Early morning awakenings

[Rameysm]

Hello, I'm new to this forum. I was wondering if anyone had trouble waking early and not falling back to sleep prior to using cpap? I've had sleep issues on and off for the last several years. At first I thought the majority of my problems were psychological. It used to be I had trouble falling asleep, but once I did, I usually stayed asleep until 6:30 or 7:00. This year I started waking up early like 4:00 and not falling back to sleep. This has occurred on/off since April. I had a home sleep study and the results were I had 12 events per hour and blood oxygen level dipping to 86%. Doc prescribed cpap and I just started. I figured it will take a while to get used to it to see if it helps with the early morning awakenings but wanted to see if anyone had similar issues and found that cpap helped. I'm still not convinced that this is all I need to remedy my situation as I am fearing this early morning issue might still be psychological. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Slim1950]

Yep. I have that problem. But if I remove the mask, I can generally catch another hour or two. But not without getting a headache from apnea that will occur without the mask.

So I try hard to leave it on. I am new to the game myself. I find adjusting to the mask very difficult. But I am slowly getting there. My machine says I got 6 hours last night.

[Rameysm]

Thanks for the reply. I'm going to give it a shot and hope for the best. If I could get 6 hours of sleep with it, I would be ecstatic. Last night I had it on for 4 hours but pretty sure I only slept 2.5 of those.

[JasonK94Z]

I just started cpap too just a few weeks ago. I had trouble with waking earlier than usual also at first. I'd take the mask off and fall back to sleep. Hated my first mask too, so that was part of the problem.

I found a new, more comfortable mask and love it. Stick with it! Now when I wake up, it's my normal time. I wake up and want to sleep more with my mask now. It's like a supply of cool fresh air. You'll get used to it like I did I'm sure.

[PST]

CPAP may help. You can divide the problem in two: waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep. One reason for waking up is to urinate. CPAP really does help with the need to empty a full bladder during the night. By a somewhat complicated chain of events, low oxygen saturation causes small arteries in the lungs to constrict. This increases blood pressure on the right side of the heart. Stretch receptors in the right atrium produce an enzyme that tells the kidneys to work double time and reduce the amount of fluid in the circulatory system. Some of us were getting up 4 or 5 times a night and (in the case of older men) assuming it was some prostate problem. CPAP changes this right away, so if the bathroom run is one of the factors producing your wake-up call in the middle of the night, help could be on its way. Not being able to go back to sleep is another issue. I would love to know the answer to that. If I wake up, I'm no longer as tired as I was at bedtime and tend to find things to fret about. This makes for much more trouble getting the second half of my night's sleep than the first.

[JDS74]

Waking in the night and not being able to go back to sleep can be a sleep hygiene issue.
When that happens, get up and go to another room and do something boring until you feel sleepy again. Then go back to bed and mask up and go to sleep.

[49er]

Hello, I'm new to this forum. I was wondering if anyone had trouble waking early and not falling back to sleep prior to using cpap? I've had sleep issues on and off for the last several years. At first I thought the majority of my problems were psychological. It used to be I had trouble falling asleep, but once I did, I usually stayed asleep until 6:30 or 7:00. This year I started waking up early like 4:00 and not falling back to sleep. This has occurred on/off since April. I had a home sleep study and the results were I had 12 events per hour and blood oxygen level dipping to 86%. Doc prescribed cpap and I just started. I figured it will take a while to get used to it to see if it helps with the early morning awakenings but wanted to see if anyone had similar issues and found that cpap helped. I'm still not convinced that this is all I need to remedy my situation as I am fearing this early morning issue might still be psychological. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Hi Rameysm,

You might want to use the links in my signature to download sleepyhead and post screen shots to make sure therapy is optimized and not causing you premature wakeups. Additionally, you might want to register your equipment so members can tailor their responses to your situation.

If your therapy turns out to be optimized, then of course you have to look at other issues to troubleshoot such as mask comfort, sleep hygiene, etc.

[Wulfman...]

Hello, I'm new to this forum. I was wondering if anyone had trouble waking early and not falling back to sleep prior to using cpap? I've had sleep issues on and off for the last several years. At first I thought the majority of my problems were psychological. It used to be I had trouble falling asleep, but once I did, I usually stayed asleep until 6:30 or 7:00. This year I started waking up early like 4:00 and not falling back to sleep. This has occurred on/off since April. I had a home sleep study and the results were I had 12 events per hour and blood oxygen level dipping to 86%. Doc prescribed cpap and I just started. I figured it will take a while to get used to it to see if it helps with the early morning awakenings but wanted to see if anyone had similar issues and found that cpap helped. I'm still not convinced that this is all I need to remedy my situation as I am fearing this early morning issue might still be psychological. Any feedback would be appreciated.

It's pretty common early on in therapy. Many do better with less hours of sleep initially.
However........
Please fill out your profile with ALL of your equipment and settings.
Also, if you're not using software (like Sleepyhead), get it and look at your downloaded data. There may be some other clues in there. If you're using an APAP in a range of pressures, it may be the pressure changes waking you.


Den

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