My Life and Sleep Apnea

Possibly the most common form of sleep disorder is insomnia , which can range from a few sleepless nights to the more serious problem of being unable to sleep for months even years. Unlike sleep apnea insomnia can be cured without surgery or wearing a cpap mask. Insomnia can be broken down into 3 categories 1. Transient that lasts no longer than a week 2. Short term is greater than a week and less than 3 weeks 3. Chronic insomnia is anything longer than short term. It is important to remember that insomnia isn’t just the inability to fall asleep it is also the inability to stay asleep. There are many risks involved with insomnia, probably the most dangerous one is falling asleep while driving. There are things that can be done to solve this problem such as cognitive behavior training, which is changing the sleeping behavior of the insomnia patients. This is considered to be a better way to cure insomnia than medication which can lead to dependency. It is always...

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...

When I was using the cpap mask years ago I probably made it through about 4 or 5 hours before I would pull off the cpap mask . After I did that it seemed like I slept better. Although looking back I probably didn’t sleep better with the mask off it just seemed more comfortable than having the mask off. From what I have read I’m not the only person who did that. In sleep apnea forums I have found that it is common for sleep apnea sufferers to wake up in the middle of the night with a dry throat, or dry gums or just irritated from having the mask on. Of course I used a full face mask which creates a whole series of problems for cpap users. The biggest problem with that is leakage; at least it was a problem when I used the cpap. I’m sure that there have been improvements made to the cpap masks now. Another problem is panic, as in panicking because you think that your air is being cut off. That happened to me a few times. I never had a problem with claustrophobia but some folks do ...

Last summer I had cataract surgery which for most people is a relatively easy and safe procedure. Of course it wasn’t for me. My first problem was the kind of eye problems (glaucoma) that I had. Before the surgery the pupils in my eyes were very small which made the surgery difficult and required a cornea specialist. And at the time my meniere’s disease (a disease that is similar to vertigo where you have spinning attacks) was probably the worse it had ever been. I had many attacks that just came up on me. I worried that I would have an attack during the surgery. I discussed this with the surgeon before my surgery date. He explained to me that he usually put the patient into what was called ‘twilight” not completely out but in a very sleepy state. When I told him about my meniere’s disease he suggested that I might be better served if I was completely under anesthesia during the surgery. Then I told him about my sleep apnea and he decided that putting me completely under would defi...

One of the problems that I had with the cpap machine was that my sinuses were always stuffed up, especially in the morning after a night of the air blowing in my mouth and nose. It seemed like I had a cold or allergies everyday, I was always blowing my nose or feeling congested. From what I understand that feeling isn’t uncommon among people who use cpap machines. Of course it may be different now because of the humidifiers built into the machines, however I’m not quite sure. But there does seem to be one way to counter a stuffed up sinus, sinus irrigation . I had never heard or read about it till I saw an article about it on the web, (you can find everything on the web). It seems that this is an ancient procedure for draining the nasal passages. You can either whip up the recipe at home or buy a kit at the health store. Before you try any of this you need to talk to your doctor about sinus irrigation to see if it is okay. I would be leery about pouring anything in my nostr...

Heart disease and sleep apnea unfortunately have a connection. I know this first hand because my father died of a heart attack and he had sleep apnea. As I have written in an earlier post when he started to have heart attacks no one talked about sleep apnea. No one ever mentioned the term, so he didn’t know that he had a sleeping disorder . What does sleep apnea do to the heart ? Sleep apnea causes breathing to stop many times, even hundreds of times during the night. The sleep apnea sufferer wakes up to catch their breath and then fall back to sleep only to wake again a few minutes later. This happens so many times that they don’t even remember waking up. The body has to wake up because of the fear of suffocation. The effect of the vicious cycle is the loss of oxygen to the body. This condition may lead to coronary heart disease and high blood pressure. And if you already have heart disease from some other cause sleep apnea will make it much worse. The scary part about all th...

Lack of sleep even on a temporary basis can have a negative effect on your life. If you have been sick or stressed out about something you may find yourself lying awake at night unable to sleep. And while you are lying there you can’t stop thinking about how tired you will be in the morning. When morning comes you are indeed tired and probably irritable. You aren’t quite as attentive as you usually are. Your mood takes a nose dive and the only thing that you can think about is getting sleep. What if you felt this way every day? That is pretty much how the typical sleep apnea sufferer feels every day. You wake constantly through the night never falling into a deep REM sleep . When you get out of the bed you feel terrible as if you didn’t sleep at all and you really didn’t. If you have read about sleep apnea you know how the health risks involved. The most frightening is the increased chance of heart disease. Your heart is being damaged by the lack of oxygen which could lead to a...