Thank you, Tal. I truly appreciate your information. I’ve been struggling with sleep disorders myself, and as yet am undiagnosed. My doctor is of the old-school mentality that unless I’m overweight, middle aged and male I can’t possibly have sleep apnea. It’s more than frustrating, to say the least.
I don’t know if you’ve already been here, but Talk About Sleep has been an incredible resource and source of support for me.
I never realized how difficult it would be to find help / information / treatment on sleep disorders!
The one thing that I find the hardest to understand is the resistance I’m met with and the way I’m made to feel guilty and irresponsible about something over which I have no control.
Glad you found the post to be of some benefit…if your doctor won’t refer you to a sleep specialist you need to find a new doctor! Sleepdisorders are often serious issues and left untreated can cause long term problems.
I have been to the talk about sleep site a number of times, it is a good resource. I spend most of my time at the alt.support.sleep-disorder newsgroup - i HIGHLY recommend them…great bunch of people (mostly) who will help you through just about anything sleep related.
you REALLY need to find a new doctor…if you can’t insist that the one you are seeing now refer you to a sleep specialist. There are so many docs out there who are still living in the dark ages, especially where sleep apnea is concerned, they dont’ realise there are MANY of us our there who dont’ fit into the old “apnea profile”
when talking about resistance you meet, are you referring to the way people treat you like you’re lazy and should just get your act together? Way too many people seem to take that attitude, until something like this happens to THEM…
If I can help in any way, feel free to contact me.
Tal, I read your post. I sleep with the machine too. Had the study, work up 273 times, of those times I stopped breathing 253. My doctor did suggest laser surgery later on, after I’ve been on the machine for a while. He said there was a series of three surgeries where they trim down and that you didn’t need to be put to sleep to do it. The machine works good for me. It took some getting used to. If you have lines on your face from wearing the headgear then you have the mask too tight. When I was fitted the guy told me that as long as air didn’t escape to the top and dry your eyes out then you were fine if it was leaking a little at the bottom that’s not a problem and won’t hurt you. Yes it’s forced air but some escaping won’t make you breathe any less better. He said that people wouldn’t work with the mask adjusting it on their face they just tried to glue it down so it wouldn’t move and that’s why they were so uncomfortable. They also have the type that’s just the two tubes, like oxygen, that fits just inside the nostrils. I may give that a try when I decide to switch.
Thanks Tal, and thanks thinksnow for starting this thread. I’m not entirely sure yet that I have sleep apnea, but it sure looks like it judging from my sleep patterns. I’ve scheduled an appointment with my doctor for next Monday. We’ll see.
Oh: male, 31, not obese - although I could definitely stand to lose a few kilograms.
I read Tal’s comments as well, particularly when I was looking around the boards for stuff about Sleep Apnea.
So you know what you may be getting into, Coldfire, I had a sleep study done a few months ago, and I wrote about it in this thread. It was actually sort of fun.
It turns out I have mild sleep apnea, for which they recommended “Positional Therapy” (i.e. don’t sleep on your back). The high-tech medical device they recommended for this is a T-shirt with a pocket sewn onto the back into which a tennis ball is inserted. Wearing that while sleeping will prevent you from rollling onto your back.
Since I’ve been wearing that, I’ve been sleeping a lot better.
I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with sleep apnea, or other sleep disorders, and fibromyalgia. I have developed fibromyalgia symptoms, and am wondering if it stems from a sleep disorder.
I’m pretty sure that I do have a sleep disorder of some kind (likely sleep apnea). I used to just say I was not a morning person, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that. I don’t think I’ve ever woken up and felt rested in the morning. I often wake with a dry mouth, am irritable, have memory problems, short attention span, etc. Also, I cannot take naps - I wake up feeling 100% worse than before (splitting headache, “cottony” head). I have been referred to a rheumatologist (for the fibromyalgia), and am hoping to get my sleeping patterns investigated soon.
I’m on a mailing list (at yahoogroups) for people suffering from Restless Legs Syndrome (http://www.rls.org) and there are a number of people on that list who also suffer from fibromyalgia. Not sure what links the two, whether it’s coincidence, or chronic fatigue from the RLS triggering whatever bodily processes start the fibro, or whatever - but anyway, in some cases there does seem to be a link. If the link is because exhaustion messes up your immune system, I could well believe that OSA could trigger/worsen fibro in susceptible people.
apnea: I’m not a middle-aged male (well, I’m not male :D) but when I told my doctor I thought I had apnea, she took it quite seriously. Including lecturing me about the possible effects of untreated apnea when I offhandedly said “Oh, I don’t want to bother with CPAP”. Long story short, after 3 separate sleep studies I’ve proven to have little-to-no OSA (I have intermittent central apnea, i.e., I simply “hold my breath” while sleeping, without any obstructive component). I was actually disappointed, as the treatment for OSA sounded better to me at that point than the treatments for RLS.
I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea last summer. I can’t begin to tell you how much of a difference it has made in my life! I used to fall asleep while driving, I never had any energy, I would nod off in meetings at work–it was terrible! I snored loud enough that my family said I “rattled the windows” and “sounded like a freight train.”
My fiance (at the time, now my husband) was scared of my periods of not breathing—and of course he couldn’t sleep with me because of the noise.
I went for a sleep study that I found on the internet, at Memorial Hermann hospital here in Houston. It wasn’t difficult to sleep at first—I was exhausted anyway. But they woke me up a million times. If I had been less severe, they would have waited until the next night to put on the CPAP mask. But I was having around 59 arousals in an hour. Once a minute! I averaged about 10 minutes of REM sleep. I can’t remember any other stats.
For 5 years or more it seems I had almost never slept! No wonder I was so tired. And my God, how dangerous to my body. I really never realized it until I started researching apnea.
I love my mask. (Well, to a point.) I sleep so much better, and wake up refreshed and energetic! I can think! My husband sleeps peacefully by my side. The mask bugs me sometimes when it leaks and blows in my eyes. The miniscule hassle is well worth it to me.
Please, get checked out, or have your loved one checked out. You won’t believe the difference.
Thanks for this thread, and for bumping it. It is so very important.
So, Dolores, if you don’t mind me asking: have you noticed any weight loss since you’ve been sleeping better?
I’m slightly overweight too (100 kgs at 1.87 meters), and one of the sites I read was speaking of a correlation between apnea and weight gain. You gain too little energy in the night, and you compensate by eating (too much) in the day, but you don’t have the energy to exercise, et cetera - vicious circle.
Billdo, a tennis ball eh? Too funny! Well, we’ll see I suppose.
Just chiming in to back up what a few others have said: I’m female, underweight, and suffered from apnea for most of my life. Three tonsillectomies, an adenoidectomy and a procedure with an unmemorable name (removal of some apparently extra tissue in my nose and sinuses) seems to have cured the apnea part, but I still snore quite a bit (albeit much more quietly, according to the WryGuy.) As an aside, if you’re claustrophobic, a CPAP is a nightmare.
A good friend of mine used to snore so loud he could make a chainsaw envious. He also has sleep apnea. He uses “the mask” now and swears by it. He says he has never felt better in his life. I would assume “the mask” has helped with his snoring too, I haven’t seen any nails pulled out of the wall in his bedroom lately.
Great question! I lost a lot of weight after my husband died in Jan 2003. I was up to 193, then down to about 175 by May. (I’m 5’4".) Around that time I also started taking Depo-Provera shots, which can cause weight gain. I was gradually gaining it back, and I also had a boyfriend by then, and I loved to cook for him—and eat! In August I went for the sleep study, and I decided to quit smoking that day, too, since I would be locked up for 12 hours. I’m smoke free for almost 9 months now.
So anyway, I have gained it all back, and more… I’m up to 212. But—I still have more energy even at this weight. I have a sedentary job, and, well, basically I just hate to exercise. The sweating part really sucks. But one of these days I’ll get off my ass and start working out. I try to eat better now, too.
So to answer your question, no, I haven’t seen any weight loss from the mask. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t help some people.
The coolest thing happened last night. I was at the pub, and somehow the subject of sleep apnea came up, and this guy said he had it, but never followed up on getting the CPAP machine. I think I convinced him to try it. He’s single and was worried what prospective girlfriends would think. I just said, “Is it better to let them hear you snore like a freight train and sleep in the other room?” He got my point.
Since I’ve been doing the tennis ball thing, I’ve lost a bit of weight. I’m not sure how much, but enough that some people have commented. I haven’t particularly changed my other habits in that time, so I suspect that getting better sleep is the cause.
Thanks for your honest answers, guys. And I’m sorry to hear about your husband, Dolores.
Well, I went to the doctor this morning. Had to get a new one because my old doc split when he was found being a little too intimate in examining his female patients. So, I found another practice around corner. Two female doctors, but one of them is currently on maternity leave, and is replaced by a male doc - not that I care either way. A really nice guy, late 30’s I guess.
Well, long story short, he’ll send me a referral for the sleep disorder clinic, but at the same time, he could already give me the probable answer: I need to lose weight. Thing is, I have a bit of a double chin, and the weight of that will push the base of your tongue against the top of your wind pipe, believe it or not. So that may be causing it. I’ll still do the test thing, of course, but chances are the specialists will say the same, and will want me to lose weight first rather than hook me up to breathing machines straightaway, what with me still being young and all. Ahem.
Then he checked my blood pressure. 140 over 95, which is slightly high (I was expecting 90 at most for the low value to be honest). Of course, the recommendation for that was… to lose some weight.
I’ve made an appointment to have my blood pressure taken again in 2 months, just to see whether this was a one-off, but I guess the bottom line is that I need to get my fat ass in gear.
I’m doing the sleep test tonight, so this afternoon I went to the hospital and they hooked me up, so to speak. I have about 15 electrodes glued (!) to my head (luckily no shaving was necessary), two band around my chest and tummy to measure my breathing, a nose breathing thingie that will monitor my air intake, one of those ET-finger jobs on my left pinkie to monitor my heart rate and my blood oxygen level (with UV light - how cool is that??), and a discman-like contraption slung over my shoulder, where all the 23,456 wires plug in.
So, a good night’s sleep is ahead of me, hopefully.
Since my previous post, I had my blood pressure checked again, and it had returned to normal levels (130 over 85), possibly because I also lost 10 kilograms since then.
As a result, my sleeping has gotten much better, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do the test anyway.
I am not a prospective girlfriend right now (am an actual one, whee!) but I must say that if I were dating a guy and he used a CPAP I would be favorably impressed. (It also means I would sleep much better without the usual horrid snoring.) I know those machines can work wonders, and I wish to God they’d invented them back when my dad was alive.
Oddly, my boyfriend is the first man I’ve ever known in any capacity who does not snore. My dog snores more than he does.
I slept just fine with all the equipment, and went over to the hospital the next morning to have it all detached again. Thing is, the neurologist is very busy, so my analysis appointment isn’t until September 21. So, there’s really not all that much to report yet, I’m afraid! Well, I lost about 12 kilos in total now, I guess that’s somewhat newsworthy.
)
I’m up to 212. But—I still have more energy even at this weight. I have a sedentary job, and, well, basically I just hate to exercise. The sweating part really sucks. But one of these days I’ll get off my ass and start working out. I try to eat better now, too.