfected and you're getting atleast 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night.

[Starlette]

Good question Paul, I'm anxious to see what others have to say.

Starlette

[ameriken]

I think the answer is yes to several months. In fact, I hope the answer is yes because I still have a ways to go and I'm hoping it's just a matter of getting the sleep debt paid.

But it also varies from person to person. Some people hook up the machine for the first time and the next morning they're back to normal and feel great. I think for most of us it takes weeks and months.

[msradar65]

For me to achieve maximum effectiveness it has take me nearly a year. I did make some pressure adjustments about 3 months ago that made a large difference. I never had leak issues and my stats always looked good. However I was snoring again, had gained some weight and was under a lot of stress. Change my pressure and voila...life is good again.

So I would say in a perfect world...yes it can take some time. I know I have had apnea since I was 20 yo but was not diagnosed and treated until age 45...so I have a LARGE debt to repay! lol

I have been sleeping all night with CPAP since the second night I had it home with me.

[RocketGirl]

I'm following this thread with interest, since it's something I've wondered too. I've been on cpap for just over a month, and while I feel worlds better already, I am astonished at the amount of sleep my body now wants me to have! I get through my work day without my former crushing fatigue, but once home, I conk out at about 7:30 pm and if I just give in and go to bed, I sleep through to the next morning.

I figure that if I give in to that need for sleep, maybe somewhere down the road the sleep debt will be repaid and my ability to sleep the clock around will level off. I've probably had this condition since I was a teenager, and I'm now mid-century, so, reading what each of you has written here I now won't be surprised if it takes a year or more to really catch up.

I found this news item from Scientific American on the subject. The news item itself doesn't give a lot of detail, but the links embedded in it give more.

[BadThad]

I don't see this as taking months. The human body rebounds very quickly and, once you have all your settings correct, you should be "caught up" in a week or less. If not, I think you probably have other underlying problems. When I started CPAP and got everything dialed in, I was feeling better within a few days.

Now that I've been using CPAP for years, I feel superhuman. I can sleep for 6-7 hours on CPAP and then stay awake and alert for 16+ hours easily without a nap. It's funny, because I can outlast my wife and kids on LESS sleep than they get....by a LONG SHOT. After 12-14 hours they are all asleep again and I'm going strong. LOL

[chunkyfrog]

In reading a lot of posts here, I'm convinced that we are all different.
Some have significant improvement almost immediately; others take several months.
I had significant reduction in daytime sleepiness and headaches immediately; but
it took up to six months before I had more energy.

[Mary Z]

I never got over wanting to sleep 12 nours. I can get by on less, but I'm happy to sleep 12 hours. I take Nuvigil for daytime sleepiness and it wears off about 7:00PM. I try to make it until 9:00PM if I can and the puppy gets me up about 8 AM.

[SleepyToo2]

There are many things that can affect sleep debt recovery. It may take a very long time in some people, and can be affected by things like hormone levels - particularly, it seems, vitamin D and thyroid. Do a search on YouTube for "Dr. Stasha Gominak Discusses Sleep and Vitamin D" and take a look at all 5 videos that she has posted. It seems that we are supposed to be paralyzed when we are in deep sleep, and many things prevent us getting there. The paralysis phase is when the most healing occurs, so if we are not getting there it may take us a while to recover from the sleep debt. The videos take a while (over an hour) to go through, but they helped me understand a lot of things about sleep apnea. Dr. Gominak also makes the point that the only "chemical" that corrects the sleep profile is "Ecstasy" (that's the "date-rape" drug), which no doctor is going to recommend you to take.

IMHO there is no single answer that will help everyone as the docs understand things at the moment. In some people it may be just correcting the apnea. In others it may be losing weight. In others it may be correcting thyroid problems. And in some people it may be that vitamin D levels are important, and need to be corrected. Dr. Gominak points out that we were never supposed to get up in the middle of the night - we could get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger. So while that is happening, whatever the cause (pain, apnea, prostate problems, etc, etc.), we are not going to recover fully. In my case, I believe that losing a bit more weight and getting more exercise (probably in the reverse order!) will help my apnea. Will it "cure" it? I have no idea.

Whatever route you take, good luck with getting the healing your body needs!

[VVV]

In some instances, can it take more than several months to repay your sleep debt?


... or is any chronic fatigue after a few months no longer sleep debt but something else?


Let's assume your sleep debt starts being repayed when you get your leaks and AHI perfected and you're getting atleast 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night.

Short of having a sleep study, the only way we can know that our sleep is good is a refreshed feeling upon awakening and feeling energetic throughout the next day.

Since you still have fatigue you are in a quandary as to what to do next.

One step would be a sleep study using your current CPAP settings. If this showed you are not sleeping well then the reasons for poor sleep should be pursued.

If it shows you are sleeping well, then other reasons for your lethargy should be pursued.

Maybe alluded to by some of the other posters and spoken of by Dr. Steven Park is how much damage was done to body and brain while you were an untreated sufferer of sleep apnea. Depending on the degree of damage it could take some time to heal or some of the damage might even be permanent.

I seem to remember you are 30 years old and would guess that the body of a 30-year old can heal itself from any but the most serious damage.

You have also been through a lot career wise and lifestyle wise. It is possible that depression could be affecting your physical health.

At the very least make sure you are fastidious in your approach to sleep hygiene, diet, and exercise. Also try to rely on friends and family for regular "soul support" and encouragement. (For this type of healing there is nothing like a good girl friend who will regularly ...)

Finances are a problem for you due to sleep apnea temporarily ruining your career, but next step would be a full physical by a doc who understand the problems you are having. If this resolves nothing then a sleep lab study might be warranted.

[mars]

Hi All

Here is another perspective -

http://www.sleepdex.org/debt.htm

cheers

Mars

[VVV]

Let me add something about vitamins and supplements. If enough interest is taken in your post, eventually you will have at least one recommendation for every vitamin and supplement known to man.

I recommending against wasting the time and money chasing these down.

[chunkyfrog]

vitamins are often just snake oil.

[levman]

I started CPAP about 9 or 10 weeks ago. I had expected to feel much better almost instantly (silly me) but it has really been only the last few weeks that I've been feeling mostly back to "normal". The specific changes I've noticed recently are much more energy during the day (versus the early weeks on CPAP, where I felt "better" but not dramatically so), and I wake up earlier and easier. Prior to severe apnea, I would typically wake up by 7 AM regardless of when I went to bed ... for the past couple of years, its been more of drag myself out of bed ... now I am pretty much back to my old pattern.

Unfortunately, most days I need to get out of bed at 6AM, and I've always found that the difference between 6AM and 7AM is huge for me!

The other big change I've seen recently versus when I first started CPAP, is that now I sleep through the night or maybe wake up briefly once, versus when I started I would wake up about a half dozen times a night, needing to adjust my nasal pillows, the tubing, or my position in bed. This pretty much coincided with when I started feeling "normal". I think my brain and body both needed time to adjust to sleeping with a CPAP.

My wife enjoys the biggest change of all though ... now she gets to sleep at night too, and this happened the very first night

[bdp522]

I think:

IF your leaks and AHI are perfected, AND you only require 7 hours(or less) of uninterrupted sleep, AND everything else in your life stays the same; you should be paying off sleep debt. Some people feel great as soon as they start repaying, some need to be totally paid up before feeling great, and some seem to feel better as time goes on.

Brenda