Is CPAP worth it for advanced age?

Napnea - do yourself a favor and buy a cheap little recording pulse oximeter. search pulse oximeter for discussions on which is a better one, etc. record your o2 levels overnight without your cpap and check to see how low your o2 went and how long. the results will probably give you that last little incentive to try a little harder with the machine and mask. good luck. it eventually gets better.

My answer is definitely YES! I am now 84 and was initially fitted with a somewhat primitive CPAP in 1988 . So I have been a XPAP beneficiary for over 26 years now, and I continue to be grateful for it. I have progressed through several machines and masks through those years, and I did experience a lot of mask problems in the earlier years. For the last 8 or 9 years I have had the ResMed Mirage Activa mask and can not see myself ever changing as long as it continues to be available. I am a very definite side-sleeper and I virtually never have any significant leaks, and the mask continues o be quite comfortable to me.

I urge you to look for a comfortable mask, and to "Hang-in-there" with treatment.

TheDuke

I read only your first post. My friend, you're obese and probably have Diabetes. If you don't take care of yourself starting with treating the OSA first and next, reducing more and eating the "correct food diet", then very soon you'll be suffering from PAD (Peripheral Arteries Disease) whereby your blood circulation will be reduced and the lack of oxygen in your body will cause probably your heart to fail and/or your extremities to become ischemic.

That's reasonable to assume.

However at 354 lbs I ...was... diabetic and had CHF and various problems
Diet and twice a day bike rides took me down to my svelte 250 and I no longer take any meds for it.
A1C is 6.1 and stable for 5 years.
I now only ride once a day but do go dancing in the park with my lady 2 times a week at concerts.

I don't need the digoxin and the doc said it was mildly estrogenic .....

Since stopping it I can use the viagra whenever I want and/or get lucky

I took in my LOANER today and WHEN I get the one I will be keeping will post all the specs.

And I was ignorant of what constituted the sleep study and the titration. Which means I have not been withholding any info. Just didn't know it.

That will change and I should have info once the doc gets back from wherever doctors go for vacations every month or so.

I did find out that it looks like I will be stuck with whatever machine Kaiser reco's as they do not "work with" or "support" what they don't sell. Strong incentive to take THEIR gizmo.

Just reading the forum today gave me another hope. I can't find the post but it was to the effect that if it becomes intolerable, it is OK to just use it AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. That's an edge I haven't had while they did this titration that needs so MUCH data recorded.

Soooooooooooooo, I'll soon be gettin mask gaskets and hose hangers and dual exhaust as soon as I ....KNOW.... what I will be accessorizing.

Whew, long post.

You seem to be doing fine.

If someone hasn't already said it, CPAP may prevent a lot of problems that might leave you in bad shape even if they don't kill you. e.g. strokes, heart attack, high blood pressure, stress, sleep deprivation, etc.

My mother is 92 and fit and spry. I'm 63, but my friends in their 40s have trouble keeping up with me, that is, provided I have had a good night's sleep. Go for it. Age is just a number. It's a matter of mind over matter. "If you don't mind, it don't matter." - Satchel Paige

I was going to start a new thread, but this one has all the history and warts and all so I'll stick with this one.

II was encouraged yesterday to read a ..guest's... post saying:

When you lay down gravity will change the shape of your face (mine too) so you need to adjust the mask straps at FULL pressure (for you) and while laying down in the sleeping position. Do it each nite until you got it right.

If you can't sleep with the mask all nite sleep as long as you can each nite but do not give up.

Now THAT sounds manageable. This past week has been hell because the techs WARNED me that they needed at least 4 or 5 days of 4-6 hours of use of the loaner machine.

That meant that no matter HOW awful a night I was having with this new piece of hell, I had to KEEP IT ON!

Now if you can EASE into this stuff, that's a different story.

..............................

Now here comes whatever you might call it. Denial, venting, wishing.....whatever.

I think I dispute the SMALL AMOUNT OF INFO I have on my so called "sleep test."


My doc is out of office til 8/25 so I can't really get any info from him. But I do recall his sending me an email that he WAS NOT MY SLEEP DOCTOR but I was stopping breathing 30 times per hour.

This is directly copied from his email:

You have significant sleep apnea that needs to be treated. You stop breathing almost 30 times per hour. You should try the CPAP and work with the sleep lab.

I think I ...CHALLENGE....that. I will certainly confirm when he gets back and I can get a copy OF the test.

But I feel TOO GOOD to think that I am starving for air every TWO MINUTES!

For the week of this machine test, I have woken up tired and miserable.

TODAY..... having returned the tester, I woke up feeling GOOD!

I just can't believe I have that severe an apnea since I am so active during the day. What took me in to the doc in the first place was that I felt "more tired" than I used to.

BAM! Immediate referral to sleep study. OK, fine. Good medicine. But EVERY TWO MINUTES??????

Just can't believe that. I bike, dance, lift weights, go on cruises, drive fast and often .... BUT..... want some naps (SOME ARE LONG) during the day. ON SOME DAYS....NOT ALL!

I have caught Kaiser before in SERIOUS clinical errors. (both acknowledged in writing) One of which cost my wife's life in 2009 so I am a pest to them for info and continuing care.

So, maybe....just MAYBE....
if I can EASE into this
AND
get a copy of my TRUE sleep study
AND
it looks reasonably assessed............. I can get this thing either on the right track or discarded as yet another error.

Maybe false hopes....I don't know.



and thanks avi123 for the post:

You seem to be doing fine.

Anyhow.... no new thread and off my soapbox. Thanks for puttin up with me.

But I feel TOO GOOD to think that I am starving for air every TWO MINUTES!

Feeling not good, or tired is only one of the symptoms. The rest are things like high Blood pressure, mood swings, diabetes, strokes, heart issues, brain damage, dementia and stuff like that.

And that's the weird part.

I've corrected ALL of those other problems with diet, exercise and better practices.

He even took me off ALL blood pressure and heart meds.

My complaint was solely the tiredness.
Oh well, we'll SEE the study and I'll know a lot more.

Before cpap, I woke up bright eyed and bushy, and then faded around lunchtime, if not sooner.
It turns out my stress hormones gave me a false sense of well-being--all while damaging my brain and organs.
It may "feel good", but, like any other stimulant, there are long- (and short-) term trade-offs.

Most of the time that AHI of 30 times per hour isn't exactly once every 2 minutes. Instead it's an average over the entire night and OSA can vary between sleep position as well as sleep stage. So a person might go an hour and not have any OSA events and then WHAM have a truck load of them in a relatively short period of time.
My sleep study (done in a lab setting) showed only an AHI of 12 in non REM sleep but nearly 60 in REM sleep. My overall AHI would be higher on nights where I got more REM sleep and not so exciting on nights where I didn't get REM sleep since it's the AHI is an hourly average. My oxygen levels went down to 73% even with just the 12 AHI because those episodes of non breathing were horribly long. That alone without the REM AHI was doing a lot of damage to my body.

Example:
6 hours of sleep with AHI of say 30.....would be 180 events over the 6 hours.
A person could have 2 hours with no events and that leaves 4 hours to have those 180 events so the index for those 4 hours is 45 per hour.
A person could have 3 hours with no events and that leaves 3 hours to have those 180 events so the index for those 3 hours is 60.
That's one a minute. Hold your breath for 10 to 30 seconds once a minute and see how long it takes to feel crappy. Better yet get a pulse oximeter and watch the oxygen levels fall while you hold your breath for 30 seconds every minute for 30 minutes (which I bet you would have to bail out on long before that happens).

There's so much more to sleep apnea than just a single AHI number...there's how long do we stop breathing and how clustered those events might be and just how low does the oxygen levels go. The damage to the body is cumulative and not always blatantly apparent and not always simple fatigue being the only symptom.

Napnea wrote:And that's the weird part.

I've corrected ALL of those other problems with diet, exercise and better practices.

He even took me off ALL blood pressure and heart meds.

My complaint was solely the tiredness.
Oh well, we'll SEE the study and I'll know a lot more.

Your body and brain do an amazingly good job of adjusting to apnea. It manages to sleep through the strangulation and oxygen deprivation. It adjusts to the stress hormones. Unfortunately, there is still some damage and the apnea usually gets worse over time, and your ability to adjust reduces over time.

People often have apneas as long as 2 minutes and still don't wake up in sleep studies. Many of these people report they're feeling fine and don't have problems sleeping.

Unless the lab is lying about the test, the tests are pretty objective and if they say you have apnea, it's pretty clear cut. I doubt they fake results very often. The profits of selling CPAP and the risks are too high for them to flat out fake it. They might exaggerate a little in the gray areas, but even with that, anyone they flag as having apnea probably has a real problem that needs treatment. If anything, they probably miss more people because you just didn't sleep well in the lab and didn't relax and sleep well enough for your apnea to show up.

I'm supposed to be getting a printed copy of my sleep test.

I'm gonna do what I need to do.

The ENCOURAGING thing was the part of the guest post that said you could ease into CPAP and that's a biggie for me.
This last week of HAVING to keep the thing on for the full week left me getting up with sore lungs and a bad mood.
PLUS no sensation of ...rest.

And then to get up the first day AFTER the trial and feel rested....well.... hmmm....

Had I been able to take it off for a while and then recover enough to put it back on, I am sure I would have had a much easier week.

So if that info is correct and I can get the thing mastered, I have no qualms about using it. Losing the weight AND STARTING EXERCISE to get rid of diabetes was no picnic. But I did it.

Will know more and be more confident when I get the test to see it myself.


Soon I should be pestering about mask types and settings.

Whee!

1) I guess by now you know that you can go to the Kaiser "Medical Secretary" or "Member Services" to get what is likely a 10-14 page document regarding your test (no charge).

2) This crap is, at least for me, rather complicated especially with the frequent use of acronyms that often don't describe anything very clearly even after you look them up. Additionally, we are all so different so what works for one may have nothing to do with someone else.

3) No advice here, but I would consider trying to find a member or two who might seem like they understand some of your issues, and contact them by Private Message (PM) to better focus on your issues rather than taking advice and information from several different directions. Certainly you need to avoid those who seem to like combat or proving that you are wrong, or who might be otherwise better served on a anger management forum. Getting a phone connection with another member is better yet because then you can more quickly zero in on some of the most important and helpful issues more quickly, but that's a tough challenge.

4) Kaiser, as well as many other providers are often swamped with patients, so things get rushed and confusing many times. Here in Northern California, I've worked with one sleep lab that was jammed, and now another that has much more time to attend to me and is a joy to work with.

Lastly, I'm 74 as well, and I have adapted reasonably well to C-Pap. But I have several 80+ year old friends who are constantly willing to explain why the C-Pap is not something they can take the time or the energy to deal with. My advice to them is that now might be a good time to increase alcohol and carbohydrate consumption as well. Start smoking again might also prove to be some short term fun.

It seems to me that the only people who want to live to be 100 are those who are already over 90. For me, right now my goal is 80.

Phil

Napnea - while I do understand you've had problems and are trying to solve them, I'm hearing the slippery slope voice here - i.e. easing into Cpap... too often someone giving themselves permission to use it less and less, rather than more and more... it was as if having heard that someone else said it (easing in) was a possibility, you just ran with that and I hope you are serious about committing to this and not looking for a way out.