Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

I think I have OSA

i know i have sleep apnia...i have a cpac but never use it...thanks for the clarification...only the capt would notice....lol

My step dad has sleep apnia. He has the big mask, but doesn't wear it because it's "uncomfortable".

zazanomore wrote:

My step dad has sleep apnia. He has the big mask, but doesn't wear it because it's "uncomfortable".

me too zaza


dusty

My husband has it, but won't wear his mask. This is why he is banished to the guest room. He rattles the walls, it is the worst snoring I have ever heard.

My step dad's snoring is the worst.

I can hear him from downstairs.

And it isn't uncommon to find out that my mom started smacking his head to try to make him stop.

My 2 brothers use their cpacs every nite,I haven't been checked, i probably should because Jake mimics my snoring.(and no i'm not making a video of that)

I have fairly mild, REM-only sleep apnea. I could not face the idea of a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine especially given the very low overall interruptions number. But my snoring was bothering my husband. I did a titration test with one and did not sleep at all with it. So I opted for an oral device, like a retainer. It positions the lower jaw forward, so the tongue is less likely to block the airway. My husband says I'm very quiet now.

It's been very successful for me, minimal drama and impact, maximal benefit. And my insurance covered it -- the studies are starting to mount up showing it as an effective and far more usable option to CPAP.

My husband's snoring is now bothering me... that's the next project I guess!

I have insomnia. Woo! it sucks. haha

hannahbird wrote:

I have insomnia. Woo! it sucks. haha

LOL Hannah, I do too! (As evidenced by the time of this post! haha!)

So...I keep seeing the title of this thread and thinking it's "obstetrics..." not "obstructive..."

Yeah...I'm strange

My pop also has OSA He used to snore like nobody else I've heard!

MandaDPanda wrote:

So...I keep seeing the title of this thread and thinking it's "obstetrics..." not "obstructive..."

Well, obstetrical nursing really IS my first love (and one of my two specialties! LOL!)

MandaDPanda wrote:

My pop also has OSA He used to snore like nobody else I've heard!

I'm sure that there are more people than we know who have OSA and are undiagnosed. It's a shame, really. I wonder if it would make an impact on the numbers of people with heart damage later in life if more people were tested for this. I'm almost certain it would make a difference in the number of well-rested, happy people walking around every day!

VickiNumbers wrote:

I'm almost certain it would make a difference in the number of well-rested, happy people walking around every day!

This. Seriously.

Well, I think if the effectiveness of the oral devices was pushed, more people would seek treatment. IMO it is the rare person that's going to cope well with CPAP. And while I now notice some small difference on the few occasions I have forgotten to wear the device, despite the sleep M.D.s apparent conviction that all people are really morning people in disguise, I still don't leap out of bed all morning-person-like. Which was a bit of a relief -- I am actually the person I thought I was all along... LOL.

Since I'm a scientist and I have a sympathetic physician, he gave me a lot of technical information for me to read in an attempt to convince me. I guess I'm a bit of a hard sell, because it seemed to me that only the tiniest fraction of the studies linking OSA to all those dire conditions like heart disease etc. were cohort studies that would separate out causality from correlation. Since OSA is strongly and mechanically linked to overweight, Occam's razor suggests to me that that's the causal link, not the OSA itself. But a couple of the cohort studies were suggestive, if involving very small numbers of patients.

At any rate, it's a much easier bullet to bite (so to speak) to have to carry around and use a device about the size of a retainer than it is to hook yourself up to wheezing constraining machine every night. And to have to lug something like that around on travel. Ugh. I'd actually rather die young. I think low impact, easily tolerable treatment is the key to getting people interested in being diagnosed. That and setting a clear threshold for when treatment is really needed. I think the material I read suggested that normal people do have some interruptions, although perhaps less than 10/hour. I had only 15/hour but they were 100% correlated with periods of REM sleep, which was deemed significant in it's own right.

I had severe apnea, to the point of (don't laugh) brain damage from lack of oxygen over so many years. I'm not retarded, but my memory is now like swiss cheese and I have to concentrate very hard on things to accomplish them. I finally went to a sleep study 4 yrs ago and my apnea was so bad that I made their computers go offline and bluescreen, LOL. I don't remember what the actual numbers are but your oxygen level during sleep isn't supposed to go below like 82% or something like that and mine was in the 30% range. Over a 6 hr study, I stopped breathing 21 times.

Needless to say, I was immediately sent to an ENT and underwent sinus surgery because my sinuses were not functioning properly. That was one of the most painful procedures I had ever gone through, but it saved my life. I was put on CPAP and now can't sleep without it because my lungs don't know how to function on their own when I sleep, my apnea had been so bad for most of my life. If I try to sleep without it, I get what I can only compare to as asthma attacks and wake up gasping.

But I will say after living a life of apnea (without knowing it) that my life was like night and day after the surgery and use of CPAP. I did lose a lot of my memory, but I am more awake now, can focus on work and don't find myself nodding off halfway through the day anymore.

Vikki wrote:

Over a 6 hr study, I stopped breathing 21 times.

I suspect you mean 21 times an hour. 3-4 per hour would be in the normal range and it sounds as if your apnea was very severe indeed.

Vikki, not to pry...but do they do any studies relating severe apnea to Alzheimer's?

Pop has had pretty bad apnea for a while. He is now in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Something in my brain clicked when you said your memory was swiss cheese. Just wondering. Of course, I love my Pop so anything that may have some sort of connection to help him...I'm going to jump on, even if it doesn't make sense.

Manda, they may. The only reason my memory is like swiss cheese is because I had been so oxygen deprived for most of my life that it killed a whole bunch of brain cells. And SNS, yes, 21 times per hour. They said that I never effectively entered REM sleep at all, which to me is odd because I always dreamed no matter how much I slept.

Vikki wrote:

Manda, they may. The only reason my memory is like swiss cheese is because I had been so oxygen deprived for most of my life that it killed a whole bunch of brain cells. And SNS, yes, 21 times per hour. They said that I never effectively entered REM sleep at all, which to me is odd because I always dreamed no matter how much I slept.

Manda, Alzheimer's sucks, I am so sorry. I don't know if there is an OSA link, but if his apnea is severe it's probably worth trying to treat it. Might be hard for a person with memory issues to follow through, though.

Vikki, it's when you are aroused during REM sleep that you most likely remember your dreams. I was actually afraid, if my apnea was 100% during REM, that I'd lose some of my vivid dream life, which I actually enjoy. Didn't happen. So I'd guess you probably entered REM before the interruption. I have the sense that what seems like a long time in a dream is actually only seconds or fractions thereof.