Octopus Overlords

I finally got around to doing a sleep study last week and confirmed something I have suspected for quite a while, that I have sleep apnea. People have complained about my snoring for pretty much my entire life, so it's possible I have had this condition for quite a while (now 40). I was recorded as having 46 events per hour during REM sleep, which was called "moderate"(!)

I'm going in for a followup test to try cpap in a couple of weeks. Anyone have experiences they can share?

I wonder what kind of effects on my health not having this treated has had. I wonder if I even know what it's like to have a good night's sleep.

I didn't know having the clap helped, but my dad used a cpap device for the last 7-8 years of his life. It kind of made him look like some sort of borg.

I am now suffering baby-induced sleep deprivation. There is no known cure.

I snore alot, but I did a sleep study and my apnea was so mild that I didn't really need a cpap. Kinda wish I did, I feel bad that my wife can't sleep in the same room as me.

I do. I was to the point of having narcolepsy during the day, dozing off at work, and getting into two accidents (just fender benders). Sure didn't help with my pre-diabetes either.

Worst case? Heart problems, diabetes, possible stroke, and more.

I'm sure you've gotten the clinical version, but the most graphic description is you're choking yourself to death, a few seconds at a time. You would never hold your breath voluntarily for longer periods. Imagine this being done INvoluntarily... while you're asleep so you're powerless to fight it. Your brain wakes up half way, forces the lungs to push harder, getting enough air pressure to open the pathway, resulting in the snore, only to see it close again a few seconds (or tens of seconds) later. And the cycles repeats ad infinitum, resulting you your brain NEVER getting any rest, and neither did your body.

The sleep test means they'll hook up electrodes all over your head and maybe one at your ankle for pulse. Then you try to sleep (face up) and do what you normally do... snore. In the middle of the night, when they think they have enough data on you, they'll ask you to put on their super CPAP where they can tune amount of air, frequency and depth of the air pulses (if any), and so on, and come up with a setting where your brain waves are no longer showing signs of waking even halfway. If the air pulses like breathing, that's called bi-PAP (bi-level positive air pressure) device instead of CPAP (constant PAP). Some people react to biPAP better than CPAP. They will figure it out and tell you next morning.

Damn you OSX autocorrect...

Yes, I already had a sleep study, that was where they diagnosed the sleep apnea. The tech said normally they put you on cpap the same night if they observe you having breathing events, even though they are not allowed to tell you that is why, because they're not doctors. They didn't wake me up during the test, but the tech that called me today said it was because they do that in cases of severe sleep apnea, not moderate. Go figure. That's why I have to go in for a second study to actually try the cpap.

The masks seem to have gotten a bit better now, most just go on your nose.

I do too. Went through the sleep studies back in early spring and have been trying to get fully comfortable with the mask/device.

The main problem I've been battling is I have Aerophagia (air swallowing/air being forced into my stomach) and end up burping and farting horrendously in the early morning hours. I have alleviated this some what by using an APAP which automatically increases/decreases pressure based on your events and does not keep it constant pressure so not as bad of gas.

The second issue is that my wife snores very loudly and we generally exchange sleeping in the bed/couch every other day so I'm not using it regularly.

Plus my Sarcoidosis reared its ugly head when we vacationed in the mountains so I was on high doses of prednisone for 8 weeks which caused horrible sleep problems for me thus no APAP usage.

So all in all I'm a poor model for PAP usage by I'm trying and can definitely tell the difference when I have not been using it for an extended period of time. The other thing that sucks for me is trying to sleep on my side with the nose mask and it losing suction and waking me up.

This is me on the second sleep study:

[bigimg]http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5498/1029 ... 6182_b.jpg[/bigimg]


How they expect you to sleep with all of that crap on. You have around 20 wires attached to you head, more on your shoulders, chest and legs. You have two bands around your chest and waist. Just a claustrophobics dream come true!

My wife wants me to do this, but I sleep fine and feel good during the day. I have suggested she try the couch on those nights when I snore.

Me, too. I was diagnosed after a sleep study three or four years ago. Mine was 'severe', and I've been on CPAP ever since. It made a huge difference in my life. I can actually function during the day now.

The bad side was that I estimated I had it for ~twelve years before I got it treated. Eight hours of oxygen deprivation for twelve years did a number on my brain. My memory is all over the place. Sometimes I can remember every word in a conversation, the next day I will read a paragraph three times because I can't remember what it is about by the end. My short term memory seems to be worse than my long-term.

It isn't worsening, and I'm not suffering any other symptoms (dementia, etc), but the inconsistent memory has been bad enough as it is.

Hehe, I'd post my picture with all the electrodes on, except it's look about the same as WYBaugh there, albeit it's a middle-aged Asian dude.

I went through the sleep study cycle last spring. I was getting more sleep at home than I did during the studies, but once I got my machine at home it really did help and was worth the time and frustration.

Once I found out I was getting a machine, I wasn't terribly selective on my mask selection. I learned the hard way that the wrong mask either kept me awake or caused me to take it off some 30 minutes after nodding off.

Best of luck!

Been two year since my sleep study and official diagnosis. My doctor wanted me to have a sleep study 10 years ago but I resisted. It was bad back then. Snoring so bad no one could stand to be in the same room, or same house for that matter, with me. Sleep through the entire weekend and still be tired. Nodding off driving on my way to work . Took care of some other medical problems and I dropped 35lbs. I thought everything was better. Then a couple years ago I started sleep walking. I really hurt myself a couple of times. I was afraid I would hurt someone else. So I finally went in for a sleep study. I was diagnosed moderate. I was fitted with a CPAP and mask that same night. Just had to do a 1 hour instruction course later in the morning, and I was done. Not as bad as I thought it would be.

According to my wife I have sleep apnea.
All I know is I'm tired all the time and I breath real shallow so sometimes I awake gasping for breath.
The VA doesn't care.

Kasey Chang wrote:Hehe, I'd post my picture with all the electrodes on, except it's look about the same as WYBaugh there, albeit it's a middle-aged Asian dude.

Come on Kasey! I'm a middle aged white dude! We old farts have to stick together.

I was diagnosed with 120+ events per hour (very severe), and having brain oxygen reach as low as 50% when they did the study on me. Obviously not good. As stated previously, this is a very very big risk factor for many severe consequences. Having apnea makes you have high blood pressure at night, which is when you should be at your lowest.

Getting the machine and getting it set properly was a huge turn around for me. Prior to the study, I had been sleeping for up to 16 hours a day and still felt exhausted, even falling asleep at the wheel and getting into two accidents because of it. It is not something you should ignore. Being diagnosed as moderate is something to be concerned about but getting a machine WILL help you sleep better at night.

In general, there are two kinds of masks depending on how you breathe, a nasal pillow-type mask, and a full face mask. I'm a mouth breather, so I use the full face one, but the one I have is kind of a half mask with nasal cups. It's called the Mirage Liberty, I think.

Immediately after starting the CPAP, I felt better, but it took at least several months before I was able to start rebuilding my driving stamina. I still have to be careful when going on longer trips, but trust me, you want this addressed.

Either way, the straps sometimes bother me so I picked up some really thin face masks to wear underneath it, and it seems to help decrease my irritation and sometimes the visible facial lines in the morning.

There's an old thread. My mother's brothers all use CPAPs. One calls it the best thing in his life. Dad had surgery and it didn't fix his apnea. It's a genetic and life-long issue for me that got terrible about 10 years ago.

hepcat can joke about shooting down MIGs at Origins and GenCon all he wants, but there's such a difference between using the machine that not using it is no longer an option. I can function with a CPAP on less than 6 hours sleep better than 10 hours without it. My kids would have killed me without CPAP.

I switch between a nose only mask and nasal pillows. It's a matter of sticking with it and learning how to sleep again. The new CPAPs even report on your compliance, too.

Jag wrote:I snore alot, but I did a sleep study and my apnea was so mild that I didn't really need a cpap. Kinda wish I did, I feel bad that my wife can't sleep in the same room as me.

You can get the cpap just for the snoring.

I have one for apnea, and after a while you barely notice it. If I wake up before the alarm goes off, I pull it off for a while before getting up.

My BiPAP is pretty darn big. But I use nose-only mask. The "attachments" can get pretty broken up so you may want to get a spare mask or the straps when you want (or if your insurance covers it). The new CPAP machines are down to shoe box sized. And that's good if you need to go somewhere.

TIL GamrIrv is a ninja

WYBaugh wrote:
How they expect you to sleep with all of that crap on. You have around 20 wires attached to you head, more on your shoulders, chest and legs. You have two bands around your chest and waist. Just a claustrophobics dream come true!

LOL, the funny thing is with all those wires, the only thing that really bothered me was the pulse/ox sleeve they put on my finger. I hate having things touching my hands when I try to go to sleep.

mori wrote:Took care of some other medical problems and I dropped 35lbs.

I'd had really, really bad asthma since about '98. I was going through two inhalers a month, plus a steroid, plus a medication, all just to keep it in check.

Three months after I got my CPAP machine, it was gone. It just vanished. I just threw away my last inhaler, which I discovered cleaning out the bathroom cabinet, last week. It had been expired almost three years.

I'm a mouth breather,

I know its a serious thread but seeing someone admit to that common put down made me smile.

Blackhawk wrote:

mori wrote:Took care of some other medical problems and I dropped 35lbs.

I'd had really, really bad asthma since about '98. I was going through two inhalers a month, plus a steroid, plus a medication, all just to keep it in check.

Three months after I got my CPAP machine, it was gone. It just vanished. I just threw away my last inhaler, which I discovered cleaning out the bathroom cabinet, last week. It had been expired almost three years.

Pretty sure my wife has apnea. When she falls asleep she breathes like Darth Vader, then snores loudly a couple of times, then startles herself awake, breathes normally for a minute, then slips back into Vader mode. Repeat that every few minutes all night long, and of course she never remembers it and denies that she snores.

She supposedly has asthma too, as of a few months ago.

It started when she got fat. It will go away if she stops being fat. But she shows no interest in doing that.

got it and my CPAP is a godsend. I don't have a full face mask only need to use the nose mask, but It has helped me tremendously

I was diagnosed with 86 events per hour, which is severe. I have a love/hate relationship with my mask. I definitely sleep better, but occasionally I fight with the seal on the mask in the middle of the night.

I definitely sleep better on average, although I still have mornings where I wake up a little cranky. But unlike before, that goes away once I get moving. If I woke up tired, I would stay tired. Not any more.

Link to the old thread. I'm not sure I like Izzy's new job, he would have found that in less than 30 minutes.



This comic from Ctrl+Alt+Del is worth posting again:

I actually took a pass on running that one to ground.

My Dad's had one for a while now, but he's got some rather unproductive tear ducts, and the air leaking from the mask has left him with some recurrent bug of some sort due to the dryness.

Have it. Diagnosed... hmmm... 6-7 years ago? Nose mask. Had good insurance where they sent me replacement parts every 6 months, no cost! Different insurance, where I expect I'd have something out of pocket, but using my stored up supplies before I worry about it.

Some nearby friends of ours have it as well. They said they were not told to clean the mask and the filter (2 filters, clean the foam one, don't clean the little thing). And they were not getting free replacements.

I don't recall being gold an hourly rate, just that I was not awakened in the middle of the night for the cpap, they had me come back for that. Thought he said I'd awoken more than 200 times in the night.

I know getting the machine and using it was almost immediate improvement! I was falling asleep doing... just about anything. Reading, watching TV, working (light programming sort of job, sitting at a computer all day), typing, playing games, talking to people, and of course - driving! Always fun on a highway at 70+ miles an hour to be going along and wake up a couple seconds later... WOAH!!!! Fortunately, never even a close accident. For me it's almost always a brief nodding off for a couple seconds and bop awake (back and forth until I shake it off). Still not perfect these days, but much better than before! Don't fall asleep driving to/from work any more at least.

Guessing I had this for several years as I'd had progressively worsening problems for over a decade.

Definitely get this checked out and get the machine! Your life will improve tremendously! (likely, as will your lifespan...)

Isgrimnur wrote:

My Dad's had one for a while now, but he's got some rather unproductive tear ducts, and the air leaking from the mask has left him with some recurrent bug of some sort due to the dryness.

Two solutions. 1) cover the eyes with something thick enough to block any air.
2) http://www.cpapsupplyusa.com/103680X-Re ... hions.aspx" target="_blank

I started using the new headgear about a month ago. It's awesome for me, no more air in the eyes. Maintains seal through any sleeping angle just have to get the fit and even if the seal gets broken it does not blow air into my eyes because the angle prevents it. It blows focused air straight out so can be problematic for side sleepers who face their partners.

WYBaugh wrote:

Kasey Chang wrote:Hehe, I'd post my picture with all the electrodes on, except it's look about the same as WYBaugh there, albeit it's a middle-aged Asian dude.

Come on Kasey! I'm a middle aged white dude! We old farts have to stick together.

Okay, okay

I have no idea - but I've been meaning to get myself sleep tested for some time.

I *always* snore if I'm on my back, and *sometimes* snore if I'm on my side. If I've got a cold, I'm simply locked into snore mode. Snoring is a trigger noise for my wife and it fills her with a terrible rage.

What gets her is that I can drift off while laying comfortably in bed and not trying to sleep - like in the middle of the day. In my mind, I'm aware of what's going on and am just in a happy thinking place. To her I'm a snoring ass that drives her nuts.

My mask setup looks like a minimized version of Bane.

Love the cartoon.

I'm another mouth breather. There is no way that a mask that didn't cover most of my face would help me.

I find that if I sleep in the afternoon now, it's intentional. It used to be that I would just nod over. Now if I nap, it's because I've made the choice to nap. That's the only real change in my life.

For what it's worth, before the test my spouse had some issue with me snoring. She hates the noise from the c-pap machine with a vengeance. I'm just saying....

I was never formally diagnosed, but I'm fairly sure I had it a while back. I used to snore like crazy, often waking myself up from my own snoring. When we were first married, my wife noted that I'd sometimes seem to stop breathing briefly while we were sleeping. I don't know if sleep apnea can be caused by (or cured by) sleeping with a partner for the first time, but either way it only seemed to last a little while. Then a decade later it came back after I'd gained a lot of weight.

The good news (for me, anyway) - when I lost ~40 pounds, all of my sleep issues went away. My apnea is gone, my snoring is gone, and my sleep is 10x more restful than before. My body still tends to want a siesta in the early afternoon, but I can manage without one if I'm busy.

Sadly there are two types of apnea, physical (obstructive) and mental (central) essentially. I have both, so even when I was very fit, I still had apnea. My brain literally just fails to send signals for me to breath when sleeping.

CPAP has been a lifesaver in the most literal sense.

I had a moderately severe case according to my sleep study. It was bad enough that the doctor recommended going straight to surgery and not even bothering with the CPAP. The surgery I can say was one of the most painful things I went through but in my case they did a lot more than just take my tonsils out. On a better note (after about a week) I can say my snoring went away, my going to sleep while driving home went away and I went to energized on six hours of sleep when before I could sleep ten hours and then take a nap every afternoon.

Well, I had my second study on Tuesday, this time with cpap and it didn't go so well. The funny thing is that when the tech first put the mask on and was going through calibration, I started to fall asleep. However, when she was actually ready for me to go to sleep I became to aware of the mask and the process of trying to go to sleep. So I hardly remember sleeping at all, but I do remember waking up a number of times and struggling to go to sleep. My nose was also getting irritated in one spot where it was touching the seal. I'm sure I could get used to the machine, it was just a tough first try. I'll need to wait for the doctor to take a look at the results and talk about next steps.

I probably need to have myself checked. I don't fall asleep driving or in the middle of conversations, but I can be very drowsy during the day. Its especially bad when allergies are acting up. If it would help my focus and memory it would be so worth it!

The sleep study gear isn't very comfortable. They want you to keep waking up to get the stress test right. You can get much more comfortable gear afterwards if you can get fitted.

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