New CPAP user-when will I feel better?

Hi All,
I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago with apnea. I use nasal pillows and cushions religiously every night. Ahi went from 11 to 2.2. Had apnea about a year I figure. I'm 50 years old & a very active person, play & ref hockey, workout and ride a road ride 2500-3000 miles/year. Resting HR 55. Bp now back to normal but blood oxygen sometimes trends to 91. However, I'm still fatigued, muscle aches every day and low energy. I still push through my activities but it's not easy. Get about 7-8hrs with a lot more dreams too. I do record my sleep noise on a sleep app. Snoring is gone but I still fidget some.

I've recently had numerous blood work ups and all came back normal. Maybe I have something else going on??

Frustrated to read it will take months to recover Anything else I can do besides sleep more? .

Thanks

bpt513 wrote:Maybe I have something else going on??

You very well may. Just because you had apnea doesn't mean that was causing your symptoms. I speak from experience. Many people notice improvement with their XPAP unit, but I have not. After something like seven or eight years of using a BiPAP machine, I recently discovered on my own that my hypersomnia, e.g., sleeping 14 hours a day, was caused by a drug I was on. I still use my BiPAP machine, though, because I would otherwise have pretty bad apnea, which kills brain cells, etc.

The question comes up often and the answer is "it depends".
Not what someone wants to hear because we as humans tend to expect fairly immediate results and while a few lucky people get what I call the "overnight miracle" the cold hard fact of life is that most people do not.
It takes time even is sleep apnea is the only thing going on but often sleep apnea isn't the only thing going on but we still expect the cpap machine to fix all our problems even those that are totally unrelated to sleep apnea.

Sometimes it does just simply take time though. Time for the body to heal.
But it hurts nothing to use that time to investigate other possible causes of not feeling the good numbers we may be seeing from the machine in terms of AHI. A nice low AHI doesn't guarantee anything.
There's so much more to restful sleep than a nice low AHI.
Getting a nice low AHI is relatively easy for most people.

So what to do when we don't feel the good numbers?
Make sure the good numbers aren't clouded by excessive large leak.
Make sure that we are getting adequate hours of sleep...and 5 or 6 hours is not enough.
Make sure that we don't take any meds that might have some unwanted side effects. Do your own homework as to potential side effects.
Make sure that the hours of sleep we get aren't marred with frequent wake ups...fragmented sleep will make us feel like crap even with adequate number of hours of sleep.
Make sure that there aren't any other health conditions going on that could possibly cause unwanted symptoms.

Start off by using the software and evaluating what you see and verify that leaks aren't an issue.
What machine are you using...hopefully it has more than just AHI available.

One area to start on is drugs, effects, and interactions.
I use an IOS app called Epocrates - free for iPhone/iPad users.
The is a web site for them as well: http://www.epocrates.com/ and it is also free to use. They seem to have the best information about drug side effects and drug interactions of any of the on-line sites. I keep all my meds in the iPad app so that if the doc proposes a new med, I can see what interactions can happen and we can discuss it right then and make any changes necessary. Additionally, they provide the serum half-life data for the medication.
Serum half-life is the time to remove one-half of the med from the blood.

As an example, a half-life of 12 hours means that 24 hours later, on-fourth of the med is still circulating so there is some cumulative effect. Looking at this information for meds you take that affect sleep can tell you that taking the med earlier in the day can reduce the effect on your sleep that night. The numbers given, BTW, are for average age patients. If you are older, like me, the serum half-life is longer than that published because older folks metabolisms don't work as well as younger folks.

My "overnight" miracle was I got to sleep all night, but it took 4 or 5 nights.
My nightmares were gone right away. My headaches were also gone right away.
After a couple months, I was feeling less dragged out at the end of the day. {yes! it took a while}
At some point, I stopped dozing off in front of the TV, but that sneaked up on me, too.
At around four months, it occurred to me that I could walk/run further. A nice surprise!
Eventually, my concentration and disposition had improved--(gradually, of course, so I did not notice)
--but my family and colleagues noticed before I did.

bpt513 wrote:Hi All,
I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago with apnea. I use nasal pillows and cushions religiously every night. Ahi went from 11 to 2.2. Had apnea about a year I figure. I'm 50 years old & a very active person, play & ref hockey, workout and ride a road ride 2500-3000 miles/year. Resting HR 55. Bp now back to normal but blood oxygen sometimes trends to 91. However, I'm still fatigued, muscle aches every day and low energy. I still push through my activities but it's not easy. Get about 7-8hrs with a lot more dreams too. I do record my sleep noise on a sleep app. Snoring is gone but I still fidget some.

I've recently had numerous blood work ups and all came back normal. Maybe I have something else going on??

Frustrated to read it will take months to recover Anything else I can do besides sleep more? .

Thanks

Once you get to 90-98% oxygen above 95% everyday. You'll begin feeling different. I had one night where I sleept 8 hours with 96-97% spo2 , 98% of the time and with a nadir of 92. I almost feelt like my old self. Feelt fully rested.

bpt513 wrote:Hi All,
I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago with apnea. I use nasal pillows and cushions religiously every night. Ahi went from 11 to 2.2. Had apnea about a year I figure. I'm 50 years old & a very active person, play & ref hockey, workout and ride a road ride 2500-3000 miles/year. Resting HR 55. Bp now back to normal but blood oxygen sometimes trends to 91. However, I'm still fatigued, muscle aches every day and low energy. I still push through my activities but it's not easy. Get about 7-8hrs with a lot more dreams too. I do record my sleep noise on a sleep app. Snoring is gone but I still fidget some.

I've recently had numerous blood work ups and all came back normal. Maybe I have something else going on??

Frustrated to read it will take months to recover Anything else I can do besides sleep more? .

Thanks

Please fill in your profile with the exact equipment and settings you're using.

Get the software and monitor your therapy. Learn to tweak the settings for the best results. You won't be seeing any benefits until you do.

But, it's going to take time. It's "baby steps" and "one night at a time". You didn't get this way overnight and you're not going to recover overnight either.


Den

.