singingkeys

So I would pretty much end up on CPAP for life if that's the case?

I'm starting to suspect that REM sleep is what triggers my apneas/hypopneas.

I have read a lot about that. Plus, I think my tongue is a bit "big" in general. One time the ENT doc told me that she could tell a little bit by the way that I speak that it may be a bit big and told me that I may want to see a speech pathologist. What I definitely do not want is somebody whacking away at my tongue to remove some of it or do any kind of surgery (I've read about that, too) to shorten the tongue's ability to fall back into the throat. I have also read about the UVVV surgery that a lot of apnea sufferers have where they scrape some of the tissue from the back of the throat, remove the adenoids and some other stuff. A coworker at my last job almost had her husband bleed to death after his stitches popped out and my brother had something similar happen when he had that surgery. I didn't mind having the deviated septum/turbinate reduction, but I drew the line after that.

I will eventually get a mouth guard because I wake up with indentations (teeth marks) on the top front of the tongue and all the way around it aka scalloped tongue or crenated tongue. It makes sense if my tongue is falling back because the perimeter teeth marks are from the inside as if the tongue was thrust downwards and flattened against the bottom teeth on all sides. Sleep doc told me that's a "classic sign" of sleep apnea and yet he said I didn't have it.

So the "eureka!" moment came this morning. My brain is so used to checking immediately upon awakening to see what is wrong with me and I finally caught one. I now know that my throat is closing or my tongue is falling back. I'm leaning towards the latter based on the fact that it feels like I'm choking on my tongue and I make a very odd and distinctive choking noise upon awakening. It is one or the other, which is close enough. The "pop" is apparently the pressure in one or both ears (it was the left ear only this morning), which is probably surging as air attempts to find a way out through the eustachian tubes when the airway closes. I suppose it could also be a vacuum created by the lungs in attempt to get air after the airway has closed, but I'm pretty sure that those tubes are in the upper throat area and would make that unlikely. This seems to be a back-to-back event that can happen a lot of times rather quickly once I'm in deep sleep or tired enough to fall back to sleep immediately after waking. It seemed like 3-4 times per minute this morning even after I had been up and about. Took the dog out in the yard, stayed up for about 15-20 minutes and not long after I had been asleep, I started having those events.

I don't think a legitimate device exists for holding the tongue in place so that it doesn't fall back and the mouth appliances are apparently known to move teeth and also make the lower jaw extend much further out than normal and can cause TMJ issues (which I already have some of). I see various gimmicks online where you put something on the end of your tongue that holds it in place (a little rubber thing that can't get past the lips and squeezes the tip of the tongue) throughout the night, but it looks unhealthy and uncomfortable.

My issues seem to happen when I'm on my back. As much as many people have told me that a CPAP might not benefit me, I'm going to give that a try soon. I'm a little bit of a germophobe and the idea of basically "renting" a CPAP from a sleep doctor for a trial makes me cringe and think of all of the other germs I could pick up from it if they didn't clean it properly. Given that seemingly everyone nowadays can't seem to get anything done right no matter where you go, I'd probably ask about buying one before I'd be okay with renting one. Don't want someone else's nasty head cold, TB risks or any other gross stuff I could pick up from one. I know that CPAPs only blow air out, but the thought of someone wearing a full face mask and sneezing into (and up through the line and into the machine) it before turning the CPAP on gives me the chills. lol I sleep on my back a lot and I have noticed that on my stomach and side I don't seem to have issues, but I don't want to lose my back sleeping and would rather have a machine. Will let you know how that works out when I get one. I'm sure it will take some getting used to having something crammed into the front of my nose all night. Nasal pillows are apparently for people with light/mild cases, so I'll see if I can get used to them.

What is about to be killer is I have been hired for a very good paying job at a manufacturing company. Repetitive machine work, but 12-hour shifts. A normal work week is 50 hours/4 days and there's always 10 hours of overtime no matter what each week. Not enough direct hire employees yet, so when I get called to start soon, people are working 60 and 72 hours per week over 5 or 6 days. Definitely not a good time to have even a light case of sleep apnea. Trying to do that with 6 hours of sleep for 5 or 6 nights per week is going to be brutal. I won't have the insurance at all yet, but I may end up buying a machine after 2-3 weeks if things get too bad with my energy level. I'm thinking the ResMed Auto Air 10 with nasal pillows. Don't know anything about the other accessories yet such as the humidifier/heater for the tube, etc.

So basically the people who have mild sleep apnea or light apnea so minor that they don't consider them to actually have it...pretty much just struggle through life trying to get enough sleep even though their sleep is fragmented? From what I have gathered about mine simply by what I remember from waking up and the time on the graphs, it appears that usually after 4-6 hours of being asleep, I start making some kind of weird, unknown noise that keeps repeating itself. The SPO2 graphs back up that something is going on with my heart speeding up/slowing down and my oxygen levels fluctuating up and down a little bit. Not enough to drop oxygen considerably, but enough to wake me up a lot of times. I used to think it was the "puffing" of air out of the corner of my mouth, but having tried to reproduce the sound immediately after waking up, it isn't it. It is louder and I don't think it is a snore. I am so tired of waking up in that way that it is ingrained in my brain to instantly try to figure out/reproduce the noise right after waking up and that's what I do every time. I also find that right after waking up when I have been asleep for several hours...I can almost reproduce the situation. It is either my tongue falling back or my throat closing over just enough to wake me. When I'm relaxed after that much sleep, I can almost feel it repeat itself on purpose as I'm falling asleep. So I presume it was maybe the tongue falling back into the throat or the throat closing enough to make a noise to wake me up immediately after without the oxygen level dropping much or at all. My apneas/hypopneas may be rather short, but it seems to be enough to make my sleep miserable every single day. By interrupting the latter portion of my sleep, it is like I'm getting just a little more than half of a night's sleep. It interferes with my driving. I am still unable to drive. I don't feel alert enough and I would probably have an accident on any given day if I got behind the wheel. I literally almost hit someone's mailbox up the street one day as I was turning off from our street onto the large main street to go to the store one mile away. My body was fidgety/not alert enough to be driving due to poor sleep. My cognition just wasn't there and that can be a daily thing for me.

I can't help but wonder how many people's lifespans are being reduced simply by having symptoms "too light" for CPAP. Their oxygen level isn't dropping, so they're not losing brain cells or getting brain damage from lack of oxygen. However, their sleep is interrupted dozens of times per night. Eventually, the fatigue probably causes their body to start failing in various ways after years or decades of doing that. That may be source of my "jumps." They get worse as I get more tired each day.

I have tried a lot of "tips" from various sites to improve sleep, but it hasn't helped any. I have actually gone as far as finding what are considered to be "rare" exercises developed by a few doctors for some of their patients with light/mild sleep apnea or hypopneas. Tongue exercises to strengthen/tighten the muscle (to help keep it from falling back as much while sleeping on the back), actual throat exercises to add more muscle mass and tighten the throat muscles so that it can't fall forward as much. Apparently as some people age, they lose muscle mass in the throat and it starts an onset in the 30's or 40's. I have also tried melatonin (but avoid sleeping tablets), but I don't care for how it makes me feel in the morning.

I'll see if the sleep clinic that I have been to even does CPAP trials. Doesn't sound familiar and I don't remember reading about it as part of their literature, but I'll give it a go. I feel pretty confident that it will help me with my issues. I know that a lot of people tend to think that with such a "mild/light" case, CPAP probably won't help much and isn't worth the trouble. However, when you wake up every day feeling like you've had 5-6 hours of sleep when you should have had 8-10, it becomes an issue and you start to wonder if having one would in fact help somehow. If it did work during a trial, it seems like the benefits would greatly outnumber the inconvenience of it. If I'm waking up several dozen times per night even with no low oxygen levels, no wonder I'm so tired. My eyes are puffy and look swollen every day. Contacts hurt to put in because the eyes didn't rest enough during sleep.

After some research, I've read where a lot of people couldn't even get the type of CPAP machine that they wanted. They had no say-so in it, the sleep doc wrote a prescription/brand and they didn't get what they wanted. It seems that some sleep docs get a type of kickback from prescribing certain brands. I have pretty much concluded that I would want a ResMed Auto Air 10 to avoid all of the titration and lab nonsense. Getting him to agree to that (of course he'd rather that I come in and have titration so that he could make more money for the lab) may be another story.

So are my minor apneas something that I should be concerned about for future health problems similar to someone who has heavier sleep apnea? If they are light, I feel about the equivalent of if they were moderate to heavy. I'm not sure why they kick in for the last 2-3 hours, either. I would think that REM sleep would have set in within 2-3 hours max. It is bad enough to where I'm now scared to drive because my body isn't alert enough to react quickly enough and make necessary adjustments. I can do repetitive job tasks and tasks that are essentially ingrained in my brain, but some days I can't even type properly due to being so tired. So frustrating. Ugh. :-/

I think he meant buy one. I'm kind of confused, though. A lot of people are telling me that I shouldn't need a CPAP because my numbers and apneas are too low. Others are saying to try one to see if that fixes whatever unknown things are happening. Is that pretty much the best that I will know about it other than the machine either helps or doesn't when I try it?

So where should I go from this point on? Should I try to get another sleep study later on? I have found that later into sleep, when there's like 2-3 hours left before the time that I would get up, I wake myself up making an odd noise that sounds almost like I'm puffing air out of pursed lips in the corner of my mouth. Only it isn't that and when I try to immediately recreate it right after waking up, thinking that it was that, it doesn't sound anywhere near the same. It is something else. While the numbers aren't as bad as many people have...the same thing reflects in them. Towards last 2-3 hours, I get erratic heartbeats going up and down with oxygen levels wavering, even if still within the decent range. Then that distinct noise wakes me up and I don't know what it is. Upon waking, I feel like I'm at the end of the day about to go to bed instead of about to get up from a night's sleep. I'm that exhausted every morning.

Wow, it took two days to post and then posted TRIPLE posts. Yikes.