I have heard that CPAP is the best thing it has happen to a lot of people.

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Acquaintances that have used CPAP have said that it is a life changing machine? How true is that? That it makes you super human. Tons of energy and extra sharpness during the day.
 
If someone has sleep disordered breathing (also called sleep apnea) they feel crummy due to lack of restorative (good quality) sleep. They can also develop serious health problems including atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure and pulmonary hypertension. Affected individuals who are properly treated with CPAP or BiPAP not only feel much better but will probably avoid or delay the complications of this disorder.
 
If you need a CPAP you likely feel crummy but think it is normal, so when you suddenly feel normal I can see how you would feel like superman.
 
Gary F said:
If someone has sleep disordered breathing (also called sleep apnea) they feel crummy due to lack of restorative (good quality) sleep. They can also develop serious health problems including atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure and pulmonary hypertension. Affected individuals who are properly treated with CPAP or BiPAP not only feel much better but will probably avoid or delay the complications of this disorder.
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This....
 
Unregistered said:
Acquaintances that have used CPAP have said that it is a life changing machine? How true is that? That it makes you super human. Tons of energy and extra sharpness during the day.
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Try getting only a couple hours of fitful sleep a day for 8-12 weeks. Any new parent knows what that feels like. Then realize that's "normal" and not something that will ever be outgrown. Then, get good solid sleep and get caught up on your sleep debt. That's a little feeling of the before/after. It's more than just snoring.
 
txflyer said:
How do you determine if you have sleep apnea?
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Officially? You need to undergo a sleep study where you're wired up with lots of sensors and then told to go to sleep. Sensors measure brain activity, BP, Pulse-Ox, leg movement, breathing patterns, snoring, and more. The aggregated data is read by a sleep doctor who can assess if you have OSA and to what degree.

Unofficially? Ask your bed partner if you snore really bad, and occasionally stop breathing for a cycle or two, just to do a really big catch up breath. And if you wake up not feeling rested, have a slight headache (from accumulated CO2), and don't have lots of energy during the day, you might be at risk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_apnea

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-apnea/default.htm

The common solution is a CPAP machine (Constant Positive Airway Pressure) which uses applies air pressure slightly higher than ambient to help prevent the soft tissues of your airway from collapsing and preventing normal breathing. During the sleep studies, you wear the mask while you sleep and the supervising technician changes (titrates) the pressure until the right sweet spot is found. Too much pressure causes discomfort while sleeping, too little is not effective. The pressure when set right, doesn't make breathing difficult. Quite the opposite it makes breathing easier when your body is relaxed and your airway is held open by the increased air pressure.

There are surgical solutions. But these are not as common as prescribing a CPAP machine.
 
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txflyer said:
How do you determine if you have sleep apnea?
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AggieMike said it - officially it takes a sleep study.

Unofficially - it's a lazy Sunday afternoon. The game is on and you are in your recliner. You nod off for a few minutes, then wake up with a gasp - you probably just had an apnea event. About 5 of those per hour in a regular occurrence overnight and you have OSA.

To simulate an apnea: close your throat like you are swallowing. Hold your breath about 30 seconds then try to inhale through your mouth with your throat still closed. Then open your throat. You'll inhale with a gasp. Repeat this every 1-10 minutes all night long and report back on how much rest you get. Then go on CPAP to a point where you only do this a couple times an hour, if that much, and you can see the difference.

Technically, an apnea wakes you up. You are in that state where you are not really asleep and not really awake and you spend very little time, if any, in a deep and restful stage of sleep.
 
AggieMike88 said:
There are surgical solutions. But these are not as common as prescribing a CPAP machine.
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A number of years ago, before I had ever heard of sleep apnea, someone told me he had surgery for snoring. Wow, I thought that was a pretty radical solution for snoring but then maybe it was connected to sleep apnea. This guy was in no way heavy and probably fit in the "normal" BMI range.
 
I've heard that surgery, UPPP, is considered a success if it cuts your apnea numbers in half. The problerm with that is that you may still have enough apneas to meet an OSA diagnosis. Plus, the one year results normally show a certain degree of apneas coming back.
 
Everskyward said:
A number of years ago, before I had ever heard of sleep apnea, someone told me he had surgery for snoring. Wow, I thought that was a pretty radical solution for snoring but then maybe it was connected to sleep apnea. This guy was in no way heavy and probably fit in the "normal" BMI range.
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Or his significant other wanted to leave. LOL.
 
I've heard UPPP is very painful. And like noted may still leave one with apnea episodes.
 
Loosing weight helps with that too. :wink2:

For you CPAP users I am struggling with incredibly dry mouth some nights. I have a humidifier and I have it set fairly high if I turn it higher I get rain out. Anyone else have other suggestions?

As for the topic I would say that I haven't noticed any major measurable affect on my life in the 40 days I have used it. I have been compliant since the day I got it I have fallen short of the 6 hours on three nights. 2 by less than 5 mins and the third I got called out to a structure fire at 3:15AM so nothing I could do about that. I have averaged just under 7 hours a night use.

That is not to say there is no improvement. Who knows what is happening that I can't see or sense. I will say I don't wake up with an apnea headache (didn't happen all the time but now doesn't happen) when I ended up sleeping on my back?

I may be an anomaly anyway as I was rarely (would never say never) excessively tired in the afternoons before CPAP and I am not now. I have always felt I was a pretty clear thinker with good judgment before. If CPAP has improved that well then I will start checking the mail for my Nobel prize. :rofl:

I know it profoundly effects some people I just haven't seen a real "awakening" (get it) for myself at this point maybe that will change. I do know that my AHI with it is 1.23 on average and without it was in the 20s at my sleep test. It wasn't hard getting used to and if it improves my health then it is a small price to pay.
 
A dry mouth usually means you are mouth-breathing. Air enters your nose, exits your mouth and dries everything out. Basically, there is a short circuit in your airway. It also means you probably aren't getting the full benefits of CPAP therapy since the excess pressure that should keep your throat open is escaping.
 
Matthew said:
A dry mouth usually means you are mouth-breathing. Air enters your nose, exits your mouth and dries everything out. Basically, there is a short circuit in your airway. It also means you probably aren't getting the full benefits of CPAP therapy since the excess pressure that should keep your throat open is escaping.
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I have a full face mask. I am a mouth breather and went directly to full face because I knew the nasal mask wasn't going to cut it. My machine says that my leaks are not excessive. I have looked at the data with the sleepyhead software (open source) and leaks are well within what the machine is supposed to be able to compensate for. My average leaks are less than 5 L/M and 95% leaks are about 13 L/M the machine is supposed to be able to provide good therapy with anything under 24 L/M. That isn't to say that leaks couldn't contribute to dry mouth at times due to the added air flow.
 
DFH65 said:
That isn't to say that leaks couldn't contribute to dry mouth at times due to the added air flow.
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No experience with full face masks. But, if you have leaks, air has to travel through some path. Maybe that's contributing. Some masks have a silicone cushion you can drop in boiling water, then form-fit to your face. If you are just getting started, and went to a local DME for the mask, they should be able to help you with the fitting or might be able to get you a different brand to try.

What's your pressure setting?
 
I find that leaks cause me to experience dry mouth. When my mask fits properly, it is not a problem. Experiment with other masks. I use a full face mask and it took a trying a couple of different masks to find one that worked for me. One of them even caused me to experience jaw pain and headaches (probably too tight trying to stop the leaks). I'm not sure if it relates to mask fit, but my AHI was in the 2's until I found the proper mask. They are recording @ 0.0 now.
 
Pressure is low 7. I am convinced the machine occasionally is recording events that are not real. I have worn the mask doing nothing but laying there breathing and it has recorded events and I am not even asleep. The machine does its best to guess but sometimes is wrong.
 
DFH65 said:
Pressure is low 7. I am convinced the machine occasionally is recording events that are not real. I have worn the mask doing nothing but laying there breathing and it has recorded events and I am not even asleep. The machine does its best to guess but sometimes is wrong.
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7 isn't much. I'd spend some time trying to solve the leak problems first.

I have tried to figure out how the recording algorithms work. I can fool mine sometimes. If you have it on for 20 min and somehow get it to think it recorded something, that'll work out to 3 per hour. And it may be adding or averaging in with whatever it recorded the previous night. It's all proprietary software, so I don't know what they do.
 
Matthew said:
I've heard that surgery, UPPP, is considered a success if it cuts your apnea numbers in half. The problerm with that is that you may still have enough apneas to meet an OSA diagnosis. Plus, the one year results normally show a certain degree of apneas coming back.
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And the surgery changes the geography and pliability of the tissue in the mouth and throat, which may render the CPAP less effective, or ineffective….
 
While I don't have OSA, I've had a UPPP for "heroic" snoring. It was painful. Very painful. Also had tonsils out. It helped a little initially, but I still snore pretty badly...my wife is the one who can't sleep. :(


Jim R
Collierville, TN

N7155H--1946 Piper J-3 Cub
N3368K--1946 Globe GC-1B Swift
 
N3368K said:
While I don't have OSA, I've had a UPPP for "heroic" snoring. It was painful. Very painful. Also had tonsils out. It helped a little initially, but I still snore pretty badly...my wife is the one who can't sleep. :(
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A cousin told me today that he knows someone who had surgery for this, who says he would never do it again.
 
txflyer said:
Hey, check this out. I found an android app called sleepbot that you set it, and keep the phone in bed with you, and it records movement and sound then displays it graphically.

It says it can even wake you up at your lightest sleep point so you get better rest.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lslk.sleepbot&hl=en
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Beware - There was an iPhone app that made the same claims, and someone put it in a different room one night and it still "measured" all of that stuff miraculously.

Reminds me of this:

 
flyingcheesehead said:
Beware - There was an iPhone app that made the same claims, and someone put it in a different room one night and it still "measured" all of that stuff miraculously.

Reminds me of this:

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I'll keep that in mind. :yes: I have not tried it yet because as usual, you have to fiddle with it, and you must have it on a charger while it's recording, or it will suck your battery dead pronto.

I hate fiddling with electronics. I'm getting older and more ****ed off with the more crap you have to fiddle with.

They should come up with a new word for the lexicon that means you are techno fiddled out. Homie don't text either. :frown2:
 
DFH65 said:
Loosing weight helps with that too. :wink2:

For you CPAP users I am struggling with incredibly dry mouth some nights. I have a humidifier and I have it set fairly high if I turn it higher I get rain out. Anyone else have other suggestions?

As for the topic I would say that I haven't noticed any major measurable affect on my life in the 40 days I have used it. I have been compliant since the day I got it I have fallen short of the 6 hours on three nights. 2 by less than 5 mins and the third I got called out to a structure fire at 3:15AM so nothing I could do about that. I have averaged just under 7 hours a night use.

That is not to say there is no improvement. Who knows what is happening that I can't see or sense. I will say I don't wake up with an apnea headache (didn't happen all the time but now doesn't happen) when I ended up sleeping on my back?

I may be an anomaly anyway as I was rarely (would never say never) excessively tired in the afternoons before CPAP and I am not now. I have always felt I was a pretty clear thinker with good judgment before. If CPAP has improved that well then I will start checking the mail for my Nobel prize. :rofl:

I know it profoundly effects some people I just haven't seen a real "awakening" (get it) for myself at this point maybe that will change. I do know that my AHI with it is 1.23 on average and without it was in the 20s at my sleep test. It wasn't hard getting used to and if it improves my health then it is a small price to pay.
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Update: Now at 71 days of use every day. l have seemed to get the leak issue under better control. It was always quite a bit less (about 1/2) than the manufactures number for providing good therapy but I have reduced it to the point where my 95% leak is where my average leaks were and my average leaks are less than half that and WAY below the minimum effective range of the machine. Dry mouth is better but some days still a bit of an issue I talked to the respiratory therapist and she said sometimes it is just the person. In any case it is slightly better.

As far as any noticeable changes from CPAP. I have started to notice a few things. As I said before I was only ever rarely daytime sleepy anyway so that is hard to say if it is better or not although I have not been since starting CPAP.

Maybe it has taken a few months to get here and get used to the machine. I can say that I do sleep more soundly and wake up less to toss and turn throughout the night. Also and this is more of an odd one but I think it makes sense since my REM sleep is less interrupted my dreams are more coherent and less choppy and repetitive.

So life changing that might be a stretch a definite improvement now after 71 days I can say :yes:.
 
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It does take a while to get used to it and it does take a while to get caught up on your sleep debt. I noticed more vivid dreams, too. Glad it's working out for you.
 
since this thread is just about done - the following is more about OSA than CPAP, but I just got back from the dentist. Spent an hour fighting OSA in the damn dentist chair ... really really disconcerting to have OSA kick in and block the exhale until I could either wiggle my tongue or jaw into a non-blocking mode and then breathe again.

One would think I could have found a position that did not induce OSA, but sure enough, given a few minutes of normal breathing, I would obstruct again. I warned the doc before-hand about it and told him "If I turn blue or wave a hand, pull back because I'm either sitting up or passing out".
 
gkainz said:
since this thread is just about done - the following is more about OSA than CPAP, but I just got back from the dentist. Spent an hour fighting OSA in the damn dentist chair ... really really disconcerting to have OSA kick in and block the exhale until I could either wiggle my tongue or jaw into a non-blocking mode and then breathe again.

One would think I could have found a position that did not induce OSA, but sure enough, given a few minutes of normal breathing, I would obstruct again. I warned the doc before-hand about it and told him "If I turn blue or wave a hand, pull back because I'm either sitting up or passing out".
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I guess I wasn't the only one (you either). I needed a filling a couple months ago - they stuck me in the chair with my head back, then put some kind of shield in the back of my mouth. That head/neck/jaw position caused my throat to close up. I had to get them to pull that thing out, then let me get settled into a slightly different position and try it again. It wasn't fun.
 
Dentists chair Apnea episodes is actually how I convinced myself to believe my wife that something wasn't quite right. She told me for years that I stopped breathing at night.
 
gkainz said:
Dentists chair Apnea episodes is actually how I convinced myself to believe my wife that something wasn't quite right. She told me for years that I stopped breathing at night.
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Wow... This can happen to you when awake?!?!? I thought unconsciousness was a prerequisite for it. I didn't realize that there would be an inability to consciously keep your tongue out of your throat without some other sort of neuromuscular disorder.

Is/was your sleep apnea characterized as mild, severe, or somewhere in between?

I guess I'm wondering - and I hope one of the docs chimes in - Does everyone with sleep apnea have potential issues when awake too? I've been thinking about ways to determine what my risk is without doing a sleep study - I'm a big guy, not big enough to fall under the FAA's proposed apnea policy, but the discussion made me wonder. However, I have none of the symptoms. :dunno:
 
Greg; would using your CPAP machine and a nasal mask have helped in that situation?
 
AggieMike88 said:
Greg; would using your CPAP machine and a nasal mask have helped in that situation?
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As soon as you opened your mouth the air would come flooding out. So my guess is nope.

I use a full face mask so that would definitely be a no. Can't say I ever experienced an apnea event of any sort while I was awake. I thought the whole idea was that you body position and then the relaxation of your throat and neck tissue caused the blockage. One of the reasons why your apnea can be worse in REM sleep is because your body is essentially paralyzed during REM so you don't act out your dreams causing even further relaxation of the tissue or so I was told.
 
Yeah, thought about that, Mike, but I reached the same conclusion DFH65 above did. So, I just fought thru it.

Actually, it was a good reminder of how bad my sleep must have been before CPAP. I don't need reminders like that for compliance, as I NEVER sleep without CPAP, but it was good confirmation.
 
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