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Sleep paralysis/CFS

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dorach79 +0 points · about 6 years ago Original Poster

I’ve had my dreamstation for nine months. I dread the moment each night that I have to put my mask on. I often wake up with sleep paralysis and choking. This never happened before I got my cpap.

I also CFS. My fatigue has not been helped by cpap. I’m not sure what to do. I’m obviously having apnea events. I’m waking up to them in nightmarish ways.

One last thing. When I wake up paralysized, I’m always on my back or at least as much as I can remember.

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Sierra +1 point · about 6 years ago Sleep Patron

Have you looked at your detailed data using SleepyHead? You can get a lot better idea what is going on during the night when you see the detailed data in SleepyHead. It is freeware.

SleepyHead Download

Basic SleepyHead Instruction Manual

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dorach79 +0 points · about 6 years ago Original Poster

Are you just completely ignoring my problem so that you can plug a product? Because sleepyhead has zero to do with sleep paralysis or CFS.

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Sierra +2 points · about 6 years ago Sleep Patron

I am not a doctor, and was only trying to help you with your APAP as it appears you have attributed your paralysis and CFS to the DreamStation. That is not very probable.

You may want to read this short article about sleep paralysis. My understanding is that during REM sleep you dream, and when you dream one of the actions the body takes to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams is inducing paralysis. Pure guess on my part, but perhaps the link between your CPAP treatment and waking up with paralysis, is that your apnea or something else is waking you up during REM sleep. Apnea is most likely to occur when sleeping on your back.

Now back to SleepyHead. I have nothing to gain by promoting it. I'm Canadian, and I recall that SleepyHead was written by an Australian and is distributed free. I have nothing to gain by promoting it. However, I use the software daily and find it very powerful in determining what is going on during the night when using a CPAP. It highlights every single apnea event, when it occurs, and how long it lasts. When you become more skilled with it, you can zoom in on events and look in detail what went on before the event, and when you woke up. In other words you can dissect your sleep after the fact. One simple thing you may learn is that your CPAP is maxed out on pressure, then you have an apnea event, and then you wake up -- possibly with paralysis in your case. Does that make sense?

Here is a screenshot from one of my recent nights. At 5:10 AM I had a series of obstructive apnea events (blue ones). The first one was when my machine was not quite at my maximum pressure setting of 13 cm. The following ones were at the maximum pressure. This may indicate my maximum pressure needs to be adjusted higher. This is the kind of analysis you can do with SleepyHead. If you want to try it, and post your screen (F12 to do a screen capture), you can post it here for comments on what may be going on.

Without being able to see your detailed data from your machine shown graphically like this, it is pretty hard to give you advice, other than my WAG that you may be waking up during REM sleep.

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