My Life and Sleep Apnea

Information is constantly being sent throught out our bodies. In our brains there is something called serotonin that is a neurotransmitter which is a nerve signaling chemical that is sent to the brain to regulate our mood, it is one of many chemicals that provide some kind of information to the brain. While we are sleeping the chemical melatonin works in conjunction with our Circadian Rhythm  that controls when we sleep and when we are awake. It is also used by some as a sleep aid. So is there any connection between sleep apnea and melatonin? How is melatonin produced ? According to Wikipedia “melatonin is produced by the pineal gland, a gland about the size of a pea, located in the center of the brain but outside the blood-brain barrier. The melatonin signal forms part of the system that regulates the sleep-wake cycle by chemically causing drowsiness and lowering the body temperature.” The pineal gland is only active at night and that is when melatonin is produced and at...

I used to work overnight on a job from 11 to 7 in the morning. I found it very difficult to sleep during the day. I put sheets over the curtains to block as much light as possible into the room but that didn’t help. I put ear plugs in to make it as quiet as possible but it didn’t help (especially since I was living in an apartment at the time). Even before the sleep apnea I had always been a light sleeper. I don’t think at the time that my sleep apnea was as bad as it is now. I weighted about 40 pounds less for one thing and I used to sleep on my stomach for another. By the time evening rolled around I was dead tired and worked through my shift like a zombie. The strange part about it was that when I went home in the morning, even as tired as I was I still had a hard time getting to sleep. At the time I hadn’t heard about shift work sleep disorder. Apparently I wasn’t the only person that had a hard time switching between work shifts, going from day shifts to night shifts. Ap...