CPAP "failure"

[ZuniWolf]

Greetings, all...

Been a while since I've been here. I had high hopes for CPAP therapy, but it didn't work for me. I had a high incidence of apnea with the sleep study a year ago.

Twelve months after I initiated therapy, I had no improvement on my chronic fatigue. I tried a different rate (started at 13). Nearly a year later, I did a second sleep study, followed by a "nap" study, also called a Multiple Sleep Latency Test. It showed that I had great clinical sleep, but that it didn't do me any good. Even though the apnea was down to near nothing, my heart rate during the sleep was still up to 120 for most of the study and I am always exhausted.

This was the same result I got 20 years ago in my original sleep study before the addition of CPAP.

The only thing the doctors can recommend is stimulants. Of course the cardiologists scream about that. However, I"d rather use stimulants than sleep all the time. (Gee, same scenario as 20 years ago.....)

I am now following the thread in this forum on fibromyalgia, which I was diagnosed with 20 years ago. Perhaps in the last 20 years some insights have been made.

Hope you all are doing better!

[MartyR]

sorry to hear that, hope your docs can figure something out for you

[GumbyCT]

I know my dad had virtually no OSA's but over 200 PLM's - hopefully you were checked for leg movements, right?

[SleepGuy]

Zuni, sorry to hear about your troubles. I invite you to consider the fact that since you have definitively been diagnosed with OSA, any time you sleep without equipment you are literally suffocating in your sleep, multiple times an hour, causing your blood oxygen levels to desaturate. Sleep disruption is only a side-effect of untreated OSA, as the lack of oxygen causes all kinds of bad things to happen, including the release of panic hormones, reduction in blood flow to most of the body in favor of the brain (which causes, among other things, digestive problems that results in Type II diabetes and GERD), etc. While you haven't expereinced an improvement in how you feel, there is no doubt in my mind that you are saving your body from the effects of nightly desaturation. I invite you to consider continuing to use your cpap while you continue your efforts to address your other problems and issues.