I’ve been using the CPAP for 9 days now. Last night on one of the many times I awoke to adjust the mask, I forgot to turn it back on, so I slept half the night without it. Oh, and I’m under so much stress right now it’s taking me two hours to fall asleep. Like objectively my sleep is pretty bad right now.
And yet, somehow, I feel great. I’m more alert in the mornings and really throughout the day. My afternoon crashes have gone from moderate to mild. Even now, at 8pm, when I am usually utterly exhausted by now, I am in gentle unwind mode rather than drop dead mode.
I think there’s something to this.
I’m going to reach out to the company about issues with the mask air leaks and try to resolve that, but we’re already moving in a good direction.
I sleep on my stomach with a nose mask. My head is to the side of the bed and I’ve learned to use the weight of the hose hanging down from my face to seal the mask. If I change positions I automatically shift the hose to accomplish the sealing function. For those still struggling with this a sleep mask over the eyes might help if it hasn’t already been suggested.
Man, I thought almost everybody did at-home ones these days to test for apnea. I thought the actual sleep clinics were for more heavy-duty stuff like night terrors or sleep-walking.
Anyway, I found the at-home version pretty uncomfortable as well for one reason - that damn O2 meter on your finger. It felt fine for the first 15 or 20 minutes, then it started driving me nuts. My results were probably not terribly accurate, but I did it for insurance purposes. I already knew I had increasingly bad apnea and just needed the study to get the machine paid for.
I’ve mentioned before it took me almost a year to really start using it regularly, but once I did the effect was pretty pronounced. It was a real struggle to adjust to at first. I still don’t care for it - I use a full face mask because my mouth drifts open and I didn’t like the chin-strap. So it can be a little uncomfortable having a plastic octopus on your face and I think the straps are combining with my age to wear a premature bald spot on the top of my head . But I will not sleep without it, because my sleep quality is just vastly better with it. Even just for a quick afternoon nap.
I did both a home and in-lab. I guess my apnea was severe enough that they actually covered it. The lab visit was to determine the CPAP settings. It was much worse than the at-home. It took like twenty minutes for the tech to get all of the sensors attached to me. It’s also really hard to sleep when they’re like “we’ll be watching you all night! If you need anything, just speak!”
Does anyone else have air going into their eyes? I have resorted to using my swimming goggles or facemasks to shield my eyes from the constant CPAP air blowing into the eyes.
No, that’s never happened to me, but air does blow into my sleeping partner’s face if I’m pointed in her direction. This annoys her, but it can be blocked by a sheet or pillow to intercept the airflow.
Yes, it dried out my face and eyes. In my case I had started wearing the mask (nose pillows) looser and looser because the app wasn’t complaining about leaks. Tightening the mask has helped a lot, but I’m still getting some air. Maybe it flexes depending on how I sleep. I think somewhere in this chat someone suggested a little Vaseline to help the seal.
I did with one of my first masks. IIRC, I went through about four masks before I found one that worked well. The one that blew into my eyes really was a poor fit, probably because I have a small nose bridge so the mask gapped a LOT there.
The last one I had was in 2010, before the at-home versions were terribly common.
The person at the sleep clinic was recently trying to persuade me to do another sleep study - I’ve lost a lot of weight, and my apnea has improved. But, yanno, I just don’t feel like it. I’ve got an auto-adjusting machine.
I had an at-home study a long time ago. It was inconclusive. Then I had a lab study more recently. I did find it unpleasant, but they got the information they needed and I got a CPAP, so I guess it was worth it.
My understanding is that sleep apnea often improves when someone loses weight, but is unlikely to ever go away entirely. So once someone has been diagnosed with sleep apnea and treatment is being covered by their insurance, I don’t see much upside to getting another sleep study. And the downside is that the severity of one’s sleep apnea might still warrant a CPAP, but they might fall below the threshold in which it is covered by insurance.
My husband had pulled off a fair bit of weight. He redid the sleep study and they said he didn’t need it - but he found he felt better so he kept using it. I don’t think insurance was ever notified so it hasn’t been an issue, fortunately. He’s since regained most of the weight and definitely needs it now. If they’d cut him off, I guess he’d need to redo the study. Ugh.
The advantage of redoing it might be to subset adjust one’s settings. Mine is an auto-adjustingv machine, so that’s not really needed.
I lost 70 pounds and saw in the CPAP logs that it was now detecting an event every two-ish hours. I did an experiment where I tracked my sleep with my watch, doing one week with the CPAP and one without. After a couple weeks of that cycle, I could neither see any difference in my sleep logs nor in how I felt in the morning. So I’ve put it away for now.
I don’t feel I sleep as well without mine, dammit, despite losing over a hundred pounds since my peak.
Of course I knew I had apnea for years before a sleep test finally got enough data to diagnose me. As in, 4 studies over 9 years. The process is hideously flawed.
I’ve had two nights in a row now without air leaks. Unfortunately the key seems to be keeping the mask really tight. It’s not uncomfortable but it leaves marks on my face.
Also, I’ve never been overweight (have been under 155 pounds for my whole life) but yet I still got diagnosed with severe obstructive apnea (37 events per hour.) So while I imagine it would have been far worse had I been fat, it can still be pretty bad when thin or average.
You know zero air leaks is not the absolute goal, yes? Lower is better and it is fine if you can get them to zero, but it is “large” leaks that are problematic. Leaks above 24 L/m are bad and effect the efficacy of your treatment. Leaks below that (say a 95% leak rate of 10L/m or whatever) should be more or less fine. Some face/mask geometries just aren’t going to allow for zero leaks.
So for example my 95% leak rate for the past week averaged 6L/m, the lowest day was 2.4, the highest was 10.8. My machine (an AirSense 11) is not designed to freak out and give me a warning unless I was above 22L/m. More specifically you should ideally be checking a graph to see if you have any individual events that qualify as “large leaks.”
I don’t want to send you too far down the rabbit hole of obsessiveness, but are you aware of OSCAR? It’s a free app - what you do is get an sd card of 32gb or less, insert it into the appropriate slot on your machine (all modern ones should have an sd slot somewhere) which should format it automatically, then periodically (once a week, once a month) pop it out and let OSCAR analyze your data and spit reams of graphs and numbers at you about how your CPAP experience is working on both a daily and average period. The ultimate test for efficacy is your own tiredness, but it can be useful for self-monitoring details.
. But I will not sleep without it, because my sleep quality is just vastly better with it. Even just for a quick afternoon nap.