I mean, it just seems like good common sense to me, though. Why waste a good self-pleasuring when you’re unconscious? That’s no fun 
Bumping this thread for some advice. I’ve always snored, since I was a kid. Never really bothered me, I assumed it was normal and I’ve never had a sleep study. But as I get older I’m starting to worry.
Tonight I had a scary incident which has happened rarely, perhaps twice before in five years or so. I woke up choking and wheezing - it was as if a film was covering my windpipe. Each time this has happened I bolted out of bed in panic, but after a few seconds of forceful breaths in and out I’m able to breath again.
I’m assuming I aspirated in my sleep while on my back. Planning to take the tennis ball advice from earlier in this thread to keep myself on my sides. But I’m wondering what the mechanics of this situation are. Did I aspirate something sticky? What would cover up my airway such that I can’t breath through either my mouth or nose and have to wheeze it out? No food object or anything is expelled, I’m just able to breathe again after a few very panicked seconds.
Thoughts?
IANA medic.
My bet is you had no actual physical obstruction. If you did, it was nothing but saliva or phlegm. Do you have some post-nasal drip while awake & upright? People who need to snort or swallow throat glop regularly during the day secrete the same goop at night lying down.
Apnea comes from nerve / control problems. It’s not that you can’t breath; it’s that your autonomic system isn’t triggering breathing, so you don’t breath.
If that temporary intermittent malfunction lasts long enough, you wake up and try to consciously breathe. But there’s a couple / few seconds of twilight consciousness as your brain is waking up. I suspect you were in a state where you could form the conscious idea of wanting to breath, but the part of the brain that controls conscious breathing wasn’t quite online yet.
Our internal sense of time is highly distorted while asleep or semi-asleep. What felt like an eternity might’ve been 2 or 3 seconds.
After looking around the internet I’m thinking I had a laryngospasm.
Other people described something similar, with the primary (and terrifying) symptom of “stridor”, which is a high pitched wheezing when you attempt to breathe. I was definitely conscious when this happened, not in twilight sleep. Apparently, it can be triggered by GERD.
I’m going to elevate my head more and stay off my back while sleeping. Again, this has only happened a couple of times over a period of years. But it’s so scary.
My understanding is sleeping on your back causes the most apnea events. Sleeping on your side causes fewer, and sleeping on an incline in a recliner causes the least.
One guy I saw online said he slept really well when he slept on his stomach on a massage table, those tables with a U shaped cutout for your face. I can understand why, you’d probably have no apnea events sleeping like that.
Amazon, etc. sell pillows that mimic the massage table effect. If someone thinks they’re suffering from apnea, or they just like getting a relaxing massage from their SO, one of these is a cheap experiment.
I don’t stay in one position all night, I know I move around; sometimes while sleeping & sometimes I wake up & intentionally roll over. Most massage tables that I’ve seen aren’t as wide as a bed; I’d hate to roll over…& off in the middle of the night. A hard pass for me, TYVM
Quite similar to my situation.
I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea in 2003. More than 1 episode per minute per 60 minutes. About…9 years ago I had another sleep study. Found that the apnea was completely resolved BUT I cannot fall asleep without my CPAP. I feel like I’m suffocating.
Being morbidly obese is a factor here, no doubt.
Anyway, I do sleep on my back as well as both sides. I’m asleep !!!- how could I control it? Due to a spinal fracture I don’t sleep on my back. Ever.
I fall asleep when feeling “nappy” if laying on a thick sleeping wedge, OR when sitting on the sofa. It’s an unsatisfactory sleep but I can nap for more than an hour without the CPAP if my head is elevated.
Emphasis added. I suspect in the second case you meant to type “on my front.”
I’m another one who can’t seem to control my sleeping position. I usually fall asleep on my side, but I usually seem to wake up on my back. So apparently, I’m routinely changing positions at some point during the night.
I too tend to fall asleep on my side and wake up on my back.
I’ve HAD to sleep on my back, the past 3 weeks, and will need to do so for at least a month next year. Not just on my back, but propped up as much as I can. This is not easy. I’ve been really looking forward to side-sleeping again.
Dunno what my AHI is like in the various positions - I did my best to “sleep” on my side at the various sleep studies.
This works. I use a tennis ball.
Home sleep studies have improved greatly in the past decade or so. It’s generally a few month wait list, but the actual device and presumably the cost should be reasonable these days even without insurance.
Exactly. My apologies for the typo. I never sleep on my front/ stomach due to the spinal injury and subsequent stenosis/ arthritis in the Lumbar and SI.
Sorry to hear this, hope it’s a temporary thing. Amazon sells tons of these. This one happens to feature an additional small memory foam like neck support.
I’m a fan of this if I have to sleep this way. In September of 2000 I broke my L-3 wide open, like a pita bread torn up, in a ladder fall. I slept on my wedge for… hmm… more than a year. I still have it by the bedside- it’s aces for watching the t.v. And napping.
The home study I was given by Kaiser was an oxygen monitor and recorder. It wasn’t testing apnea events, it was testing blood oxygen levels. It strapped to your finger, with a wristlet to keep it in place. Very easy to deal with.
If you didn’t qualify with the take-home device, you’d be scheduled for an in-clinic sleep test, which actually did measure apnea events, along with blood oxygen levels.
I qualified with the take-home device.
I do indeed have one very much like this. The little pillow was useless and it’s gathering dust in the corner; I also found that my head tends to droop to one side, and I found that using a donut-shaped travel pillow helps my head stay put.
And OWWWWW on the L3 injury.
I’ve now graduated to sleeping just on my back, without being so propped up, and it’s much easier. I’ve even been able to go back to using the CPAP; when propped up, the damn CPAP was just too much extra annoyance. I have tried sleeping on my side but it’s still too painful unless I’m at about a 45 degree angle tilted toward my back vs perpendicular to the bed.
Next year, for my big surgery, the plan is to drag my office chair and footstool into the bedroom and sleep in that when I need to be propped up - people recommend using a recliner for that surgery but we already own the other stuff.
My husband tried that for a while and it did help, but not enough and of course it wasn’t terribly comfortable. He finally went in for a sleep study and bingo, apnea. He was ruining MY sleep!
Having had SIX sleep studies over the years, I won’t do another in-clinic one. The person at the sleep clinic suggested I have a redo soon, given that it’s been 15 years and I’ve had substantial weight loss, but I’m not in a big rush. I think that aging makes me more susceptible even with the weight loss, and I honestly wonder whether muscles might tend to weaken with prolonged CPAP use since they don’t need to do as much work to keep the airways open. I could be full of baloney there, of course.
If I do one, it will be the at-home sort.