Reassurance Maybe? Cant be Apnea, can it?

Ask your doctor to order an overnight pulse/oximetry study. Most DMEs will provide the equipment and the report at no charge.

You mentioned physical therapy and drugs; but have you tried psychotherapy or behavioral therapy?
Keep trying, you need to get over the hump--OSA cannot go untreated without a bad outcome.

SilverSleep wrote:Thanks for the responses. I have titrated so that the gas pain is no longer an issue and my AHI is still under 1.5. The new challenge is severe panic attacks upon waking. They are actually more intense than any attacks i have had in years. If this is something anyone has experienced (and hopefully overcome) - any advice would be helpful - I dont know how many mornings I can handle without giving up on CPAP.

Can you post what machine you have? If you have data, it would be good to look at what was happening right before you woke up with the panic attacks. It could be that one of the few apnea events you still have was longer and thus caused the attack. Or maybe you have something else that might show up.

Keep at it Silver! Getting the apnea under control (as you have) is a great start! The anxiety and vertigo may, or may not, be due to the apnea - but it is likely that worrying about your health and your treatment is making them worse. You can't go around it, you can't go over it - the only way out is through. What has your exercise pattern been lately? You indicated that you used to get plenty of exercise. I know it is hard to motivate yourself to work out when you feel badly, but exercise is better than psychotherapy or medications in controlling anxiety.

Anxiety and panic attacks result from a stress response. The stressor can be physical and/or psychological in nature (e.g., low oxygen levels (physical) or worried about your health (mostly psychological)). The stress response occurs when our perceived level of stress exceeds our perceived coping resources. Sleep apnea increases our perceived stress and decreases our perceived coping resources - so it is quite possible for apnea to either cause or exacerbate anxiety (as was found in the study that was cited earlier in the thread).

One possibility is that the anxiety may not be directly related to the apnea, but is exacerbated, or made worse, by the apnea. If that is the case then you may need treatment for both apnea and anxiety. I would suggest a psychologist or a counselor if the panic attacks continue - but that reflects my bias and expertise, in addition to the fact that anxiolytics have been unsuccessful in controlling the anxiety. By the way, vertigo is specified as a symptom of panic disorder in the DSM-V. That doesn't mean that the vertigo is caused by the anxiety, but it very well may be.

We don't know the source of the anxiety or the vertigo, yet. But we do know that you suffer from sleep apnea - it is important that you continue your excellent efforts to control that.

Hey Silver...I've gone through almost everything you're going through. It's been about three years ago since my big crash. I never have gotten confirmation about what was happening to me from any doctor...they all said everything looks fine.

The only thing that has worked for me was initially the cpap...but it really only took off some of the fatigue and anxiety. One thing that I noticed was that my blood pressure got really low for me when the fatgue/jelly legs hit. Normally I was always 120/80...however, when I felt bad, it would be around 105/60. The docs always dismissed it like it was a good thing. Also, when this hit me hard, I found that eating more frequently helped. My body temperature was always like 96-97.5.

Before all this hit me, I was exercising 5 times a week with basketball and tae kwon do. I was in great shape. I often skipped lunch on those days I exercised at work. (just ate larger breakfast). I also have 2 kids and my daughter had gotten a really bad pneumonia a month before I crashed. . I was 41. I started to get aches and pains all over my body that would normally never be there. After this hit me, I was sore all over and I wasn't exercising at all.

Ok, so what's helped me. Vitamin d seemed to help a lot with my energy, however, it didnt cure the bouts of fatigue I would get...but I did feel like my achy joints got better. Was at 21 when checked. Eating more fruits and veggies. Multivitamins seemed to make me jittery and wipe me out for a day. I eventually found a gummy vitamin(kids) that didn't give me jitters and it seemed to help with the fatigue. About a year ago I started taking a vitamin c supplement and that seems to have gotten rid of most of the fatigue. I still use cpap. I also try to stay hydrated.

I think What I have is adrenal fatigue that was brought on by exercising a lot, stress from my daughters sickness, not eating right at lunches...once the anxiety kicked in, that made things even worse. I don't think apnea caused all this, I think it was brought on by this and made things much worse.

Also, I also got vertigo really bad and did the epley maneuver and that fixed it. Check YouTube.