sc0ttt wrote:I broke four ribs last weekend and couldn't sleep lying down at all, so I've been sleeping in a cushy chair with pillows (not a recliner).
Before this accident, a good night for me would be below 10 AHI... hardly ever would I see less than 5, and I figured that was good enough because I felt like I was getting good sleep (untreated AHI in the 70s).
But in this chair, every night my AHI has been below 1 !!! This is really amazing. My leaks are a little higher and my snores are a little more frequent, but last night I had ZERO apnea events. Sleep isn't great because of the broken rib pain, but once that gets better I'm staying in the chair.
On Friday I went out and bought a deluxe LaZBoy recliner with four adjustment things - being delivered tomorrow... this might well become the new normal.
I am happy that you found a solution that works for you. It would be interesting to see if others, converting to sitting up but still using CPAP, would have a similar result. This should probably encourage some of us to try this. I once slept in a Papasan chair for a couple months due to shoulder pain, and it was fine.
But you may also just be an outlier, and not representative of what others might experience. Anecdotal reports have value, but should not be assumed to be the norm for everyone. I also would assume that you are on different medication, now that you are recovering from a painful recent injury, which may also skew your results.
But that does not invalidate what you are saying; I think it might at least warrant a discussion with your sleep doc. And if this is making a positive difference for you, who really knows whether it could for others, until they try? I hope they do. If it becomes the "new normal" for you, or others, that's just great.
I had a sleep study the other day, and they put me in a bed so soft I could barely sleep in it without being in serious pain from lack of back support after about 90 minutes, which woke me for the next 90 minutes; like sleeping in a hammock. When I used to sleep in my girlfriend's waterbed back in the day, at least I could go sleep on the floor and relieve the pain (she was not the pain, far from it, but waterbeds have zero support).
But in the sleep study I was limited to taking the two miserable pillows they gave me and scrunching them up behind me so that I was virtually sleeping upright. I would guess that half-sleep in an upright, not normal position for most of the night probably skewed the results of that study beyond any recognition.