I had one a few weeks ago. I’ve always been a restless sleeper, but this fall I started pushing on my wife with my feet. She could deal with that, but right before the new year I hit her hard while I was sleeping. There was no dream that I remember. If I hadn’t hit her on the backside it could have done some damage. I tried sleeping on the floor next to our bed, but I kept hitting the bed frame and waking her up. Since then I’ve been sleeping in our son’s old room. It took a while to set up the sleep study. The neurologist had me start taking melatonin and wean myself off the SSRI I was taking. I wasn’t on the full dose of melatonin yet when they did the study, so it may have reduced the limb movement some. My limbs were moving a ton, though. A big surprise when I got the results was that I actually slept a lot less than I thought. I was only asleep about 60 percent of the time. I badly underestimated how long it took me to fall asleep as well as how long it took me to go back to sleep. I won’t be able to talk with anyone about the results until May. I don’t actually care about getting more sleep; I don’t get tired during the day. If the melatonin isn’t reducing the movement there’s no reason to keep taking it, since I don’t sleep any better with it. I’m guessing the next step may be something like Klonopin, which I’m not crazy about. I really want to sleep with my wife again. It takes so damn long to get follow up appointments that this thing ix really stretching out. Okay, rant over. Maybe my wife should just tie me up every night.
I have both had sleep studies and odd problems. The sleep study revealed what was very clear to me, I had developed sleep apnea and needed a CPAP.
The odd problems seem to have been caused by the cocktail of psychiatric drugs I was on at the time. For a while ( I think a few years) I would occasionally wake with a violent kick of my right foot. This resulted in minor injuries to my foot. One night, I had left my laptop on a tv tray by the bed. I woke with a violent kick. My laptop went flying and hit the wall. It worked fine after that. But, it knocked the cover off one of the keys. That key still worked. It just looked funny.
The other odd problem came a few years later. I would have dreams of tall, sinister, grey beings gathering around the bed. I had the urge to sit up and roar at them. As you may have guessed, I would wake up while sitting up and roaring loudly. Once I was fully awake, I was not frightened at all and would try to get back to sleep. This happened once while sleeping in a room with friends. It woke them up and scared the crap out of them.
I have not had either problem for many years. I still inform the technician monitoring the sleep study, just to be on the safe side.
I’ve been plagued by chronic insomnia for more than 20 years, and I’m preparing for my third study. The first one said I had unusual sleep patterns, but they didn’t come up with a solution. The second one said I had apnea and they prescribed a CPAP. I wore that damn thing for a year and a half, and it did nothing to help me fall asleep. My doctor and I hope I’ll get a more useful diagnosis and more useful treatment.
BTW, sleeping with my head elevated has been just as effective and considerably more comfortable than a CPAP.
I sometimes travel with a cousin who will occasionally bring her CPAP and I don’t know how one gets accustomed to that.
I have always struggled with insomnia and don’t think that I could deal with either a sleep study or the resulting treatment.
I know it works for a lot of people but it seems it would create more tension for me.
Somehow I find ways to get by.
I’ve had a sleep study done. Turned out I was having a lot of apnea events per night. I already knew I had sleep apnea, but I didn’t realize how bad it was. I’m on a BiPAP now and I usually only have about 1-2 apnea events per hour according to the machine.
If you do get a CPAP, certain masks are better than others. I’m a stomach sleeper, but the mask I use works well for me. I’ve tried to sleep on a full face mask that goes over the nose, and I can’t do it. But one that goes over the mouth and under the nose works well for my stomach sleeping.
As far as meds for insomnia, I find combining an antihistamine, liquid melatonin and trazadone works reasonably well for insomnia. But if those don’t work, there are other options however many of them are schedule IV, so doctors aren’t as willing to prescribe them.
I did a sleep study, but it was the most typical/boring of the sleep studies - I snore, I’m tired during the day, hook me up to the machines, you’re snoring and you need a CPAP. It has been one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself!
But it sounds like y’all have way worse sleep problems than I’ve ever had.
I did find the test to be amusing. Apparently the Cleveland Clinic rents out blocks of hotel rooms at local hotels for testing (or maybe they own them and it’s just this one hotel?) So I went to a hotel about 5 miles away, went up to the top floor, met a guy in a lab coat in a hotel room who got me started to be hooked up, then went to my sleeping hotel room where he finished hooking me up and I watched TV on the hotel TV until I started to drift off.
The guy had a monitor in his room and he was watching at least 2 other people taking the test at the same time as me.
Erm…at least I assume this is what was happening and what I did. I did come away with a CPAP 
I don’t know anything about this subject, but that still sounds like a lot. 
I use a CPAP machine myself. My understanding is their purpose isn’t to help you fall asleep; their purpose is to help you stay asleep.
I was able to adjust to using a CPAP machine pretty easily and as soon as I started using one I was astonished at how much better I felt. I was finally getting a full night’s sleep and waking up in the morning feeling rested.
I’ve had a sleep study, and I have apnea, but just barely bad enough to qualify for treatment, so they advised I loose weight instead (which I’m working on, but it goes very slowly). It was one of the “at-home” studies, where you get a kit that measures heartrate (on the finger) breathing (strap around the chest with the central unit as well as nose monitoring).
Darn pricey even with insurance sadly, which also applied to the CPAP. I do suffer from a decent bit of insomnia, but it’s normally anxiety or depression based. You get into bed, and the brain just WON’T turn off.
This is my main problem. Can’t get my brain to shut down.
I also have difficulty getting myself into the bed at night. I’ve always been a night owl and shutting down for the day is a chore.
The mask I used was dead easy to wear. Just a small, flexible cushion that is head against the nostrils with an elastic strap. I took to it immediate and got the first good night’s sleep,in ages.
I had several sleep studies over the years.
First time - I snore; specialist said I had nasal polyps, surgery may; or more likely not help. Over time this lessened. And I still struggled to sleep
Second time - I have restless leg syndrome. Meds helped somewhat, but over time this became much less severe. And I still struggled to sleep.
Third time - I have chronic insomnia; have been on Ambian for the last 20 years
Now I sleep most nights
Normal sleep is considered to be 5 or less apnea events per hour. I was having 60 per hour before treatment. My resting pulse has dropped about 20 points since I got treated because my body isn’t in constant fight or flight mode all night.
- Normal sleep = <5 apnea events per hour
- Mild sleep apnea = 5-14 apnea events per hour
- Moderate sleep apnea = 15-29 apnea events per hour
- Severe sleep apnea = 30+ apnea events per hour
I was diagnosed with apnea in a sleep laboratory and was prescribed a CPAP device. Everyone who had been to the sleep lab with me had been prescribed such a device. It is paid for by the health insurance company, maybe the doctors’ economic interest cannot be completely ruled out.
As much as I tried, I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour with the device, and other masks didn’t help either. I finally resorted to a simple alternative solution: I tape my mouth shut at night. It works wonderfully and since then I have been sleeping through the night without apnea.
My wife and I had them done as volunteers for some dude’s PhD work. Included both lab work as well as at-home monitoring sessions. Was great fun.
My apnea diagnostic study had me at 89.
I’ve had two.
The first was 25 years ago after a brain injury and I was part of a study to see if brain injuries caused sleep apnea. I had a couple of instances of central apnea, which are caused by the brain swelling, but no sleep apnea.
I had a second study done about 10 years ago when I was always exhausted to the point it was impacting my day to day life. Again, no significant sleep apnea. Turns out I had a benign pituitary tumour that was messing up my entire endocrine system and got that taken care of with meds.
I had a sleep study in 2010, which found I was averaging 74 apnea events waking me up per hour. That’s an average of one every 49 seconds. It’s quite a bad score. I got a CPAP machine and have had way, way better sleep ever since, even dreaming again.
That is an awesome resolution!
What kind of tape do you use?
Due to snoring and repeated incidents of being awakened by my wife who was concerned that I was not breathing, I had a sleep study about 18 years ago. It often seemed like I was dreaming in REM sleep during the “not breathing” episodes, and when my wife woke me up, I had the distinct impression that within the dream I had been holding my breath or trying to talk. Perhaps this is an example of my dreaming brain trying to rationalize or incorporate the experience into the dream?
The sleep study facility was underneath a bank, presumably located there to take advantage of the hopefully silent and empty building at night. Fortunately, there was no distraction from drilling or blasting of vault doors upstairs during my study. I went in a back door and took an unmarked elevator to the basement. They glued approximately 1,493 wires to me and watched me sleep via infrared night vision cameras. This would have been the perfect setting for the hypnopompic hallucination of grey beings hovering over me, but alas, I failed to catch them in the act. I was diagnosed as having sleep apnea and was prescribed a CPAP device.
The first time I used the CPAP, I conked right out and experienced the most vivid dreams I had dreamt in years. The CPAP is great. I use it every night. My wife no longer punches me in the ribs for snoring. I also have a wedge pillow to elevate my head and upper body while I sleep. Besides reducing apnea, this also helps a lot with preventing reflux from GERD at night.
Side story:
I did have a hypnopompic hallucination once in the late 1980’s, after getting a new job in a new town and moving into a new apartment, and having trouble getting used to sleeping there. I was awakened by a burglar pinning me to the bed and choking me. I couldn’t get my arms up to try to fight him off. I struggled to try to move. I felt paralyzed. Then I woke up… again. I rolled out of bed in a panic, turned on all the lights, and searched every nook and cranny of my apartment trying to figure out where the burglar was now hiding. I eventually convinced myself it had been a dream. The next day, I mentioned it to the doctor at the mental health center. (Handy place to get that new job, huh?) He told me about hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, and how you can be more likely to have them when your sleep pattern has been disturbed.