singingkeys

I probably do this more than once, but I usually remember it happening at least once per night. I wake up halfway through the night. I open my eyes and I'm laying there with my brain fully awake. I know where I'm at and what is going on. I know that I was asleep and I'm now awake. I can physically move if I want to, so it isn't like sleep paralysis that I've read about where you can't move and you're still partially asleep. I also "know" that my body is physically still asleep while my brain is awake. I'll have the commonly described "body vibrating" or "skin crawling" feeling all over my body still going on because my body is still in deep sleep while my brain is awake. When I reach over and check my wrist pulse, I presume that my heart is beating very low and I'm either just checking it in the wrong spot or it isn't beating hard enough to feel a full pulse. Sometimes it feels like I'm having odd, vibrating palpitations or something. I've seen where my heart rate goes down into the 40's at night during a home sleep study before. So I'll lay there for a minute or two and not move much and then my heart will basically kick into overdrive and start beating much faster as my physical body wakes up to 'catch up' with the brain that is already awake. It is usually 1-2 minutes in between me waking up and this physically happening with the heart. It is weird as heck.

Cardiologist has done a full Stress Echocardiogram before on me. I went into the office and before any exercise, they took images and viewed my heart in real-time via ultrasound. Then they had me run on the treadmill and get my heart rate up, then checked it again. They said my heart is very strong and healthy and I have absolutely no conditions to worry about. At night, it just feels like my heart does weird stuff while in deep sleep.

Over the past 3-4 months, I have gotten panic attacks out of nowhere, beginning at 37 years old with no known stressors. Previous in-lab study yielded only 5 AHI and 18 RDI, indicative of /UARS. I have one more month before my employer's health insurance kicks in and I can start chipping away at their deductible. One of the first things I'm planning to do is this:

http://axgsleepdiagnostics.com/product/comprehensive-type-2-diagnostic-home-sleep-study-unattended/

They also translate it for you. It is rare to see such a good deal with head electrodes.

A comprehensive Type 2 home sleep study for $500. You hook up your own head electrodes and get to sleep in your own bed. The in-lab study went horribly last time and I just slept a few hours. I may eventually have another in-lab study, as well. I've been worked over for everything that they could do bloodwork-wise. I'm healthy, but I think I have some severe sleep issues of some type, including UARS.

OSA treatments using Air Sense 10 Autoset on 7cm - 10cm settings haven't helped. They take my AHI down from 5 to 0.5, but I have literally woken up with a panic attack before and I haven't worn the APAP since. I have also tried it in CPAP mode. In Oscar, I would typically see a number of apneas, a number of hypopneas, a few central apneas that looked legitimate and also one or two RERAs and something else that I can't think of right now (forgot the other thing that it detects). It may be that I might have some kind of central apnea and might need BiPap for the lowest exhale pressure that the EPR 3 on the Air Sense 10 just can't cut it for. I have read that someone had similar symptoms before and after getting BiPap, they didn't have any more panic attacks and their felt so much better every morning.

The past few months have been scary for me. My apologies for the length. I badly need some advice as I continue to work with medical professionals to try to figure out what is going on. Even they are at an "I don't know" point in all of this.

History: March 2018, I had an in-lab sleep study after lots of blood work at my GP doctor. I was chasing down the "tired" feeling I have had since my early teenage years that nobody could figure out. I'm in my mid-30's at this point. MRI of the brain shows nothing wrong. I ask for a referral for a sleep study after learning about the process (I wasn't aware of how it worked before and never really thought about sleep issues when I was younger).

Polysomnogram Interpretation: "The polysomnogram shows severe sleep fragmentation. Sleep efficiency was reduced. There were 13 obstructive apneas and hypopneas present for an overall apnea-hypopnea index of 4.7. There were 50 respiratory events including RERAs for an RDI of 18.1. Supine AHI: 6.1. REM AHI: 9.2 (REM time - 6.5 minutes). The total time with oxygen saturation under 90% was 0.0 minutes with a nadir of 92%. The desaturation index was 4.4 events/hour. Cardiac was normal sinus rhythm. Snoring was present. 0/hr periodic limb movement index and PLM arousal index - 0/hr sleep. Impression: snoring. No sleep disordered breathing. Insomnia vs first night effect."

Doc said I didn't have sleep apnea. I have a very scalloped/crenated tongue, which I've had since I was a kid. He said that's a "classic sign" of sleep apnea. No CPAP.

I go to my ENT doc and show her the results. CT scan of the sinuses requested. Deviated septum surgery and turbinate reduction surgery. I breathed much easier now. It used to take 2.5+ seconds to exhale a full breath. Now it takes about 1 or so. I still feel horrible, though. I request a home sleep study. It shows a variety of apneas/hypopneas averaging 20-30 seconds and one apnea up to 80+ seconds. Lowest heart rate was 42bpm. No dangerous oxygen drops noted. Puzzled.

Over the past few months, I started having what docs think are anxiety attacks. I've never had them like that. Haven't been sleeping well. I sleep 8-9 hours and wake up with a flush-hot feeling in my face, sometimes a little pinkish on each side of my cheeks and face. The more I exert myself doing stuff at work/home, the more hot and flush my face feels with pressure.

I've been to the ER three times over the past couple of months with a random racing heart (140+bpm out of nowhere, right before bed), shaking all over with adrenaline as if freezing to death and feeling like I can't breathe and I'm dying. Classic panic attack symptoms. Blood pressure was going up as high as 1703/90. I've never had anxiety like that, ever. Not in 37 years. Now I get "adrenaline pulses" when I yawn that shake my whole body as if freezing cold.

GP doctor did thyroid blood work (TSH), CBC, everything. ER worked me for everything from a heart attack enzyme/blood clot, a few EKG's, x-rays of the chest cavity, everything. All came back normal. I've had so many blood tests that I'm sick of them.

Even on days when I sleep more/better, I'm still exhausted. I have trouble getting my body to turn off early, before 11 or 12. Sometimes later. It wants to stay up and awake, even when dead tired. I have set up a nigh vision home security camera trained on my bed. It's attached to the security system DVR. About every 10-15 minutes all night long, I either wake up and look around or I toss and turn from one side to another. Sometimes just a slight movement shows that I've awaken. During the in-lab study, I remember hearing the sleep tech a couple of rooms over say regarding someone, "He keeps waking up!" I think it was for me. I've had a couple of panic attacks an hour or two after going to sleep and I would wake up with my heart just racing immediately for no reason. I would feel like I was losing my breath and struggle to keep from going to pieces. The more you panic, the worse it gets. About 6-8 months ago, I asked my ENT doc to help me get an Air Sense 10 APAP based on my home sleep study results of 5.2 AHI. She agreed because she knew my sleep doctor refused to give me one. I figured out the settings to get my obstructives down to 0.5 AHI every night. But about a week ago, I woke up after an hour while USING the APAP and had a bad panic attack. My AHI had spiked to 3+ out of nowhere for that night. I have since stopped using it until I get more sleep study work done.

When I work out, my heart beats upwards of 140+ bpm. It feels like it is going to pound out of my chest just sitting down and pedaling moderately on the elliptical cardio machine at home. The pule rate is higher during the day when I'm resting, usually up around 110 or so. Picking up a 10 pound box at work and moving it over to sit it down makes my heart race. I've been to a Cardiologist when my blood pressure was up and I was feeling odd. Stress Echocardiogram showed a perfectly healthy heart with no issues. Yet exercising would make you think I have heart trouble. I'm not alert enough to drive or use machinery at work. I've made mistakes driving before (e.g. not paying attention and turning left in front of opposite traffic about to start moving, while I had the red light...or over-compensating turning off from our street and nearly hitting a mailbox).

Big concerns: I 'vibrate' when I sleep. There are times when I'm so tired that I fall over into my bed and within a few minutes, my skin feels like it is crawling in place about a quarter of an inch all over my body and my whole body feels like my organs and skin are vibrating as if they're shaking back and forth with my heartbeat or something. Other times, I might fall asleep in my computer chair and I wake up with my body still 'asleep' basically. So my brain is alert and I can turn my head and everything, but I wake up knowing that my body is still asleep. After 30 seconds-minute, my heart will start beating what feels like very fast as my body 'wakes up' to catch up to the brain. It is quite scary. I have started automatically grabbing my chest whenever I get those odd feelings. It is sort of a jerk reaction probably related to the anxiety that whatever this is is causing. GP doc wouldn't listen and wanted to give Metoprolol for lowering the heart rate/blood pressure. When I'm really tired, I'll feel like I'm going to faint over with that. I stopped taking it. Other days my whole body just shakes and feels trembly.

I sign up for my employer's health insurance in March. It kicks in April 1. I'm planning to get a Type 2 home sleep study from this place online: http://axgsleepdiagnostics.com/product/comprehensive-type-2-diagnostic-home-sleep-study-unattended/

In-lab studies...I don't sleep enough to be beneficial and I'm scared that I won't get good results in my next in-lab study, either. I'll follow up with an in-lab study after the home study. That one is almost similar to an in-lab, minus the sleep tech watching everything, of course.

My household got a stomach bug/virus around the first of February. Now my digestive/GI system seems all messed up and I'll be getting probed for an upper endoscopy on March 5. Doc thinks I might have a stomach ulcer. Bladder wall has stiffened since being sick, for no reason. Feels odd when I bend over. Docs don't know what causes this. Urine sample was negative. Even a culture growth sample was negative over 2-3 days. They have no idea why my bladder wall has thickened, per the CT scan data over the past couple of weeks.

Could all of this be related to UARS? They put me on metoprolol at my GP doc, but sometimes when I'm really tired and I take that, I feel like I'm swaying a little and could faint anywhere.

Where do I go from here? Everything has been checked. All blood work is normal. Heart doc warned that the meds were suppressing the symptoms, not treating them. He 'thought' it is anxiety since my heart is healthy, but we don't know what is causing that anxiety. I've had a full abdomen MRI (nothing but a few benign cysts found in the liver, which most people have) and CT scan. The hospital even checked the heart/lungs, pancreas, everything.

I feel pressure in my face even when I lay down at night to sleep. When I take my blood pressure, sometimes it is quite normal even though my face looks pink, confusing me even more. I do get 'anxiety' out of nowhere just over the past few months - worried about all kinds of stuff now because of all that is going on. I manage that with breathing and it goes away. I just don't understanding.

When I wake up and feel my body vibrating, my brain is awake and aware of what is going on. My body is still sleeping. I don't feel unable to move like people with sleep paralysis (I've read vibrating is a symptom of exhaustion and sleep paralysis). No paranoia about the room or anything. My body is just "vibrating" inside and out in a rhythmic pattern almost like a heartbeat. When I do start physically moving around, that's when the heart rate surges upward and feels weird. I do hear sounds sometimes when drifting off to sleep and I'll nod off sometimes on the way home from work on the bus and jump awake with a single and very violent hypnogogic jerk every minute or two because I can't hold my eyes open.

Over the past couple of months I've started having "panic attacks" of some type for an unknown reason. Two put me in the ER at first, a couple of days apart. They thought I was having an heart attack. 173/90 blood pressure and 140+ heart rate. Got worked over for virtually every kind of blood test. All normal. Multiple EKG's were normal at two different hospitals. Stress Echocardiogram at the Cardiologist was normal. It typically happens around 10pm or 11pm at night just a few times a week. I'll be getting ready for bed or just sitting around relaxing and my heart will start racing, I'll feel lightheaded, sometimes will feel short of breath, etc. My GP doctor did all kinds of blood work, physical, tests, etc. Nothing. They've chalked it up to 'anxiety' and put me on 25mg Metoprolol (beta blocker) to lower the heart rate and blood pressure when I have episodes. I don't have them that often, like just 2-3 a week or so. Sometimes it is right after I eat or drink something. I will also get a shaky/trembly feeling where it is almost like I'm about to freeze to death with chills or something, but I'm not cold. I'm also not stressed about anything that I am aware of. This came out of nowhere at 37 years old and my general health itself puts me in the odd category when it comes to a sleep apnea diagnosis. I don't fit the sleep apnea profile.

Previous in-lab sleep study was 4.7 AHI and 18 RDI. 50 RERA's in just under 3 hours. About 7 minutes of total REM sleep in all of that. A follow-up home study that I requested showed 5.2 AHI an an apnea as high was 80+ seconds with apnea/hypopnea averages of 20-30 seconds. A warning came with the home sleep study that said that symptoms could be way worse than what the basic home test checks for. The in-lab study noted that my oxygen levels didn't drop below the lower 90's and the same thing was true for the home sleep study. With the longest apnea on the home study being 80 seconds, I'm confused about that.

I'm doing my best to hold out for signing up for my employer's health insurance in March and it activates on April 1. I'm on APAP already. Min 7.6 and Max set at 12. The 12 is overkill just in case and the most I have seen it go up to is 10, with 9 being the average max. EPR on 3 and set for ramp only.

The other day, I had something odd happen...it was like I couldn't breathe properly when I was upright during the day. If breathing through my nose, I felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen. If I opened my mouth and took deeper breaths, I felt better. Not sure why my upper airway felt so 'closed' randomly out of nowhere like that. I've had deviated septum/turbinate reduction surgery in the past after a CT scan of the head. My airways are otherwise clear as far as I know.

The medicine helps sometimes with taking it when I feel one of these events coming on, but it simply covers the symptoms. Can't find the problem. I have also had some odd intestinal/bowel/bladder issues lately. My family has just gotten over a bad stomach bug last weekend and I have felt something odd in my lower stomach ever since. Sort of like a "full" feeling in the lower intestine/bladder area. Doc chalked it up to maybe a little inflammation. Nothing wrong showed up on the MRI of the abdomen and I simply get a bladder full feeling. Could be intestinal swelling from the previous sickness (feels similar to last week), but I also tend to have some general GI issues going on sometimes. I've read that sleep apnea can sometimes have a hand in causing that because the body isn't functioning properly as a whole.

Could sleep issues/UARS be causing all of this? I seem to toss and turn every 15-30 minutes all night long, sometimes popping awake for no reason as if wondering where I'm at.

I'm referring to racing heart randomly throughout the day on certain days, blood pressure spikes, flushing red face even when blood pressure isn't high, feeling a little dizzy when you take deeper breaths, of course falling on your face tired, feeling like you can't breathe enough and like your body is "too tired to breathe" if you don't force it to and that sort of thing. Sometimes even when I'm awake, it feels like my body just wants to stop breathing similarly to an apnea while I'm upright during the day - "too tired to breathe" and I have to force it to do so anyway.

My in-lab study was only about 3 hours. Low AHI 4.7. High RDI of 18, indicative of UARS automatically. About 50 RERAs during that 3 hours. Only got about 7 minutes of REM sleep per the in-lab study. CPAP in auto mode with minimum 7.6 or7.8 and max of 9cm seems to work great and gets 0.5AHI with barely any apneas/hypopneas. Sometimes RERAs and centrals register even when under lower pressure. No central apnea noted in in-lab study. Home sleep study showed 5.2AHI. SPO2 monitor confirmed heartbeat going up and down throughout the night. Home sleep study revealed apneas as long as 85 seconds and averaging 20-30 seconds, but my blood oxygen never seems to drop below about 93% or so. In the in-lab study, they said my O2 levels were fine. No restless leg syndrome note. On camera every night, I open my eyes and jump awake every 20-30 minutes at least. The motion sensor catches it every night. I can't figure out why. Has to be UARS. AHI numbers on APAP (Air Sense 10) are 0.5. Some nights it has controlled it so well that I had 0 events for the entire night for a flat 0 AHI.

Can my CPAP treat UARS specifically or not really? I've been worked over for every kind of health problem, blood test, heart issue, etc. They put me on Metoprolol to control heart rate/blood pressure and mask the symptoms, but I'm wondering if it isn't sleep-related. Anyone had anything like that? I have given up on my GP doctor as of yesterday. Neon greenish urine color on a daily basis, anxiety/shaky-like symptoms, felt like it was hard to inhale and hard to get enough air. Friday I had pain in my lower back area, lower stomach area and both sides on the front. GP doctor has brushed it off and was actually "sighing" at me yesterday because they weren't LISTENING and as a doctor all that they could see and think of was, "Well, we can increase your dosage of the Metoprolol" to mask the symptoms that they can't figure out. My face was flush red with a single massively deep-looking wrinkles/dark marks about 2 inches underneath each eye and almost halfway down my face. They said blood pressure was perfect. Before, they said my adrenal levels were borderline. No explanation for rapid heartbeat, sometimes higher blood pressure out of nowhere, etc. Even very odd reflex "jumps" that seem to originate from my core/possibly lower back in response to the back of my head unexpectedly touching the back of a chair when sitting down or feeling a blower blowing air down on my head as I enter a store door. My body reacts as if I nearly hit my head. My GP doctor treats me as if I'm some kind of mental case because they don't understand the symptoms. Today, they finally said that it "could" be related to my sleep apnea.

History: in-lab sleep study showed 4.7 AHI and 18 RDI over 2.75 hours of sleep. Total REM sleep during that time was about 6 minutes. Had deviated septum surgery and turbinate reduction surgery. It was a success. Breathing capacity improved, but didn't help my sleep. Home sleep study a long time after surgery recovery showed 5.2 AHI with average apneas of 20-30 seconds and one up to 85 seconds. No drop in blood oxygen levels (nothing below 93%) in in-lab study or home sleep study. I have also done my own SPO2 monitoring lots of times and I see a spiking heart rate, but oxygen levels are within reasonable levels of 93+%. Heart rate went down to the lowest point of 42bpm, which was alarming since O2 levels did not drop with it.

I'm on APAP (Air Sense 10) in CPAP mode right now. Starting pressure at 7, EPR set at 3 to Ramp Only, bumping up to 8cm max pressure after 5 minutes. Numbers are great. Typically around 0.5AHI and RDI using a nasal pillow mask with mouth taping. I average about 2 hypopneas and 1 apnea per NIGHT. I don't think it is OSA. It must be something on top of it.

Still feeling terrible. I'm about to begin my second journey to see what else could be wrong, starting with a full panel of blood work. I get heart flutters or palpitations on a daily basis. My resting heart rate is higher than normal and sometimes I feel like my heart is beating harder than usual when I do something that shouldn't really raise my pulse rate or make me that tired (e.g. carrying a moderately heavy object at work that doesn't weigh that much). Resting heart rate seems up sometimes for no reason and other times it is about 80bpm, but still feels like it is beating heavy as if I'm totally exhausted; and I am totally exhausted. Not overweight, very muscular and fit. 37 year old male. Had this issue since pre-teen years and seem to be no closer to figuring out what it is.

Scared to drive due to not feeling alert. I take a bus home that takes about 30+ minutes to get back to the station. I fall asleep after like 10 minutes of setting down in the afternoon around 3pm to 4pm. My job is active and keeps me standing and moving around all day, but if I sit down anywhere, I instantly get so sleepy that I could just go to sleep within minutes. I fall asleep sometimes within minutes of sitting down in my computer chair at home. As a passenger in a car, I could drop off to sleep within minutes of getting in. The little bumps on the road and feeling of the motion of the car moving are so relaxing to me. Hyper-sensitive reflexes. If anything brushes against my head, it makes my lower back muscles arch to abnormally jerk me away. Been to a neurologist and they have no idea why. Blood work in the past has revealed nothing with thyroid checked twice. A scary blood draw situation one time where I fainted for 15 minutes and blood pressure shot down to 60/60 and 52bpm pulse. They never figured out why. Obviously, they do an EKG when you're having the in-lab study and nothing was noted on that, so I don't think I have heart issues. There have been times lately where I have been scared that I do, though...simply because I feel so weird sometimes with the way it beats.

Anyone else have anything on top of sleep apnea? Suspected Narolepsy, but I'm not sure that I would actually fall asleep in a Multiple Sleep Latency Test setting and I may not even have it.

Mine looks blocky until I restart the program after changing it, then it seems to work right. The RDI is the exact same as the AHI. Is that generally right?

Under File---> Preferences ----> CPAP tab, there is an option to select "preferred major event index" and one of them is AHI and the other is RDI. I purged all previous data (started a new week with new settings yesterday and didn't need the old ones) and I switched that option to RDI before importing last night's study.

I don't see anything RDI-related in there, just the plain AHI as usual. Where can I find it?

Yes, both at 8cm.

Alright, so I did start pressure of 8 (didn't want to try the 7 yet) and EPR of 3cm on Ramp only.

2 hypopnea events and one obstructive for the whole night. I also had the craziest dream(s) this morning, which I think may be because of getting more REM-related sleep than normal. Some of them seemed like they lasted forever. Zero centrals showed up, so it probably is that EPR messing it up.

I saw a bit of odd looking, choppy-like breathing that I'll take a quick screenshot of later and post just because it looks so strange. Otherwise, I feel pretty good. I also went from medium to small on my Dreamwear nasal gel pillows. The Medium was more like a larger and the small is much more comfortable and doesn't cause painful sores on the bottom sides of my nose, so that is also helping. Just got that yesterday, as well.