CPAP Use & short term memory loss

Just curious, my husband has been using his CPAP machine faithfully for 1 year now & still is having short term memory issues. Has anyone else had this experience?

Please give us something else to go on - like whether or not he feels more alert otherwise on Cpap than he did before, like whether or not he uses (free) software that tracks what happens overnight (we can steer you to that if you'd like) and what it has said, whether or not he's seen a doctor for any cognitive testing (how old is he?), etc. etc.

To previous poster - no one said Cpap caused the memory loss... do read before responding.

Good question. What I'm wondering is...
#1 If his machine collects treatment data, has it been assessed to determine that his treatment is actually effective? I was on CPAP several months and my mind got progressively worse. Once my settings were tweaked to be more effective, the fog began to lift.
#2 Does he have any other conditions affecting the quality of his sleep, like maybe limb movements or pain or medication side effects, etc?

mrsluvsun wrote:Just curious, my husband has been using his CPAP machine faithfully for 1 year now & still is having short term memory issues. Has anyone else had this experience?

Undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea can lead to memory loss as can many other things including genes. But I tend to think that genes again leads back to untreated sleep apnea.
Just using the cpap does not always mean that the treatment is effective.

So follow kteague's lead here and try to find the answer to her questions. Spend some time reading searching and esp. learn to use SleepyHead software to understand if the treatment is effective. Then post some of the results.

kteague wrote:Good question. What I'm wondering is...
#1 If his machine collects treatment data, has it been assessed to determine that his treatment is actually effective? I was on CPAP several months and my mind got progressively worse. Once my settings were tweaked to be more effective, the fog began to lift.
#2 Does he have any other conditions affecting the quality of his sleep, like maybe limb movements or pain or medication side effects, etc?

Has he been still ageing? That's causing mine. Without using XPAP i'd be dead, no more memory loss. Jim

He uses a Resmed machine with an AirFit full face mask. He uses the MyAir program to track his events etc. He is 63 years old. He has probably had Sleep Apnea for 20+ years but was only diagnosed one year ago because we noticed his short term memory issues. When he was originally diagnosed, his events were 50 times per hour. Now he is at 3.8 events per hour. His oxygen levels were dropping below 88%. He has no other health issues. He has been retired from a very stressful job for about 9 months now. His Neurologist did a MRI & blood work 1 year ago & the MRI came back normal. Blood work showed a few things in the Low Normal range but our regular doc said as long as it was in the normal range he did not want to re-test. I may have my Naturpathic doctor run a full blood panel on him. He currently takes no prescription meds. Just a Bcomplex vitamin.

It's not always easy to find a sleep doctor with the same philosophy, but what helped my lingering questions about how much my sleep was to blame for continuing cognitive issues was another sleep study. For your hubby that would be a study with him using his CPAP at his prescribed pressure to see what his usual sleep is like. It would reveal if he getting the right proportion of the different sleep stages, and if something else needs to be addressed regarding his sleep, or if the symptoms are residual damage or from another source besides sleep apnea. The battle with the doctor is that they can get stuck in tradition, which says to do another diagnostic study and another titration study. Neither of these will likely be helpful to the person using CPAP diligently and the machine data says it is effective. It would be interesting to first see if any of the data gurus here (that would not be me) could see any red flags in his nightly data. You said he has a Resmed machine, but can you be more specific and give us the full and exact name. It matters when one is trying to troubleshoot. For instance, with an auto machine that is set to a range of pressure, if the machine spends the whole night jumping around trying to ward off apneas, even if it accomplishes that, all the pressure changes can be disruptive if one happens to be sensitive to the changes. For those persons a pressure tweak could be all that's needed. BTW, if my AHI was 3.8 I'd feel miserable. That means in an 8 hour night he's had about 30 events, and generally a good number of events cause arousal. That would not be "good" sleep for me. Maybe his AHI could be lowered even more. Does he feel his sleep is deep and restful or does he feel it is light and restless? Does he move around much in his sleep? Sorry to bombard you with so many questions, but the details can hold clues.

His GP should refer him for cognitive testing, regardless of Cpap, to see if he's 'just' going through normal aging - forgetting the odd word, etc. (or are there more serious flags?), or if there is any condition/process taking place that needs addressing.

My Air does not have a good reputation for giving much useful info - Sleepyhead is much more comprehensive.

Has his oxygen level been tested while he is using the cpap ? A few of us like
myself not only need cpap but require oxygen with it at night.