Up at 5:30 a.m. EVERY DAY!

I have reverted to mediocre sleep nights. Let me explain and perhaps someone who is experiencing the same can comment.

Before CPAP/APAP: Broken sleep, waking up at all hours through the night in cold sweats, heart pounding, etc. Taking in insufficient air generally with few OSA events during the night.

First got CPAP/APAP: Much improved sleep, sleeping through the night, dreaming for the first time in years, sleep study showed much improved REM sleep and few awakenings. I would sleep to whatever time the alarm clock was set for, generally 7:00 a.m. in order to wake our son and get ready for the day.

NOW: Summer vacation. The past few weeks, even before summer vacation began, my body clock seems to have gone 'wonky'. It matters NOT what time I go to bed/sleep. I fall asleep as soon as I turn out the light (within a minute or two). I awaken and turn over during the night and immediately fall back asleep. But I awaken at 5:30 a.m. every bloody morning and it's killing me! No matter what time I went to bed I am awake at 5:30 a.m. and I toss and turn from that point forward, perhaps falling back asleep for a half hour here or there until 9 a.m. As an example, last night I went to bed at 2:00 a.m. (our dog is not well after a trip to the groomer - eye and skin infections being treated).... I was up at 5:30 despite being tired. Tossed and turned, grabbed another bit here and there but generally awake and tired. Funny thing is that I will be awake all day and active without problem (no falling asleep at the wheel or on the couch any more) until evening, at which point if I LAY DOWN on the couch I am out like a light. As long as I am sitting and not laying down, no problem. Wide awake. No yawns. Zip. We went to Walmart last night at 10 p.m. to run off some photographs for an album we are doing (amongst our vocations we are photographers, my wife and I). Finished off a stew for tonight's dinner (yummy!). Watched some TV and spent time on the computer. Ooops. It's 2 a.m. all of a sudden heading into a weekend. No problem, I'll just sleep in. WRONG! 5:30 a.m. curse.

Now, the only thing that I can think of is light entering the room as we have blinds on the windows. Might be messing up my internal clock? I cannot for the life of me think of anything else except that I am getting older (58). When I do sleep I am now sleeping like a log. I am baffled and ready to ask my MD for referal to another sleep study but am not sure that it will show a thing except that ..... I am getting up at 5:30 a.m. Anyone else have this 'issue'?

BTW, Happy July 4 Independance Day and Happy July 1 Canada Day to all of our friends on the Board... take advantage of the long weekend if you can!

My next step is going to be installing light blocking drapes on the windows over the blinds so that the room remains pitch dark. Funny, nobody else in the family has any issues with the wee bit of light that the blinds let in when the sun comes up.

Yep I wake with the sun and doze from then on - or get up. I think humans were designed that way. It is a real pain in the winter how ever getting up to go to work.

I just get up and go to bed earlier in the summer.

I was out of bed by 6:30 this morning even though I had a late and disturbed night (family issues due to budding teen) I was running the dog on the canal path by 7:30. Which is good because it is going to be 30C plus today.

Right now I am "resting" between contracts so I can go with the flow.

BlackSpinner wrote:Yep I wake with the sun and doze from then on - or get up. I think humans were designed that way. It is a real pain in the winter how ever getting up to go to work.

I just get up and go to bed earlier in the summer.

I was out of bed by 6:30 this morning even though I had a late and disturbed night (family issues due to budding teen) I was running the dog on the canal path by 7:30. Which is good because it is going to be 30C plus today.

Right now I am "resting" between contracts so I can go with the flow.

We had budding teen problems too. Know from whence you speak. Joined Parents Today or Today's Parent and got lots of great advice and it was good to know that we were not alone but we still had lots of 'issues' that in hindsight were really not issues but just normal teen growth behaviors. Now we have bigger kids and bigger issues... and again, they are not really issues except in OUR minds. As long as they are safe and not on drugs and getting by at school give them your love and support. Our problemsome daughter is still problemsome but is finishing first year University on her way to medicine (we hope). Now we have to work, although retired, until we are 90. Our problemsome son just finished Grade 11 and has sufficient credits to graduate high school but will do Grade 12 in order to qualify to get into Engineering and BOTH became Honor Roll students and outstanding citizens (except at home, where we have to keep reminding them of chores, etc.).

I am inclined to try and do the same as you. We are one year from having the kids out of the house and buying properties somewhere warm stateside and a much smaller property here in Toronto. We are looking into the RV'ing lifestyle as well. Don't know what we are going to do but I think I am inclined to wake at 5:30 and get ready for the day... enjoy the early day and adjust my own personal clock to accomodate the changed sleep habits. I am just a wee bit confused at the moment after all these years of using an alarm clock to get up.

I have been retired for quite some time now (I'm 71-have been on cpap for almost 8 years now) and I wake, almost every morning, just around 6 am. I get to bed around 11 pm ALMOST every night and my internal clock seems to go with this and I do quite well.

On any days when I am feeling unwell, or my arthritis is bothering me causing my night's sleep to be disturbed, I have an afternoon nap - with cpap of course!

If you are feeling fine and have energy for the day I would not be worrying.

Hi torontoCPAPguy,

I had a similar experience, of waking up after just a few hours of quality sleep, at the beginning of my CPAP success. I've also read that others have had similar experiences on this web site. I was warned about it by my Respiratory Therapist, who advised me that it is your body learning how to have good quality sleep again. His theory was that the body may have been so starved for sleep that it's waking up after just a few hours, similar to someone who has been food starved not being able to eat a larger quantity of food until their stomach adjusts. The RT assured me that after a few weeks I would probably gradually sleep longer, but that when I woke up early, just to get up and enjoy the day, if possible. I know, hard to do when you're still tired! His theory was that you aren't getting much quality of sleep by laying in bed anyway. Now, instead of waking at 4 AM, I usually wake up pretty consistently at 6:30 AM, no matter what time I go to bed. That's OK with me.

I like your idea of light blocking drapes, also. Less reason for your body to wake up early. If your sleeping partner doesn't like the dark drapes, you could try an eye cover.

Good luck!

Happy Sleeper

torontoCPAPguy wrote: We had budding teen problems too. Know from whence you speak. Joined Parents Today or Today's Parent and got lots of great advice and it was good to know that we were not alone but we still had lots of 'issues' that in hindsight were really not issues but just normal teen growth behaviors. Now we have bigger kids and bigger issues... and again, they are not really issues except in OUR minds. As long as they are safe and not on drugs and getting by at school give them your love and support. .

Luckily my youngest just moved out and seems to have morphed in one month into an adult who likes a clean room!!!??? washes dishes and can handle money.

The problem is my granddaughter - almost 12 - who has a temper to match her size. Luckily I can stand back and not have my buttons pushed so I can support my daughter in this. "no, saying you're sorry for hitting your mother, shouldn't be a pass to not getting punishment" "no just because you as mama feel you love her doesn't mean she gets away with it"

Summer is really nice at 5:30 am - winter not so much.

Can you take a look at your data? I'm wondering if you are in a very deep REM sleep about that time and having a cluster of events. Your overall AHI and leak rates may be low, but maybe around that time in your circadian rhythm, perhaps something is going on with your sleep breathing that is waking you.

I had the night sweats, heart pounding awakenings around 4:30 a.m. that seemed to go away at first on CPAP. After a few short good months of therapy they came back. I was kind of flummoxed because my data looked great, until I noticed that my maximum pressure on autopap was bumping up to its highest pressure setting a lot. Working with the RT, we raised my upper pressure from 13 to 15. My 90% pressures have gone from about 11.5 to 12.2, and I'm not having those 4:30 a.m. wake ups anymore. It's so nice to be able to look at the data and see what's going on.

I do still wake MUCH earlier than I did before CPAP--but I wake feeling so great it's like I took the best drug in the world, and I wake because I've had sufficient good quality sleep to be ready to start my day.

My sympathies to you with a teenage girl around. My eldest is 17, and the human being inside of her is finally beginning to emerge again--just in time for my youngest to start that pre-teen angst. Raising teens is NOT for the faint of heart!

A few years ago I turned the family room of our (then) house into a home theater with black-out curtains. A few months ago I found them in a box in the garage, and thanks to CPAP had enough energy to install them in our bedroom. My wife does not really like them, but now I can sleep till 6:30 or 7:00 am and feel a lot better. I just can't seem to get the #%$# dog's internal clock to reset. Every morning they still try to wake me up about an hour before I am willing to get up.

LOL, finally we have a dog that sleeps in!!!!! I've never had a dog before that we had to wake up to feed in the morning--but we wear her out with long walks every day (a tired dog is a good dog ).

Before that we had early rising dogs who also could not recognize the fact that it was the WEEKEND!!!!

Grrrrrrr!

Checking your data and hanging the black-out curtains are good ideas. You might also want to think about noise levels; I once had a neighbor who left for work at 5:45 every morning on his Harley. Great guy, excellent neighbor, but he woke me up EVERY DAY on that noisy bike. I've also had numerous friends report that as they age the reluctantly become morning people because they just can't sleep late any more. Guess that's just one of the "pleasures" of getting older!

brazospearl wrote:Checking your data and hanging the black-out curtains are good ideas. You might also want to think about noise levels; I once had a neighbor who left for work at 5:45 every morning on his Harley. Great guy, excellent neighbor, but he woke me up EVERY DAY on that noisy bike. I've also had numerous friends report that as they age the reluctantly become morning people because they just can't sleep late any more. Guess that's just one of the "pleasures" of getting older!

Lots of outstanding ideas here.. keep 'em coming.
We have a plumber living across the street who runs his business illegally out of his home and 3 car garage. I am almost willing to bet that what is waking me is all of the trucks starting up as he and his crews depart for the job sites, where they start at 6:00 to 7:00 a.m.!! If that's the case, the ByLaw Officer will put a rapid end to it for me (he is a great guy).

Despite deep sleep I have incredible hearing... this after two home invasions (one successful and one not). And if one of the kids gets up to go to the washroom or the dog moves from one room to another I am up and have spotlight in hand, ready to protect the home. Last home invasion attempt was only an attempt because I told the 911 operator that the minute the creeps came through the door they could cancel the call and change it to a call for an ambulance and the coroner/ME. 30 seconds later we had 20 police officers all over the place with guns drawn and good thing too as the bad guys had pry bars and guns. We have a dog, an alarm system that flashes the lights downstairs inside and outside with 135dB sirens wailing and these guys were totally oblivious as the dog had barked and we had pushed the panic button on the alarm. Sic. But old and heavily ingrained habits die hard and I am indeed susceptible to ANY noise out of the ordinary.

Think I am going to run the digital audio recorder for the next few nights to see if it is indeed sound that is the culprit. Interesting thought. We also have a new neighbor with a yappy dog and they may be letting it out early. Who knows?

In any event, looking at the data it would sure appear that all is well. My only issue is the awakening. My issue by the way, is not so much apnea events as opposed to reduced air intake as I fall deeply asleep as I was on life support three weeks last summer and my lungs were damaged and scarred as a result. The APAP is intended to prevent apnea events but also to keep enough air flowing that my SO2 remains above 90% and my BP as a result remains nominal. It was skyrocketing as my SO2 dropped due to shallow breathing.

Keep your thoughts coming, please, as all of the MD's and RT's and sleep therapists that I have been seeing have not suggested nor mentioned any of this. Duh.

I have learned over the past year that if you are not your own advocate and willing to educate yourself as best you can you are shortening your life expectancy and if it were not for my good wife and my family and friends I can assure you that I would not be here today. Three weeks on life support is when they start talking about unplugging you .... they had to do some pretty nasty things to me to keep me alive and I was in lala land so knew nothing. They are just telling me about this stuff now. I cannot imagine having been intubated let alone having my lungs suctioned out manually. I had veinous taps all the way up one arm and across my chest and arterial taps (3) up the other arm... that took months to heal and stop aching. It took me four months before I was able to simply turn over in bed. I was sent home from hospital exactly one week after being ejected from critical care without a single hour of physiotherapy. They did however drop off one of those ball things that you have to blow into to exercise your lungs and told me to blow into it three times a day. So much for government health care in Ontario.

The APAP is intended to prevent apnea events but also to keep enough air flowing that my SO2 remains above 90% and my BP as a result remains nominal. It was skyrocketing as my SO2 dropped due to shallow breathing.

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the airflow from cpap doesn't really "flow" per se. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_a ... w_it_works which says:

It is important to understand, however, that it is the air pressure, and not the movement of the air, that prevents the apneas. When the machine is turned on, but prior to the mask being placed on the head, a flow of air comes through the mask. After the mask is placed on the head, it is sealed to the face and the air stops flowing. At this point, it is only the air pressure that accomplishes the desired result.

.

This is my understanding (I understand that Wikipedia is not the final authority on things and could be wrong, so I'd be happy to be corrected).

I understand it as being kind of like when you blow up a balloon--while inflating the balloon the air flows from your mouth into the balloon, but you eventually meet the resistance and can't "flow" any more into the balloon when the maximum pressure of the balloon is reached. Now, the higher (positive) pressure in the balloon is pushing the walls of the balloon out against the air pressure.

Do you use an oximeter? What does your 02 sat do around 5:30 a.m.???

I am going to have to tape the recording oximeter on again tonight (I have two of the 50E's) and read it; I honestly have not taken a reading since this phenomenom began a few weeks back - I keep poking myself with the finger with the oximeter on it. Sic. Amazing what the Chinese have accomplished. We also have an Accutor 4 automatic recording BP machine with inflatable cup that I can try wearing at night but it generally wakes me up if it inflates automatically during the night... funny, didn't do that while I was in a coma in the hospital, but drove me crazy every five minutes as I was coming out of the coma and becoming aware of my surroundings. They were about to pull the plug methinks or do something else drastic. And they did. Two doctors stood at the foot of my bed thinking I was still in a coma and said "Let's put an oxygen mask on this guy and see if he can breathe on his own". I couldn't figure out who they were talking about until they did it.

I am also going to run the tape recorder (it's electronic) and fast forward to 5:30 a.m. and thereabouts to see if there is noise waking me up. I wouldn't be surprised after my hospital stay and the attempted home invasion but we had new windows installed 1.5 years ago and the bedroom is a whole lot quieter than it ever was before.

I'm also going to have the BP meter near the bed and take my BP as soon as I awaken. I used to wake up in a sweat but no more since going with CPAP.

Interesting explanation of the CPAP device... so I am wondering this: If my breathing gets very shallow and my air intake gets very low, will the APAP read this as the beginning of an obstruction and increase the pressure being presented so that more air gets forced into a partially inflated lung? An interesting question and explanation of CPAP operation and one that I never really realized before. It must be doing SOMETHING because my BP has dropped, my SO2 has risen, I am getting REM sleep, etc. And I am showing virtually ZERO OSA events through the night. I can count on the fingers of one hand the OSA events showing in ResScan over a week. The original sleep study showed only a handful over the course of the night. Not a great deal of confidence in the sleep study and would not mind trying to get a referral for another when the S9 gets set up and running and comfy.

Thank you for the explanation. Now I have to go and puzzle this out.

Keep them suggestions coming!

Oh, and I am going to try and find the eye shades they gave me when we flew first class on Royal Morroco Airlines twenty years ago. I think my daughter was using them for a bra on her stuffed bear to show that it was a female bear some years ago so Lord knows where it went. (Maybe that should be "bikini" top).

torontoCPAPguy wrote: We have a plumber living across the street who runs his business illegally out of his home and 3 car garage. I am almost willing to bet that what is waking me is all of the trucks starting up as he and his crews depart for the job sites, where they start at 6:00 to 7:00 a.m.!! If that's the case, the ByLaw Officer will put a rapid end to it for me (he is a great guy).

Despite deep sleep I have incredible hearing...

I would definitely try the heavy curtains too. My room must be in a "black-out" state, or I'll awake as sure as a rooster, and I don't mean that crazy- bird forum member of ours....

And, you may want to ask the plumber for a lifetime supply of earplugs if he won't shut the hell up!

I hope you get your system back in sync..... those summer days are just too long and precious.

Regards,
Rick

brazospearl wrote:I've also had numerous friends report that as they age the reluctantly become morning people because they just can't sleep late any more. Guess that's just one of the "pleasures" of getting older!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) this is true.

I was always a night owl. Now, I wake anywhere from 4.30am to 6am, and am quite refreshed. But the slugabed in me wants to sleep longer. If I do drop off again, I only feel bad later, the extra seems to drain me. So I tend to get up, go for a walk (theoretically anyway!), bake, watch something I've taped & need to catch up with, work .... or whatever. Go with the flow. Never been one for a nana nap, though - just go all day.

Socially-speaking, the frustrating thing is, I'm dog tired by 8.30pm most nights! Don't necessarily sleep then, but do need to go to bed & maybe watch TV or read.

TCG, it could be that you need to retrain your system, it's in a rut! I did try sleeping tablets at one stage, early on prior to and early on in my therapy, and whilst I don't advocate medication per se, they can help you to sleep longer and more soundly, which in turn resets the system. For me, the time can be immaterial, I'm just happy I wake up!