You won’t need a full sleep test at first if they’re just checking for apnea. They’ll just give you a small device that you put on your finger (a pulse oximeter) to record your oxygen saturation throughout the night. As long as you’re not the type to take things off your hands, it generally doesn’t interrupt sleep.
The actual studies are usually done in special rooms, and sleeping anywhere unfamiliar has been scientifically proven to alter sleep–your body remains on higher alert. But they will do everything they can (short of medicine) to help you fall asleep for the test.
It seems to me that some doctors skip the actual test sometimes if it seems you have apnea, and will try the less annoying fixes first, like giving you a mouth guard or even one of those more automated PAP (positive airway pressure) machines and see if it works. Others insist on the proper diagnosis with a sleep test.
You can get apnea test for your phone, but what they measure usually isn’t oxygen saturation, but movement while sleeping, under the assumption that sudden movement is likely sleep apnea and your brain jolting you awake to get more oxygen. But since that’s exactly the part you’re not sure about, I’m not sure the apps would be of much help.
Finally, I note that there is one other option: night terrors. In that case, it really is the nightmare waking you up. It may have nothing to do with your breathing at all and be essentially benign. That is the case for me when I occasionally have this–though I more often have the “falling asleep” kind. I have had the kind you detail, though. They seem more prevalent when other people are active in the house, making noise.
anmouse, I don’t know if this is serious or a joke. GQ is for factual responses. If this is serious, keep religious posts out of this forum. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Not to hijack my own thread, but are there methods to enrich one’s ability to lucid dream? I am finding myself able to “knock off some of the silliness” from dreams but not really take full control. Is that all lucid dreaming is?
For example, I have a pretty good handle on bypassing the really frustrating dream foibles that we all know and hate. Like when you have to call 9-1-1- but keep pressing 9-2-2, or you look at your cell and it’s some antique Nokia that you’ve never seen before and don’t recall how to operate. After a few frustrating misdials, I can go “Ok well this is a dumb dream so skip ahead that I’ve already called 911 and in fact the first responders are on scene” and continue the dream from there. Sometimes if the dream is particularly uninteresting and mildly unpleasant I can just NOPE out of that entire dream, usually awakening me briefly enough that I lay half asleep and go “ok well don’t think about that stuff again because we’re not dipping back into that dream.”
Is that full-fledged lucid dreaming? Considering my nightmares are such a major factor in my quality of sleep, regaining some control of the absurd situations helps reduce my misery.
For fun, my first experience where I realized I could control the environment in my dream I was being chased by someone. I was on foot and they were in a car. At an obvious disadvantage, I just went “well, RUN AS FAST AS A CAR I GUESS,” and I took off like a superhero. As I was running through traffic I thought “wow, I guess let’s just be in a really fast car, then” and boom, I’m in a super car. I remember I went so far as “I don’t really like the color of this car” and was able to change it like when you build a vehicle online. But then I made it turn into random colors that didn’t exist in real life and realized there’s no limits on what I can do. That level of control isn’t something I’ve experienced much, if at all, since that dream.
Somehow, I trained myself to stop having a particular kind of dream. I had been having “frustration dreams” that took place in the factory where I worked for years. Usually, I’d be wandering around looking for something or somebody I never found. Now, when I catch myself doing that, my dreaming self says, “Hey, I don’t work there anymore! Nobody does, they tore down the plant!” Somehow, it works. Maybe it helped to physically drive to, and park outside, the grassy field where the plant used to be.
Keep a journal handy beside your bed. As soon as you wake up, immediately write down everything you can remember about your dreams. This supposedly can help you train your mind to retain the memories of your dreams, so you will be more likely to be aware that you had experienced a lucid dream.
This is similar to what I experience, I’ll be jolted away obviously not breathing, but after an initial gasp I’m fine. If you stop breathing you tend to wake up extremely quickly, not enough time to really get SUPER out of break. Other people have reported I’m a terrible snorer so sleep apnea seems likely. I’m not willing to spend my nights hooked up to a machine so I’ve seen no point really in attempting to get a formal diagnosis.
It’s not associated with any dreaming, although I do lucid dream and can sometimes direct myself to wake up to end the dream if the dream world is starting to go south. I tend to get those “put in detention or term paper was due last week and I didn’t do it or can’t remember your locker combination” type dreams and I can sometimes recognize and put a stop to them.
One of my more reoccurring dreams are about when I waited tables in my early 20s. It’s always some variation on me greeting a table, going to the back to get their drinks, being waylaid by jackassery to the point I go “OH NO, it’s been 6 whole hours and I never gave that table drinks or even took their order!” And I go out, and they are still waiting, they are just 6 whole hours of waiting level pissed off. Terrible dream.
I’m to the same point, tho, I can go “Hey I haven’t done this job for 15 years. Click to the next channel.”
Why thank you @Northern_Piper, but I wouldn’t call myself calm. I do try to be as reasonable as possible, but I don’t always succeed.
@Dead_Cat : I was looking for a username back in, I think it was 2007 or early 2008, and I found a thread about hypnagogic jerk. I thought, ok, sure, let’s go with that. I’m not sure I could find this 13-year-old thread now though.