CPAP won't work after a year of trying.

Welcome ldj325! This is a very good site to research the archives on, as well as to post questions. Thanks for your insightful post.

ldj325 wrote:I hope my comments will not be out of line here. This is my first post and I know very little about OSA and CPAP and have no input regarding that. (I've only just self-diagnosed that I may have OSA and in doing my initial research I found this site.) But I am a health professional and know a lot about blood sugar issues. Many people (non-OSA related) find themselves waking up after a few hours (often 3-4 hrs, but it can be shorter) because their blood sugar levels drop (cortisol gets released which is more of a "wake up and find food" hormone). One way to test this out is to eat a moderate amount of protein (turkey would be a good choice--or a non-sugary protein drink) right at bedtime. If you find yourself extending your sleep cycle, then it is likely that blood sugar issues were at least a part of the reason for the premature waking. I am not advocating that eating at bedtime is the way to handle blood sugar issues, but it can be an effective sleep first aid for those with this pattern until they can do a proper correction. This may or may not be the case with your situation, but many, many people have this pattern. Unfortunately there is no law or rule that says we are limited to one malady or imbalance at a time. And most even moderately overweight folk (and there's a pattern for skinny folk too) have at least sub-clinical blood sugar issues. It's much like OSA where it goes undiagnosed a lot.

Thanks, see also viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48796&p=446165#p446165

Don't worry about being out of line - we spend more time disagreeing here than agreeing. But most of us do agree on the fundamental principle of educating oneself and taking charge of your own health.

Have you considered video taping your sleep for as many nights as you need to so as you might SEE and to understand what else may be going on that could be waking you up? If I had done that years ago, I would not have wasted so much time trying to otherwise figure out my particular mystery, which is OSA exaggerated by my sleeping position, and very easy to see. 2 sleep studies however didn't either pick up on it, or at least tell me about it. For me, it's simply my head position during sleep. With my head turned to the side, I will have an AHI below 1, usually below .5 and my snorings and runs are extremely low as well and best of all, my pressure is very low, I've settled on 8 as effective. As soon as my head partially turns to the back or completely, then I wake up often, the APAP pressure increases to where it needs to, and everything else increases too, and I soon get the usual need for bathroom breaks, though with no real need to, but my kidneys' thinks they needs to. For me, It only takes a slight turn of the head position to cause increases in apneas and wakings. It's taken me one year on CPAP, many many wakings and much trial and error to narrow this down and to also figure out solutions, which are harder for me to come by when tired. I'm getting close to figuring out something that works consistentantly and hopefully not just for the short term, though it may be that another problem will creap up.

You may not have any positional OSA occurrences, but you don't know either, but my point is, that without studying yourself while sleeping such as with video tapes, along with your software data, you have no idea what else may or may not be going on. Sadly multi night sleep studies are so difficult to come by, so I think that we have to figure out ways of analyzing our own sleeping situations and we're all so different. You need to do more and more investigation into your sleeping, to find the problem and a solution, or to at least to eliminate what isn't the problem. Otherwise, arent' you and the rest of us are just guessing at possibilities?

Mtnviewer, how to do you tape yourself for 8 hours?

You can use a Video cam, newer ones have better night vision & some have extended record modes (but a little less quality but more than good enough). Some models have better night vision than others. As well, some have programmable time lapse modes, say one frame every 1-? secs, which also would be very good. But I don't have access to one nor can I afford to buy one right now.

A much cheaper alternative that I've just thought of would be to use my computer and a cheap wired USB web cam, (or I could probably use my laptop's built in webcam) & while these webcams don't have infra red night vision, I could use a night light to put some light on you in bed. The computer video software would record the video onto the hard drive. I will try this by getting a webcam my next trip to town later this week.

The hard (or slow) part is doing the video review of many hours. I have recorded sound before via my laptop & using a freeware PC program called Audacity, & doing so told me A Lot.

Like chriscummings83 has said, he's doing the therapy, doing what he thinks is right, but there is still a problem. I felt the same. I had two sleep studies over several years, finally found this forum, got onto CPAP but successfully due to the help from others here, but I played with pressures, various settings, various other things that I read in these forums, wikis etc., & while things were "better" for me than before CPAP, but I knew that something was still wrong by how I felt, which wasn't always great or as as good as I'd like. The hardest part, made even harder by being tired, was trying to figure out what was the problem. Over time & after much much trial & error, I think that I've figured a major problem, but I would have done that probably several years ago if I had video recorded & watched a few nights of my sleep. The sound recordings that I did to start my journey told me what was happening, & provided proof & matched the software data & oximeter data, but without the video I could not see the cause of the problem nor a solution. Several years were wasted in suffering that didn't need to be.

ALast night I had a MUCH better night & today was VERY GOOD as a result. My AHI for the first 4 hours was ZERO with very few snores & runs, & then .5 for then next 3.5 hours & again very few snores & runs. My breathing as per the graph was also MUCH more steady than previously with AHI's below 5. Again, video evidence of my sleep would have provided me with the problem a long time ago.