So how does anybody get any sleep around here?

I need someone to help me understand something.

When I got my pulse oximeter I did a couple of mild "apnea simulations." I would stop breathing -- without doing the usual tricks you do before going underwater such as taking a series of deep breaths. I found I could stop breathing for 30 seconds or so before I HAD TO BREATHE. This was accompanied by a rising feeling of panic like you would get while drowning. my heart rate would go up as well. It wasn't pleasant. My ox level would dip a little below %90 but not by much and not for long.

When I sleep I occasionally see the same pattern. I see an apnea event on the cpap report and a desat as described. It never goes below 88% and never for more than a few seconds.

If I have even one of these it can wreck my sleep architecture. If I have three or four events during the course of a night -- even without a desat of any kind -- I wake up feeling like hell.

All the indications I have say that:

1.) I am having trouble breathing when I sleep
2.) Whenever I have any trouble breathing, it wakes me up

Now this makes sense to me. When I did my apnea simulation I thought, "Man, nobody could sleep through that and the adrenalin release would keep you up for hours."

I guess what I don't understand is, how can anyone get any sleep at all with an AHI of 5? It's like some cruel man coming in every 12 minutes and yelling in your face "HEY WAKE THE HELL UP YOU"RE DROWNING."

Am I unusual in some way?

Exactly -- My sleep study showed that I was going for periods in excess of a minute without breathing and that my O2 sat was dropping into the 70's. Given my lung conditions, I have tried and cannot hold my breath for one minute. It's how do I live, much less sleep.
Norm

it is not still doing that is it?

What is your 90% pressure and what is the range you are using?

Apnea you describe is ones you want to avoid, they may be happening during REM. That machine can also score
the occasional central if you have any of those, they can show up as you transition from one stage of sleep to another, no big deal your machine will ignore them if there are no others with it.

That pulse oximeter seems to give pretty good reports, it is good to know that your O2 levels are not dropping.

I guess you got it:

>>Now this makes sense to me. When I did my apnea simulation I thought, "Man, nobody could sleep through that and the adrenalin release >>would keep you up for hours."

>>I guess what I don't understand is, how can anyone get any sleep at all with an AHI of 5? It's like some cruel man coming in every 12 minutes >>and yelling in your face "HEY WAKE THE HELL UP YOU"RE DROWNING."

While you are awake, you put EFFORT not to breathe. This means adrenalin that causes your heart rate go up and you probably
generate muscular tension too. All this consumes a lot more oxygen than when relaxed. If you can do the non-breathing experiment
without getting stimulated (force yourself calm) you can manage longer.

It's a diving technique. When I learned to stay relaxed (I was also otherwise in a much better shape then) my diving length went from 50m to 79m. After that, one of the swimming pool personnel was pretty close to killing me for scaring them up. Those long dives are dangerous. Not because of the decreasing oxygen level, but the increasing of relative nitrogen and CO2 levels.

I feel real bad if my AHI is 3 or more.
And I think you'll find many of those who tweak their own therapy end up at less than 5. 5 is a bureaucratic definition. Nobody thinks people do well at 4.8, and so much worse at 5.2.

O.

Like ozij, I too feel real bad now if my AHI bumps over about 3 ... I have no idea how I survived for so many years with an AHI of 102, 99 of them full apneas and desats down to 60%

Sometimes when I get frustrated with my lack of progress, or my failures in the past, I just tell myself, that's ok, you were sleep deprived for sooo many years! I also have no idea how we managed at all with such bad apnea Just goes to show you how resilient the human body REALLY IS!

During my PSG I never went below 93% desat, though with an AHI of 35 & arousals of 40. I never had refreshing sleep until I started on CPAP (even at the incorrect pressures I was still sleeping a million times better with CPAP than without).
I'm sure I've had this since I was a teenager, if not earlier. Ever since I was a baby I have had a hard time falling asleep - most times I just refused to go to sleep. Guess my brain didn't like the idea of suffocating during my sleep, so it tried to avoid sleep all costs

Here is a clip from my sleep study showing a central lasting 2 and a half minutes. How did I wake up from that? (each block is 10 seconds)





Bev

ca_hosehead wrote:...........

I guess what I don't understand is, how can anyone get any sleep at all with an AHI of 5? It's like some cruel man coming in every 12 minutes and yelling in your face "HEY WAKE THE HELL UP YOU"RE DROWNING."

AHI of 5 is unacceptable to my mind and body.

That old man isn't just yelling, he is also choking me. And no, a young female beauty choking me would not make it feel better. (But I would be willing to try her a few nights )

ca_hosehead wrote: I guess what I don't understand is, how can anyone get any sleep at all with an AHI of 5? It's like some cruel man coming in every 12 minutes and yelling in your face "HEY WAKE THE HELL UP YOU"RE DROWNING."

I wonder that myself. I saw my sleep test results and wondered just how I slept through all those times I was struggling to breathe, because I rarely woke up. When I did wake up I didn't know why, and I'd roll over and go right back to sleep. How do we do that? Now that I'm on the CPAP I swear I feel just as bad with an AHI of 3.0 as I did when I had an AHI of 98 or so before I was treated. And I swear my brain still doesn't want me to go to sleep, it doesn't realize I'm on CPAP and it figures staying up is the best bet

Wow, Bev. And look at that oxygen level plummeting. Whew.

Especially scarey to me that the Dr.'s report said that the longest I had was 80 some seconds. It's clear to me that neither my abdomen nor my chest were making any movements for well over 2 minutes. No wonder I wake up with headaches!

Bev