tl;dr: Have a lot of symptoms matching those of UARS, giving CPAP a try. one week in, massive difficulties with sleeping with CPAP, but made some improvements the last night.
Long version:
I like to share my story here, maybe others find value in it and maybe some of you can help me along the way.
Reading other peoples story already helped me a great deal!
I've been struggling with morning tension-type headaches, fatigue and dizziness for a couple of years now. For the most part I made bruxism responsible for that. I tried various splints, mouth guards, relaxation techniques and physical therapy in order to get in under control. Nothing has helped. Blood and overall health is in perfect condition...
Out of frustration I bought a jaw-clenching audio-biofeedback headband, which records the times I clench per night and chirps whenever I clecnch. It showed pretty low values and only made a sound when I moved around... it puzzled me. I was so sure that I clench my teeth a lot and so did my physician, although there isn't that much wear to see on my teeth. After that I installed an infrared night camera to record my sleep, I thought maybe I see my grinding and clenching with it. I realised however, that jaw clenching might not be the issue after all. The recordings showed no excessive clenching or grinding whatsoever, but that I have quite a restless sleep. I move around a lot and four to five times per night I do strange things with my arms for a couple of minutes. I hold my hands to my head and due to gravity they fall back down, so I put them up again, rinse and repeat. Knowing that its probably not very accurate, I bought a sleep tracker armband and it showed too little REM and deep sleep. It finally came to me, that something is wrong with my sleep.
I went to a sleep physician and got a home PSG. Oh boy did I not slept that night... the pressure of having to sleep in order to have some data to analyse kept me awake. I finally slept for 2 hours though and it turned out I have severe snoring, but no apneas. As I had a couple of nights with video data from my sleep I knew that I do not snore at all. My girl friend was surprised by this as well, as she never hears anything from me at night. She only complains about my arm movements, which sometimes land in here face *ups*. The physician said I could spent a night in a sleep lab to find out more, but it may be more difficult for me to sleep there than at home and the wait time is 5-6 months.
I also bought a pulse oximeter to record my oxygen levels at night. They were normal on the PSG, but I wanted to see how they look at a full 8-hours night. I have about 20 events per night where my oxygen level drops by 4% or more. Nothing to worrisome I guess, but when I compared them to those of my girl friends, my levels look like a roller coster.
So I went home and did what every physician probably fears the most. I googled.
I found out that there is indeed something as inaudible snoring and I came upon Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome.
The similarities where eye-opening for me. I'll list a few here:
- Small, slightly recessed jaw and small neck
- Lean body (BMI < 21)
- slightly crowded teeth, wisdom tooth extraction when I was 16
- Bruxism, jaw tension, headaches
- Feeling of restless sleep
- Can't sleep on my back
- Cold feed
- Problems with my gut
I'm wearing the thing now for 5 nights and last night was the first night where I managed to get a little bit of sleep with it. I actually had my first dream with it and guess what it was about – the CPAP machine. I dreamt it had a malfunction and increased the pressure to the max and I couldn't turn it off. Woke up a moment later, checked the pressure and everything was normal.
I can tolerate the mask, but turning in bed is difficult because the hose tends to get stuck somewhere in between and pulls on my mask.
The pressure however, this is really difficult for me. I have a really hard time falling asleep with it. But last night was some kind of milestone I guess.
My settings are:
APAP, 6.6 - 10 Pressure, ERP on 2 and no Ramp.
The sleepyhead data is not that interesting for now. Last night I had an AHI of 0.67. No apneas, no RERAs. But from what I've read, the data isn't that interesting for UARS anyways. I'm feeling like shit today, so I guess it's still a long way to see if CPAP does anything good for me or not. At the end it could be, that I don't have UARS at all, and something different is giving me a bad sleep.
I only have one question for now.
The only thing that still makes me uncertain about the whole thing. I usually feel much better in the afternoon or in the evening. Sometimes my symptoms are gone by the end of the day. Is this something other UARS oder OSA people see in themselves as well?
