fdw wrote:Not sure what you mean by "panic juice"? . . .
Sorry. It is my shorthand way of referring to the stress hormones the body has to crank out in order to jar us out of an apnea during sleep.
For many of us with long-term moderate-to-severe apnea, the body tries to help us breathe better during sleep by releasing hormones to arouse us out of deep sleep whenever a closure of the airway starts to occur. That can be the basis for the arousals that disturb our sleep. Much of the benefit of PAP therapy for us is that it allows us to stop experiencing those little panics that used to occur during sleep whenever the body needed to jolt us out of an apnea. Once the body gets used to making those chemicals, it thinks it needs to keep a big supply on hand, just in case. And if we don't burn that off with exercise, the body can decide to release those stress hormones at any moment just because it wants to. That can make for one heck of a roller-coaster ride.
That is an oversimplification, because all medical explanations of everything are oversimplifications. But it is important for many of us to realize that constant use of CPAP at ALL times can help us to have a more relaxed and healthy life on all levels because of how it changes our body chemistry and our ways of reacting to things both when we are asleep and awake. For some of us, our OSA actually first showed up as mood troubles--including panic, anxiety, depression, etc. Fixing sleep has helped some to make improvements in those areas. Failure to treat apnea can, for some, be a failure to help mood and a failure to help emotional troubles. That seems, according to some theories, to be closely tied into the body's chemical system and the way it reacts to the mechanical issue of a throat that closes during sleep.
I find it much more fun to just talk about "panic juice." I'm odd that way.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... enemy-no-1
