Hi @Missjudi, this site isn't specifically for any treatment type - we want to open the discussion up for all aspects of sleep apnea, research, and treatment. There are always many discussions about CPAP because its such a common treatment choice. There was a thread earlier about dental appliances that might help initially.
Perhaps an even better idea - you can start a new topic to open the discussion up and hear from others who use mouth guards. Just visit this link, name it something like "Sleep Apnea Mouth Guards" so that it's very clear and easy to find for others, and add as much info as you would like! Let me know if you have any questions!
Hi I just joined this forum, for along time I was very active in the old ""Sleep Apnea Support Forum"" I was diagnosed with sleep apnea back in January of 2007. Had a very difficult time of it, as CPAP didn't help, in a period of less than a year and a half, I had 5 full in lab sleep studies done, went from CPAP to BiBAP to BiPAP with O2, and numerous pressure changes! Finally in May of 2008, my normal Sleep Apnea doctor got sick and I was give a different doctor, who thoroughly reviewed my case, and suggested that I be given a ASV titration study because of the history of mixed apneas, (Central and Obstructive) The rest is history I have been on the ResMed VPAP Adapt SV machine with 3 liters of O2 ever since, and have done great! I am one that sings the praises of the ASV machine! I use it with the Respironics Fitlife total face mask. Within two weeks of using the ASV machine my bed drenching night sweats completely disappeared, and within a few months the dread sleep apnea fog also finally lifted! Anyway I heard about this web site, on a very very late night talk radio program, and thought I would check it out and then decided to join. I am a very avid supporter of treating sleep apnea, and as I used to say, and still do, is: the whole secret to success is persistence in getting proper treatment, and then in the case of "PAP" using your mask and machine, every night all night long!
Hello, I'm Jacob. I have had sleep apnea for about 15 years. I have had c-pap for that period. I have been unable to sleep with the machine on a regular basis for most of that time. I start every night trying because I cannot sleep on my back or I start to suffocate. I usually 2-5fdan keep the mask on for hours. I never really feel refreshed, just different stages of tired.
Hello myapnea, I am from Bahrain, age 34, weight 83. Since 6 years , I have continuous severe headaches, I hardly sleep at night and wake up starving for breath every 10 to 20 mins. I doze off while driving, and always sleepy during the day. I have been to ENT , neurologist, don't all types of tests . Recently a neurologist did a sleep test and he concluded abnormal polysomnography , with findings of suggestive obstructive sleep apnea and strongly recommended me cpap with pressure of 14cm/h2o. They tested cpap on me for an hour, asked me to breath in from the nose and breath out from the mouth, I went choking with this cpap and was not able to wake up. Later with cpap I tried breathing from the mouth only, and I had the best sleep of my life. Please advise me what should I do, I scared of using cpap all my life , Please help, I cannot suffer from severe headache and deprived from sleep its 6 years now.
Hi I have posted on here before. My name is Anthony:
I have been having a hard time with sleeping and Sleep Apnea. I always wake up many times and use the bathroom, don't know if this is common. They are trying to solve this. Another problem is whenever I read or lay down to relax almost right away I fall asleep Its almost like the falling asleep is too fast.
I have talked to my doctor who sees me for my Sleep Apnea all the symptoms and she doesn't seem to considered. I think I have Narcoelspy sorry about the spelling. But! I don't have all the signs. I don't know if you need to have all of them to be considered this way. Thank you for your help.
Anthony J. Nacke
Welcome @WhiteBeard, and very glad to hear you persisted with treatment and have been so successful! Hopefully, your story will help inspire others. Welcome to MyApnea.Org, and please feel free to post on the forum and share any insight you have that might be helpful to other members!
@ReliableSlateGrayRaccoon1728--Hi Jacob. If you do not mind me asking, is there a specific reason you start every night trying to sleep on your back? Sleep in the supine position is not required when using CPAP. Have you tried sleeping on your side to see if your experience improves?
Hello @SilverStar. Did your sleep study include a CPAP titration study? I am wondering how the pressure of 14 cm was determined. Also, what kind of mask are you wearing? If you are wearing a full face mask, breathing through your mouth is okay. As for wearing CPAP for life, I encourage you to talk to your sleep physician about possible treatment options that might be available to you if you are unable to tolerate CPAP. However, don't give up! I have been on treatment for many years now, and I was also scared of having to wear CPAP for the rest of my life. With time, I adjusted and now cannot imagine sleeping with out it! Good luck, and please continue to post if you have additional questions. We have other members who have shared their experiences with CPAP on the forum. If anyone has any tips for Bahrain, please share them!
Thanks,
Dan
Hi Anthony. I read through your earlier posts, and I see that you were told you had mild sleep apnea. I did not see any mention of treatment. Did your doctor put you on CPAP or some other treatment? If not, do you know if he or she plans to try treating the sleep apnea? The symptoms you describe can be associated with sleep apnea. In fact, one of the most common complaints among patients with sleep apnea is that they fall asleep when trying to read or watch TV, or that they become drowsy while driving. A diagnosis of narcolepsy is more difficult, and it usually requires an overnight sleep study followed by a daytime study called a Multiple Sleep Latency Test. Your physician would likely consider the results of both tests, but sleep apnea would usually be treated first. I hope this information is helpful, but please do post any questions you have.
Thanks,
Dan
I am new to this forum. My husband has Complex Sleep Apnea. Changes in his behavior was my first clue that something was wrong. Plus his snoring at night woke me up frequently. He was diagnosed 2 years ago. Started on a Cpap, but that did not seem to decrease his AHIs / symptoms He has been on an ASV for over a year. He uses the ASV for at least 5 hours per night and 6 out of 7 nights. The sleep doctor told us that his cognitive challenges would be resolved with the ASV. I am not seeing this happen. It seems like he still has impairments (i.e. forgetfulness, slow processing information, asking the same questions within a few minutes, lack of awareness, money management, forgetting a word then has to substitute other words, forgetting names, difficulty in learning new things, and staying attentive.) Does anyone know why there has not been improvement in those areas? Has the brain been permanently damaged? Is there a potential for vascular dementia?
Hello @DanM , they put me on cpap and did a study of my sleep with that, they gave me a mask that just fitted my nose, and I could not breath in from my nose , i was only able to breath in and out from my mouth. I cannot sleep with a machine all my life, there must be some other way to cure this..
Hi, my name is Pat and I am very new at this.Last Friday night was my first night with my nose mask. That was a real disaster--I spent the night taking it off out of panic thinking I couldn't breathe. Yesterday I was fitted with a nose & mouth mask. Again, I couldn't keep it on. Each time my mouth gets so dry. I increase the humidity but that didn't seem to help. Today when I was going to take a nap, I put on the nose/mouth mask and as soon as that burst of air hit me, I went into A-fib and had to take it off because my breathing was too fast and erratic. I am a 77-yr old female who has probably had sleep apnea for at least 10 yrs but just now diagnosed with severe complex sleep apnea with high BP and A-fib. I want so much for this to work because I want to get my BP and A-fib under control. Tonight I am going to use the nose mask again and hopefully can calm myself enough to get some sleep. While I am watching my favorite baseball team this evening, I am going to do as some suggested and put the mask on and hopefully get this ole brain of mine to accept what must be. I'm hoping to hear some good tips on how to make this easier.
Just discovered this site and forum. For 15 years my wife has said I snore and stop breathing every night, but a sleep study a few yrs ago was inconclusive. Seven weeks ago our cat woke me early in the AM for food, I went back to bed planning to get up when alarm went off in 30 minutes. I had a bad seizure (never had one before), dislocated my shoulder and fell out of bed on the already injured shoulder at the same time. After EEG and MRI tests (both negative) in the following week, no one has come up with a reason for the seizure, but my family Dr suggested sleep apnea as a possibility. Right away I started sleeping with my wife's oxygen concentrator in case that was it. I took a home sleep test and sure enough, it confirmed what my wife has said. I got fitted with a ResMed AirSense 10 two weeks ago and have been using it every night. I'm not sure I sleep better yet, the pressure may be waking me up a few times a night, but my wife says NO MORE SNORING ! I'm afraid to NOT use it in case apnea was the cause of the seizure, the dislocated shoulder was/is very painful.
Hello @CreativeIndigoShark2210. Welcome to MyApnea.Org. For some people, PAP treatment does improve some of the symptoms you mention. However, medications and underlying medical conditions may also contribute to these symptoms and behaviors. It would be important to discuss this with your physician to see if there are other factors contributing to the challenges you mention. Your questions about reasons for lack of improvement in the areas you describe, potential brain damage and dementia are all good ones, but these questions would likely require further testing by your husband's physician or other specialists. I am happy to hear he is using his treatment regularly, as we know that sleep apnea contributes to so many other health conditions. Please continue to visit the forum, complete the surveys and consider posting a research question. And best wishes as you continue to seek answers and help improve your husband's health.
Hello @SilverStar. There are other treatment options that you may consider discussing with your physician, as he would best know what is appropriate based on your sleep study results. Have you considered talking with him about an oral appliance (dental device), possible surgical options or something like the Inspire implant?
Hi @azpatsmr. I'm sorry to hear your first couple of nights have been so difficult, but you are not alone. Your idea of attempting to wear the mask while awake and watching baseball is an excellent one. We often suggest that new patients try wearing their treatment while awake and doing something like watching television or reading. This helps adjust to the feeling of the mask on your face and to the feeling of the air pressure that is entering your airway. As for the dryness, continue using your humidifier to see if dryness improves as you adjust to treatment. For some patients, an additional room humidifier and the use of saline spray at night may be helpful. If severe dryness persists, I encourage you to contact your equipment provider and ask them to make sure your humidifier is functioning properly. Several MyApnea.Org members have reported that visualization helps them lower anxiety and adjust to their new treatment. Imagine yourself in a place that you consider most relaxing and pay attention to slowly breathing in and out. Please keep us posted on your progress, and come back to the forum and post additional questions if we can help!
Hi @GlennP. I am very sorry to hear about your seizure and the associated injury. Welcome to MyApnea.Org, and I hope you are on the mend and recovering well! While there have been some published studies on sleep apnea and seizures, there are sometimes no certain answers about the cause of a seizure. I am glad your family doctor suggested a sleep study and treatment for your sleep apnea. I encourage you to continue using your treatment nightly, but do contact your physician or home care company if the awakenings associated with high pressures continue after another couple of weeks. It does take some time to adjust to the air pressure, and I'm happy to hear you are no longer snoring. And I'm sure your wife is happy too! Keep us posted on your progress, and we invite you complete the surveys and propose any research questions that might interest you. All the best with your treatment and continued healing.
Hi there, I'm 32 and I recently underwent another sleep study that confirmed a prior diagnosis of sleep apnea. The strange thing for me is that in a previous sleep study my reading was mild with under 10 episodes per hour and during this new study my readings were over 100 events per hour. Nothing about me has changed. In fact I've actually lost weight (and I'm not overweight to begin with... apparently it's my facial anatomy) which I have been told is beneficial but I did sleep better during this study after they doped me up with ambien. Unfortunately my new cpap machine has no way of addressing my underlying sleep maintenance insomnia. I went into my last sleep study hoping for answers but so far all that I have gotten are an expensive machine that doesn't help me and a new prescription for more powerful drugs. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to wait this out and do everything I can to get better but I want to know if anybody has any advice on surgical options or whether anyone else has had similar experiences. Oh and one more thing: Is it possible to have mouth leakage while using a cpap machine without experiencing dry mouth? I'm just wondering because my doctor advised me recently to wear a chin strap but I haven't experienced any telltale signs and my cpap report hasn't recorded any major leaks. My doctor seemed to think the small amount of leakage that was present indicated mouth leak but I'm also a restless sleeper. I'm just hoping for answers.
Hello. My name is Allison and I was diagnosed with Severe Complex Sleep Apnea last month after suffering from severe fatigue, daytime tiredness, poor sleep and my partner complaining about my snoring and then videoing me sleeping to show how bad it was. I saw I was more than snoring; I was struggling to breath and stopped breathing. Fortunately I got into the sleep study within a few weeks and they called me back for an appointment to review the results right away. My Sleep study revealed my AHI was 85.1 events/hour. My oxygen desaturations dropped to a low of 63% with 12.8% of the total sleep time spent with oxygen saturation of less than 90%. I had zero slow wave sleep and 96% of my sleep was N2. I'm going back in a week or so for her to read the results for the month and convert me to a Bi-PAP and then to do another overnight study with the machine. I am relieved to get the diagnosis because it explains why I'm so tired all the time and I've been struggling with memory loss and deminished cognitive skills which prevents me from doing many functions of my job. I've been doing a lot of reading on complex sleep apnea and there is a lot to comprehend. Its nice to find this site and hopefully be able to talk with others experiencing this disease.
Hello @ResourcefulPeriwinkleHorse2611. It is possible to have some leak without experiencing dry mouth. However, people with larger leaks who tend to be mouth-breathers frequently experience dry mouth when on PAP treatment. When this occurs, a chin strap or a full face mask is usually used to either try to correct or accommodate the mouth breathing. As for your sleep study, there are many things that contribute to an increase in AHI besides weight. Medications that promote relaxation can cause the airway and breathing muscles to become more relaxed and a change in body position (usually to supine) can increase events. There are other possibilities as well. It is great that you are sticking with treatment and trying to find answers. I have no personal experience with surgical options, but there are some options out there. The new Inspire implant has recently created a fair amount of excitement in the field, and that is just one option. Your sleep physician should be able to talk with you about other options and potentially refer you for further evaluations. In the meantime, best of luck as you continue your search for better sleep!
