Terrible memory problems, can't concentrate

[sickwithapnea17]

I'm having terrible memory problems, problems concentrating and I think it's my osa/csa. I'm having trouble doing math or remembering basic simple things like where my keys are
I've tried bipap for months and it didn't help and I got to this point where I couldn't read sentences, would forget words I just read???

[cflame1]

Are you changing the settings because you want to change them or are you changing them because the doc wants you to?

If it's the doc... get another doc.

You've changed your settings so many times and currently have CSA more than OSA showing so you need to be under the care of a good sleep doc that understands your problem.

[BlackSpinner]

Talk to your schools counsellors, and consider taking a semester off to get your health under control. Then use that time to get assertive with your doctors and treatment.

[apneawho]

I wish you the best. Please take care of yourself.

[ThirdOutOfFive]

BlackSpinner is right. Take time off from school and get your health back. Your health must be your first priority now. School won't work if you can't think.
If you can't get what you need from your current doc, get another one.
Please keep in touch. The folks here are a great resource. And, we care.

[sickwithapnea17]

I still can't remember well but I guess I've been struggling through classes

[sickwithapnea17]

the pulmonologist said I should change to a setting like 12/10 but when I got the bipap st they had it on 18/14 so I don't know if I should change it- I wake up with the mask off all the time and then I just sleep with it off so I get very little therapy

it seems that sleep apnea may damage or deplete the dopamine in your brain that governs memory and concentration- I wonder if it can be treated like ADD like with green tea and ginseng

I really don't know how I developed this disease when I wasn't having sleep problems before. they found a brain lesion and I was having a lot of stress. I had low cortisol but none of my docs said I had adrenal fatigue
the weird thing is I fall asleep after like 6-8 hours of being awake- I'm constantly tired and then when I try to do math or remember I can't concentrate
I just wish I could have been cured on CPAP like everyone else

[ems]

Hi 17... I don't think many people get "cured" on CPAP. Better.. yes..cured.. NO!

One thing for sure is that you must put the mask back on when you realize it's off. That would be the beginning of getting better.

I think you should call your doctor tomorrow and let him/her know their instructions were not followed. Use it the way it is set for tonight.

Stress doesn't do much for any of us... try to find a way to calm yourself down - maybe meditation?

Take care.

[Emilia]

You should change your settings to what the doctor said.... not leave it to what a DME set it to. You may find that reducing the pressure that amount will allow you to sleep all night with the mask on and yield excellent results. You won't know until you try it. Do you have the clinician's manual for your machine in order to get 'under the hood' and adjust the settings?

[fadedgirl]

Your hormonal problems could be the direct cause of your memory and mental acuity issues, as much or even more so than apnea. You can take your own hormone saliva test by ordering from a lab direct (zrtlabs.com for one). There are many books that can guide you to getting your hormones under control yourself once you get your test results back, OR find yourself a naturopath who is well versed at hormone issues and work with them (faster route assuming the doc is adept).

I have had the same issues as you and have had severe hormone issues for approx 8 years that I am only now beginning to address myself as mainstream docs are dangerously clueless in this arena. For a super-quick result try taking a B vitamin complex. I was apparently extremely deficient in B vitamins and my mental fog cleared overnight after taking B vitamins. If you are needing them you will experience a benefit right away & you can buy them at any grocer or drug store. I take mine in the morning; some find that they will keep them awake if they take at night. I will never stop taking them (I take Garden of Life Raw B Complex ~~ its a whole food vitamin versus a synthetic vitamin). Your profile doesn't state if your are male or female, but if you're female being on the pill screws up hormones AND sucks the B Vitamins (among other things) out of your body. Also, low estrogen = brain fog.

So please don't assume its just the apnea. I think my apnea caused or compounded my hormone problems, it makes sense that almost strangling to death every few minutes all night would raise one's cortisol levels, ha. Once something gets out of balance, other things go askew as well. You'll need to be on your cpap in order to get anything straightened out, IMO, but don't delay in getting your hormones evaluated and straightened out ASAP. You'll be amazed at what a massive difference it makes in your wellbeing and mental capability.

[sickwithapnea17]

I was taking VB shots but it didn't help, my O2 is at 73% it seems or lower maybe.
I read that green tea/ginseng can raise dopamine levels that help with memory but it only helps a little I think

[robysue]

sickwithapnea,

As I've indicated in a different thread, I'm a college professor. The idea of a medical leave of absence is to help students who find themselves in the same pickle that you are in: It allows students who are facing a long term health problems and who are unable to do work that is up to their usual standard of quality to withdraw from all their courses without any academic penalty. Many, but not all, institutions also offer a partial refund of tuition and fees; the amount of money refunded is often tied to how early in the semester the student requests the medical withdrawal.

The office you should go to in order to find out about your school's medical withdrawal process is the Dean of Students. If the folks there can't help you, try the Dean's Office for the school that contains the department you are majoring in.

Next you write:

the weird thing is I fall asleep after like 6-8 hours of being awake- I'm constantly tired and then when I try to do math or remember I can't concentrate
I just wish I could have been cured on CPAP like everyone else

We're not cured with CPAP. But our OSA is kept under control by sleeping with CPAP---once we start using it as intended (always sleep with the mask on) and once we are fully adjusted (no longer have any significant problems with the cardinal rule, always sleep with the mask on). A few lucky folks start to feel better almost immediately. Many folks start to feel better in a couple of months. Some of us are unlucky though: It may take us many, many months or even a year or two to figure it all out. And a few folks are very unlucky and never feel much better on CPAP than before, but keep plugging away at sleeping with the mask all night, every night because they know that's the only way to prevent their bodies from deteriorating further from the damage the untreated apnea causes.

Me? I fall into the "merely unlucky" category. The first three or four months on xPAP I felt much, much worse in terms of daytime functioning even though I always slept with the mask on. But by six months into therapy, I was starting to notice some very subtle signs that it was doing something positive for me. But it took until the end of month 10 before I was consistently feeling better than I did pre-CPAP on most days. And even now, the GOOD days, in terms of feeling pretty much back to normal (as in how I felt years ago pre-OSA) are only about 50%. Is this as good as it will get for me? I don't know. But I hope not and I continue to do what I can to help the therapy work better.

You also write:

I really don't know how I developed this disease when I wasn't having sleep problems before. they found a brain lesion and I was having a lot of stress. I had low cortisol but none of my docs said I had adrenal fatigue

OSA is an insidious chronic condition that typically develops over a long period of time. Even though you are only 22, you may have had this disease for most of your life, but you grew up thinking your physical condition was "normal" because you had nothing to compare it to. Or it could be that the physical anomalies in your upper airway structures have started to lead to upper airway collapses now that you are fully grown and under a great deal of stress. Stress brings out the worst in us: Both in terms of our mental functioning and in terms of how well our body copes with things. But relieving the stress is not going to make the apnea go away: The structural problems are there and will remain regardless of your stress level. It's just that once you were facing the unusual amount of stress, your body could no longer function well enough to effectively hide the OSA.

Asking "why me?" is common. I did it myself for a very, very long time. But there is no good answer for most people. Indeed, bad things happen to good people all the time and often for no reason. And on the grand scale of "bad things", OSA is nowhere near the top of the list. It helps sometimes to remember those who are far more unfortunate than yourself: It gives you some perspective to think about the blessings you still do have instead of focusing on all the negatives in your life.

And you write:

the pulmonologist said I should change to a setting like 12/10 but when I got the bipap st they had it on 18/14 so I don't know if I should change it- I wake up with the mask off all the time and then I just sleep with it off so I get very little therapy

1) Double check with the pulmonologist about those pressure settings. If s/he wants you on 12/10, tell the doc that the DME set up incorrectly, and either reset the BiPAP yourself or take it back to the DME and tell them to reset it correctly. If you chose the later, bring a written copy of the prescription with you.

2) When you wake up with the mask off, it is extremely important to establish the GOOD habit of putting the mask back on your nose. You absolutely must break the BAD habit of just returning to sleep without the mask. Every time you sleep without the mask, you are continuing to let the apnea destroy your body bit by bit. Someone here has a signature that says OSA is death by a thousand cuts. It's an appropriate analogy: Any one apnea/hypopnea is not going to kill you. But every hour you sleep without the mask, you are subjecting your body to dozens of mini-suffocations that will destroy it over time. You will NEVER feel any better as long as you allow yourself to sleep for long periods during the night without the mask on.

[sickwithapnea17]

thanks so much for the posts!
here is my bipap data from the past few months- I still get headaches when I take the mask off while sleeping

[robysue]

I still get headaches when I take the mask off while sleeping

Of course you still get headaches when you sleep without the mask: The apnea comes back more or less immediately and so the O2 desats and arousals start immediately and the headache on waking comes back. The OSA headaches will only go away and stay away once you are sleeping with the mask all night long, every single night.

Re the data: The OAI and HI are nice and low, but given that you are not yet sleeping all night with the mask, it doesn't mean much in terms of how you are feeling. In other words, it's hard to tease out of whether you will start feeling better once you master keeping the mask on all night or if all the other issues you are dealing with will still have a huge negative impact on the quality of your life.

The CAI is bouncing all over the place, but since the overall CAI = 1.8, that means more nights than not the CAI is actually rather low in order to "cancel" out those obvious nights with very elevated CAI numbers. Do those nights with high CAIs mean something significant? It is hard to tell from the summary data. If they are occuring on nights where you are wearing the mask for a long period of time drifting in and out of sleep, they may just be sleep onset centrals, which are usually not much to worry about, or they could be the machine misinterpreting your wakeful breathing patterns, which again is nothing to worry about. But if those are the nights that you slept the longest and most soundly with the CPAP on your nose, then there's a chance that the central apneas may indeed be a potential problem. You should probably share this data with your doctor and specifically ask for the doc's opinion.

You didn't include any leak data or any usage data. Since you are still working on sleeping with the mask on all night every night, the usage data is important to look at: You need to know if the nights where you manage to sleep with mask on for a longer time typically have better or worse numbers than the rest of the nights: Lots of night with an AHI below 1.0, but where you only get only one or two hours of sleep, are not really very meaningful in trying to figure out whether your therapy has been properly optimized.

Leak data is also critical: If you have leak problems, that can lead to serious discomfort, which in turn may help explain why you are still taking the mask off at night. Serious leak problems can also lead to inaccurate data being recorded during the leak as well as compromised therapy.

[jamiswolf]

sickwithapnea wrote: I just wish I could have been cured on CPAP like everyone else

How do you know that you couldn't? You don't keep your mask on so you've never really experienced good treatment. I'm rather tired of all your self pity and non-compliance.


There I said it...now at least I feel better...
Jamis