8 Months, still tired

Farrell · Post by **Farrell** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:57 pm

: screenshot-20191121-155500.png (296.32 KiB) Viewed 553 times

: screenshot-20191121-155500.png (296.32 KiB) Viewed 553 times

Friends, I have been tired all my life. Never rested, mentally sluggish, waking up several times a night, sometimes for hours. Even when I get eight hours of sleep, which is seldom, I still do not feel rested. I have had several lab studies, none of them very helpful. One at Mayo's--they said I was just depressed. I'm not depressed--when I can get some sleep I feel great.

The last in-home study showed 5-8 AHI before cpap. Now, I range from 1 to 4 AHI.

I've been wearing the mask pretty faithfully since April. Sometimes I think it's helped; most times I feel my old tired self in the morning. I just never feel like I get that deep restful sleep. But I found this group the other night as I lay awake Googling "Cpap-Still Tired". I'm hopeful maybe one of you see something in the attached sample of recent charts that might help. I really appreciate you taking a look.

Thank you.

zonker · Post by **zonker** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 6:43 pm

Farrell wrote: ↑
Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:57 pm
screenshot-20191121-155500.pngscreenshot-20191121-155500.pngFriends, I have been tired all my life. Never rested, mentally sluggish, waking up several times a night, sometimes for hours.

welcome to the zoo! you are not alone. we have pretty much all gone through the same or similar. but you can do this. we can get your ahi down and help "fix" this situation.

are you taking any medication? if so, what?

one of the things you can try right now, is to raise your minimum pressure. you have it set at four which is making the machine work too hard to try to get going on your events. i would suggest a minimum of 7. if that is too much, you don't have to jump up to it at once. you can seak up on 7 a little bit at a time. this should helps things a bit.

i see by your chart that you "centrals". someone with far better understanding than i can comment on that.

others will be along soon to offer suggestions.

good luck. you can do this.

Pugsy · Post by **Pugsy** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:03 pm

Are you waking often during the night? If so, approx how many times?
We can see 2 obvious breaks in therapy where you were awake and turned the machine off and back on again.
How many others?
Why?

Farrell · Post by **Farrell** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:55 pm

Thank you for your encouragement.

I usually wake up at least once or twice a night. I try and lie there and go back to sleep, but after an hour or so I get up and go to the bathroom and then try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I will take a Tylenol which seems to help me get back to sleep. I take no other medicine except Red Yeast Rice for cholesterol.

By the way, since using the cpap, the formerly occasional “ringing” in my ears is now constant and loud.

Tomorrow I’ll try and download my manual and raise the minimum pressure.

Thanks again for the help.

roadcycler · Post by **roadcycler** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 10:03 pm

The ringing in your ears could be indicative of high blood pressure. Have you had it checked lately. Also the rice yeast for cholesterol how high is it, and have you tried to stop it for a while. When my wife use to bake bread I use to get mild headaches ( ? off gassing from the yeast ). As stated above 4 is pretty low.

roadcycler · Post by **roadcycler** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 10:08 pm

To raise the pressure you need to get into the clinical settings.

Press the silver dial to wake it up
press and hold the home button and silver dial till clinical settings header comes up
press the silver dial on settings
rotate the silver dial to pressure
press the silver dial then rotate to desired cpap setting.
press home
then rotate dial to exit clinical settings and press silver dial

Pugsy · Post by **Pugsy** » Thu Nov 21, 2019 10:26 pm

How many hours of real sleep and not just laying in bed trying to sleep do you think you are getting?

kteague · Post by **kteague** » Fri Nov 22, 2019 2:52 am

While others are addressing optimizing your therapy, I'll just throw out a few things to consider. The first is usually to consider medication side effect, but you've already answered that. What about supplements? Taking any of those, like maybe melatonin? What have your doctors already tested and ruled out in regards to medical conditions or nutritional deficiencies? Thyroid? Anemia? Diabetes? D3 or B Vitamins? Pugsy has asked you about your sleep. Are you getting enough and what is the quality? Do you feel like there are deep periods between the wakeups or does it feel shallow and restless? Do you have any issues with limb movements or jumpy legs? Sorry to throw so many questions at you. Sometimes there are additional factors at play and it would be nice to address them while getting the best support from your treatment to find your best overall state of well being.

Farrell · Post by **Farrell** » Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:38 pm

Thank you for your responses. I'll try and answer your questions:

I take no medicines or supplements other than the red yeast rice. I've had PET scans, glucose tolerance tests, MRI's, EEG's and several in-lab sleep studies, old CPAP, $1000 dental "appliance", all many years ago, and all to no avail. I had pretty much given up, but last year a new doctor talked me into trying CPAP again. But eight months in and I still feel like the walking dead. If I hadn't stumbled on this site, I would put the machine in the closet.

My blood pressure is good; no issues of limb movement or restless legs.

In my previous post I said I wake up once or twice a night. That's not accurate. I wake up and stay awake, sometimes for hours, once or twice a night. But I actually wake up and then go right back to sleep many times a night. Last night I kept track of ten times that I awakened and then quickly fell back asleep.

It's like I'm always getting only shallow sleep, never the deep restful sleep.

I try to go to bed early, even by 7:30-8:00, because I know I'll be awake for hours, usually around 2-3:00 a.m.. I try for eight hours of sleep a night.

Tonight I'm going to turn up the minimum pressure from 4 to 7 and see if this might make a difference. (Thanks for the directions on the machine)

I appreciate you guys

Pugsy · Post by **Pugsy** » Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:25 pm

Sleep maintenance insomnia....google it and start reading.
If you don't have good quality sleep you are going to feel like crap and sometimes the crappy sleep quality is from sleep apnea and sometimes it from something else.
CPAP can only fix bad sleep that is related to sleep apnea. It can't do much for bad sleep that is related to anything other than sleep apnea no matter how much we might want to blame sleep apnea and have the machine fix things.

Fragmented sleep just kills sleep quality. We don't get the number of hours of sleep for one thing and the normal progression of the sleep stages doesn't progress normally so that we get a chance to get the required amount of each sleep stage.
Sometimes there are known causes but sometimes we simply don't know the cause and it's real hard to fix a problem when we don't know the cause of the problem.

You can try more minimum pressure and see if it makes any difference or not. Sure worth trying.

kteague · Post by **kteague** » Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:45 pm

Does sleepiness accompany the tiredness?

8 Months, still tired

8 Months, still tired

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