Treatment Sleep apnea?

[Snafu in the Void]

I've recently started to suspect I may be suffering from sleep apnea. I've been told through my whole life from family and girlfriends that I snore loudly, but I'm also a man and never really thought much of it. Men snore, right?

About 2 years ago I noticed something odd for the first time. Sometimes, but not always, when I try to sleep sober I will start to hear myself snore while I'm still half-conscious. As I'm drifting off to sleep I can hear myself snore loudly and sometimes it will be so loud/intense that it jolts me awake, almost like I'm choking on my own breath. It seems to almost be labored breathing. It seems to happen 1-3 times and then I will actually fall asleep.

I've been having a lot of sober time recently in the last few months, much more than ever in the past, and have become more aware of my sleeping habits. Every night I will routinely wake up after every 90 minute sleeping cycle. I sleep in 90 minute chunks, very reliably and without much fluctuation. It's basically impossible for me to sleep through the whole night. It also seems like no matter how much I do sleep, I'm always tired during the day.

At first I logically blamed this on my addict brain damaged from so many years of alcohol and drugs, but I'm starting to suspect something else may be at play.

How does one go about getting a potential diagnosis? Do I have to spend the night at the doctor's office? I assume they can't diagnose you without watching you sleep?

Is sleep apnea really a life threatening issue?

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

Usually they do a "sleep study" where you sleep overnight in a hospital room fixed up like a bedroom, but are under observation. They typically hook you up to a 12-lead EKG so they can monitor and record your heart and breathing. My wife went through this procedure where they confirmed what I've told her, that she periodically stops breatning for extended periods of her sleep.

 

[n3ophy7e]

Usually they do a "sleep study" where you sleep overnight in a hospital room fixed up like a bedroom, but are under observation. They typically hook you up to a 12-lead EKG so they can monitor and record your heart and breathing. My wife went through this procedure where they confirmed what I've told her, that she periodically stops breatning for extended periods of her sleep.

I came here to say pretty much exactly this

I can report VERY similar experiences to you, @Snafu in the Void and I have suspected for many years that I too have sleep apnoea. Fun fact: my husband sleeps in the spare room because I snore so loud So it's me and my son in the master bedroom and my husband and the dogs in the spare bedroom I've been wanting to do a sleep study for years but it's just not a high priority unfortunately, especially with the baby. I'll do it one day. I actually want to get my soft palate surgically altered to fix my snoring so that my husband and I can share a bed again

Interestingly enough, my son is having a sleep study done in November as he most likely has sleep apnoea! It will be interesting to see the results.

 

[Eligiu]

Narcoleptic here. I had to have two sleep studies done, one to rule out sleep apnea, the other to test for narcolepsy. They take you in overnight (though some places allow take home tests) and hook you up to a bunch of electrodes. Seriously, heaps. There's gonna be glue shit in your hair. They also put them on your body, arms and legs. This is to measure everything from your heart rate, leg movement and arm movement, and they set up an oxygen measurement thingy which figures out the data on how many times you stopped breathing during the night.

Now, I'm not sure of the amount of times it has to be for sleep apnea to be diagnosed, I only know the criteria for narcolepsy. All I know is that I don't have sleep apnea. However, I tend to snore much more whilst sleeping on my back than I do on my side and can also sometimes hear myself doing it.

As a trans man, I'm more at risk of developing sleep apnea due to the testosterone which is why we had it tested for, as well as that being standard protocol.

Once the study is done, they send your results off to the sleep specialist. The technicians can't tell you anything so don't expect them to. The specialist will analyse your results and tell you what's going on.

It's a pretty simple process, although sometimes you need to come off meds for the study. Also they'll ask you to keep a sleep journal for around 2 weeks I think.

Breathing interruptions, snoring, and frequent awakening are all signs of sleep apnea so I think it's a good idea to get checked out.

 

[n3ophy7e]

Narcoleptic here. I had to have two sleep studies done, one to rule out sleep apnea, the other to test for narcolepsy. They take you in overnight (though some places allow take home tests) and hook you up to a bunch of electrodes. Seriously, heaps. There's gonna be glue shit in your hair. They also put them on your body, arms and legs. This is to measure everything from your heart rate, leg movement and arm movement, and they set up an oxygen measurement thingy which figures out the data on how many times you stopped breathing during the night.

Now, I'm not sure of the amount of times it has to be for sleep apnea to be diagnosed, I only know the criteria for narcolepsy. All I know is that I don't have sleep apnea. However, I tend to snore much more whilst sleeping on my back than I do on my side and can also sometimes hear myself doing it.

As a trans man, I'm more at risk of developing sleep apnea due to the testosterone which is why we had it tested for, as well as that being standard protocol.

Once the study is done, they send your results off to the sleep specialist. The technicians can't tell you anything so don't expect them to. The specialist will analyse your results and tell you what's going on.

It's a pretty simple process, although sometimes you need to come off meds for the study. Also they'll ask you to keep a sleep journal for around 2 weeks I think.

Breathing interruptions, snoring, and frequent awakening are all signs of sleep apnea so I think it's a good idea to get checked out.

That's excellent info, thanks mate.

 

[Snafu in the Void]

I'm assuming they don't give you anything to help you sleep after hooking you up to all that stuff?

Sounds like it might be hard to sleep

 

[Eligiu]

I'm assuming they don't give you anything to help you sleep after hooking you up to all that stuff?

Sounds like it might be hard to sleep

No, they don't want to give you anything that might impact the results of the test. Honestly it isn't that hard to sleep unless you thrash around. You get used to the feeling of the wires on you pretty quickly and it's not really a big deal. I fell asleep in under 2 minutes, but again, I'm narcoleptic and that's kind of what we do.

I had to do a second study where I slept overnight again, then the next day is a 'nap test' where they set 2 hour intervals 5 times across the day and you get told to nap at that time, and to pass and get a diagnosis you need to fall asleep within a certain number of minutes and go into REM in 2/5 naps. Sleep latency (how long it takes you to fall asleep) needs to be under 10 minutes.

Technically I fall between being narcoleptic and having 'idiopathic hypersomnia' (which is a fancy way of saying you sleep too much and we don't know why) but I also have the sleep paralysis and hallucinations common with narcolepsy. I fell asleep in all of my naps within 5 minutes or less except one because I needed to piss really badly so my sleep latency was just under 10 even with the fucked up nap. When I saw the specialist he was like 'so what happened with this nap' and I just replied saying I needed to piss and he laughed.

The one downside to having a sleep disoder aside from the constant lethargy is that usually they put conditions on your driver's licence. I have to be medicated and show good symptom relief and have a letter from my specialist every year when my license gets renewed and they won't take just a GP letter, it has to be from the guy in charge.

Thankfully at this stage I'm now finally on Dexamphetamine, which was a whole ordeal to get prescribed with my drug use history (5x maintenance therapy, huge red flags) but they eventually gave me the authority to have it with some strict conditions like collecting it from a designated chemist twice weekly, random fortnightly urine drug tests, and random checks for IV drug use by my GP. The good thing is my GP doesn't actually care if I happen to use other drugs while on the Dex. I told him a couple of weeks back I took some old valium I found while moving houses and he just laughed and asked me how it was considering it was long out of date. So he's pretty lenient and it works out well once I finally got on a medication that worked.

 

[Shady's Fox]

I know people who sleep with their head tucked into pillow or better, they're still cousins but differ by "walk" are those who sleep with the blanket over head and you know.. depending where they got this habit. Either being EU and mosquitos.. either you know simply breaking routine. Snoring isn't going to kill you. This whole dying in sleep is so heavily bombarded similar to what we see in the fish market where people actually fish instead of buying one. Listen those are processed to have low level mercury and marine food is the camouflaged enemy within. I saw articles read some myself.. you're ok unless you hold your breath intentionally you'll not hug the oblivion

 

[Eligiu]

I know people who sleep with their head tucked into pillow or better, they're still cousins but differ by "walk" are those who sleep with the blanket over head and you know.. depending where they got this habit. Either being EU and mosquitos.. either you know simply breaking routine. Snoring isn't going to kill you. This whole dying in sleep is so heavily bombarded similar to what we see in the fish market where people actually fish instead of buying one. Listen those are processed to have low level mercury and marine food is the camouflaged enemy within. I saw articles read some myself.. you're ok unless you hold your breath intentionally you'll not hug the oblivion

Sleep Apnea is a real disorder. It doesn't cause people to die, but it causes them to have immense fatigue during the day unless it's treated. If OP has reason to believe that they should get tested, I think and agree that they should get tested. That way they can enjoy the positive side effects of treatment from a CPAP machine.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I saw articles read some myself.. you're ok unless you hold your breath intentionally you'll not hug the oblivion

are you a doctor? what expertise do you have to claim this is not a problem?

i have mild sleep apnea- i.e. it has been confirmed in a sleep study in a hospital that my sleep is interrupted by stopping breathing several times an hour. this is a central apnea- i.e. caused by my brain not being so fat my chest is suffocating me. it was not enough times for the NHS to see it worth treating. being tired all the time due to not being able to get a decent nights sleep has ruined my life. my entire addiction history is tied up with having been tired forever. poor quality sleep causes a slew of mental and physical health problems. no, its not life threatening, but it can be life ruining.

all my partners have observed me stopping breathing in the night (even when i wasn't close to ODing on downers) routinely, and i snore like a fucking train.

@Snafu in the Void someone on here recently said that a long history of opioid abuse can increase chances of sleep apnea, i haven't looked into fact checking that.

i first had to wear a pulse oximiter (i think) every night for a while (a week i think), this indicated that something was going on so i was taken in for sleep studies. that was just for one night and you're hooked up to a load of machines which isn't ideal but isn't as uncomfortable as i'd expected. i did at least get my own bedroom so didn't have to deal with distraction of other people on top of that. obviously i'm in the UK and this was like 17 years ago so things may have changed.

they did not give me anything to help me sleep and i was super worried about that so smoked a fuck ton of weed before i went in. i don't think they would want to give someone anything that causes even mild respiratory depression before going into such studies, given your breathing is what is causing the problem if you do have apnea doing anything to impact that would not give the most reliable results so i can't see them doing it without clinical need.

 

[BadAddiction]

"Is sleep apnea really a life threatening issue?"

Study Shows That People with Sleep Apnea Have High Risk of Death

A study shows the connection between severe or untreated sleep apnea and increased risk of death. Learn more about sleep apnea risks and treatment now.

aasm.org

"Do I have to spend the night at the doctor's office? I assume they can't diagnose you without watching you sleep?"

This kept me from having a sleep study done for over 2 years. My insurance only pays for sleep studies done at a facility where you have to spend the night. I refuse to do that. But in January of this year I began having an abnormal lack of energy during the day. I can take naps and STILL not feel rested. I wake up with headaches, as well, which is another symptom. Went to the doctor and he said the same damn thing he always does. "You need to do a sleep study." I still wasn't onboard with the idea of going to a sleep study lab. So what I did was pay for an at home test ($300 + $50 for the initial consultation with a doctor). Found out I have moderate sleep apnea, and lower than normal oxygen levels while I sleep -- at one point it was down to 60%. The sleep doctor said, "...to put that in perspective, if you're in the hospital and your oxygen falls below 80%, alarms start going off and nurses rush into your room."

So now I have the test results. Going to my regular doctor tomorrow. There's still a possibility he won't prescribe a CPAP because I didn't do the in-house study, but we'll see. Fingers crossed! Worst case scenario, I will buy my own unit. Self-titrating, of course, and probably used. Not going to pay thousands for a new one...

 

[Jabberwocky]

Increased risk of stroke, heart attack, dementia, parkinsons, and Alzheimer’s

fucking hell i did not know that.

i'm already at increased risk due to the insane crack addiction, long term ED can't have been great for my heart either.

i might just have to fork out and buy my own CPAP if those are the consequences of not having it. degenerative brain disease is petrifying.