Sleepy vs. Exhausted

sundial · Post by **sundial** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:16 am

I have been on CPAP for about a month now. First week or so was phenomenal - energy level way up.

Over the last week or so something new has come up. While my energy level is still good and the constant feeling of exhaustion is pretty much gone - I find that I have fairly random periods of intense sleepiness during the day. This is very different from the exhaustion I used to fell - this is just purely sleepy. Jaw cracking yawning and all that.

Is this a common "period of adjustment" thing others have seen? I'm sleeping quite well with the mask on - generally waking for no more than a few moments once during the night when attacked by my hose or mask.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

twillson · Post by **twillson** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:58 am

There are lots of previous posts about the way the adjustment and recovery period feels. Your scenario sounds similar to mine, and is pretty common.

You probably have a huge backlog of sleep deprivation to work through. Also, I found that I noticed the difference in sleepiness between days simply because I started having good ones. When you are exhausted all the time a good day and a bad day feel similar. OTOH if I didn't get a full nights sleep do to some disturbance I could really feel it after I started CPAP.

For me, things finally evened out after I was on CPAP for several months. Now it takes several bad nights in a row to make me feel really tired at work. I can vaguely remember feeling that way 10-15 years ago, but I certainly never did when I had severe OSA.