OSA and soreness

[RyanMW]

Is general body soreness considered a symptom of untreated OSA?
Aside from general daytime sleepiness and headache, soreness, specially in my back, is my most persistent symptom.
I have a memory foam mattress top and I sleep on my side, so I don't think my positioning could be causing the problem.
I also have general soreness in the rest of my body, but it's not as severe as my back.
Most of the pain is in my upper back, near the base of my neck. It isn't debilitating but it's frustrating and makes me want to just go back to sleep so the pain will stop.
Interestingly, most of this soreness is gone by the time I am ready to go back to bed late at night.
I really worry about a diagnosis of fibromyalgia or something similar where there isn't really a direct treatment path.

[Janknitz]

CPAP did help. I had residual pain from bilateral frozen shoulders. and shortly after beginning CPAP it went away after years of misery. I did not expect that result--it was a very pleasant surprise.

However, I had a lot of other skeletal pain (including low back pain) that did not go away until I did something else--I completely eliminated grains and sugars from my diet. Sounds weird, but my skeletal pain is completely GONE. And when I cheat the pain comes roaring back.

[Julie]

Hi - you need to re-evaluate your bed (memory foam is turning out to NOT be the end-all for everyone) and see a doctor to rule out any cervical or other issues you have. OSA does not cause orthopedic problems.

[RyanMW]

Hi - you need to re-evaluate your bed (memory foam is turning out to NOT be the end-all for everyone) and see a doctor to rule out any cervical or other issues you have. OSA does not cause orthopedic problems.

Hey Julie. I can't afford new bedding right now . I will try to sleep on the floor and see if i feel any better. I've always preferred harder bedding surfaces, actually.

I went to a doctor two weeks ago and everything seems fine with me orthopedically.

Maybe I should try the change in diet as suggested above. It might be difficult to get rid of grains considering I don't eat meat or dairy as it is.

[TyroneShoes]

Harder is better (that's what she said).

Kidding aside, I think the elephant in the room is that you have issues throughout the night, and upon awakening, but they go away after you've been out of bed for a while. I have to second Julie's assessment. Look into a firmer sleeping surface. Those actually work very well with a memory-foam topper, because they still give you the firm support, but the MF takes the edge off. If cost is an immediate issue, try sliding a piece of 1/4-inch plywood between the mattress and the MF topper. Or maybe something with a little more give to it, just to see if it helps. That might not be immediately all that comfortable, but if the soreness goes away, that means you are on the right track and should consider a harder sleeping surface.

I started having back trouble at 26. This was also about the time that waterbeds became common. But waterbeds and sleep number-type beds only have the ability to have one single pressure for all surfaces at any single time, and for some of us, more pressure under our hips is important compared to less pressure under our chest or head. Since these beds are based on hydraulic pressure, pressure is the same everywhere, which is exactly what does NOT work. Someone such as yourself may need more pressure (support) for your upper back.

But bottom line, for many of us, a soft bed does not work. I slept on futons for decades, because they are firm enough to support me where I needed the support, and naturally, the more weight a particular part of your body has to press into the mattress, the more support the mattress gives you back, at least on a hard bed. So on a hard mattress, you get different levels of support for different parts of your body, something you do not get with a soft bed or a waterbed/sleep number bed.

My girlfriend years ago had a waterbed; I could last 4-5 hours, but then would wake up so sore I had to lie on the floor, or in her bathtub (hard to explain when she got up to pee). Since then I have abhorred any soft bed.

That is, until, my last sleep study. The bed was so soft I thought I was on a trampoline, and sure enough, like clockwork, 4 hours in I was so sore I could not get back to sleep. And with all the wires I was trapped, like being shoved into an Iron Maiden with no escape. A little hard to titrate pressure when your sleep subject is in abject pain and unable to sleep. A firm bed will be a requirement before I ever agree to another sleep study.

So your story rings true with me, and I literally have felt your pain. And for me, a harder sleeping surface was the key to never having back issues, or morning soreness, ever again.

But then back to your question, I think OSA is a totally different issue. You have multiple issues, completely unrelated, other than they both happen when you are laying down trying to sleep. Treat the OSA with XPAP; treat the soreness issue with a harder sleeping surface. Problem solved, we hope. Good luck.

[Captain_Midnight]

Poster Ryan asks...Is general body soreness considered a symptom of untreated OSA?

You have certainly noticed a wide cross-section of answers to your question. And, I have a different one for you.

As my undiagnosed, and thus untreated OSA continued to get worse (in my fifties) my neck would be stiff and sore every morning (and I had no idea why).

My sleep study was prescribed for reasons other than stiffness or soreness, I had never even thought to connect those issues w OSA.

Then, once happily xpapping, it eventually occurred to me that my neck soreness had vanished, and did so about the same time I began xpap therapy.

Folks hereabouts will be quick to mention that there are many symptoms and sequelea of OSA, you might look first to snoring, mental fatigue (especially in the am), and a fairly longish list of other somewhat commonly associated issues. (There are a few blood test telltales, I had high RBCs for example.)

Good luck in your search for answers to your issues.

.

[Neecerie]

in another thread you started you said this...


' I work out 5 days a week, a mix of cardiovascular and lifting routines. I have been doing this since August.'


So is it possible that your workouts are adding to the soreness?

[Guest1]

Bed surface and firmness should be evaluated.

But another thing you want to consider is are there any nutritional issues involved.

This is before I got diagnosed with OSA recently (10 weeks ago).

In 2008-2011, I had aches in my shoulders when I woke up. Also some random aches thruout the body. I didn't know why. It didn't bother me too much so I didn't care.
In 2012, I got tested for Vitamin D. And I came out extremely deficient. I was at 12ng/ml. The bare minimum that doctors suggest is 20. I have since then raised it to 34 (as on Jan 2014). And my aches and pains have vanished. This was prior to getting OSA diagnosis in October and starting xPAP. Now with xPAP, I started getting aches again (because I wasnt turning and tossing as much and so the body wasnt used to being in one position for so long). But after 10 weeks of xPAP, that has vanished as well.

Something to think about. Getting Vitamin D back up is fairly cheap. YMMV.

[Tatooed Lady]

I'm surprised not to have seen anyone suggest the pain could be from untreated OSA, in that you aren't relaxing fully at night, so your shoulder and neck muscles are likely constantly tense. Since starting treatment, I've had less back, shoulder and neck pain. And I drive truck, so pain is common. It's not GONE. It's just much less.

[TyroneShoes]

I'm surprised not to have seen anyone suggest the pain could be from untreated OSA, in that you aren't relaxing fully at night, so your shoulder and neck muscles are likely constantly tense. Since starting treatment, I've had less back, shoulder and neck pain...

I am not surprised by that at all, because I think the likelihood of that [pain could be from untreated OSA] is pretty small. And SA is not really related to how much you are relaxing, other than when your airway relaxes too much, it can cause obstruction. But that indicates that MORE relaxation is tied to MORE SA, and not that LESS relaxation is, so I question that theory. The only thing OSA does to muscles is gets you to use them a little bit during the brief partial arousal from a SA event, and the only thing XPAP therapy does (from the point of view of how it affects musculature) is prevent that.

But that said, I would never try to imply that it is not possibly a related issue, just by saying that it seems more like a sleep comfort issue rather than a SA issue. I don't think it is a SA issue, but that is also not a reason to rule anything out.

Also, pain going away after beginning XPAP treatment may not be causal, and may only be coincidental. We would need an empirically sound study to really know one way or the other. So me saying it is likely a non-SA issue, and someone else saying it might be, neither one of those possibilities should be taken to invalidate the other.

Bottom line, no definite answer, and a large grey area to sort the issue out of.

If one starts from that understanding, the question then becomes "how do you deal with that?". Logic seems to say to thoroughly try to approach it from both points of view, just so you are not missing anything. But if it is a SA issue, you will need advice from an expert to help you discover how much that is a factor. If it is not, approaching it as a sleep comfort issue only is something we each have in our power to fix, without the help of an expert.

Then it just becomes a matter of taking those first steps.