Apnea fainting feeling question

[Moemah123]

Hi everyone,

So I am doing okay on my apnea therapy, still expirementing but overall better. I need help with understanding sleep without cpap. Whenever I go for a nap if it is like 20 min nap. I immediately fall asleep, but I get a fainting, sinking feeling when I wake up out of nap. Best way to describe it is drowning. Does anyone know what this feeling is or why? It's like I can't even nap without a cpap or I risk extreme discomfort. Is it supposed to be this bad? If I tune my cpap to lowest settings could and post Oscar would that explain what's going on? Or if I am to consult a doctor, what should I expect they monitor for ? 

Apologies if I didn't explain well , please ask me questions to clarify as I basically feel unless there is cpal around, I am doomed not to sleep. What is even confusing is my pressure settings are not that high, so I cannot explain how my body now is completely dependent on cpap otherwise I immediately feel sick even if I nap 20 minutes and can feel crap all day.

Appreciate your kind help and insights,

[OpalRose]

Whenever I go for a nap if it is like 20 min nap. I immediately fall asleep, but I get a fainting, sinking feeling when I wake up out of nap. Best way to describe it is drowning. Does anyone know what this feeling is or why?

I experienced something similar to that "before" I was even diagnosed with Sleep Apnea.  I could fall asleep easily enough, but waking was pure terror.  I would wake on my back and felt like I was literally sinking into the sofa or bed.  There was no way I could get up or move.  I believe it's called "Sleep paralysis".

Even now, after almost 8 years on Pap therapy, the few times I've napped during the day would result in the same feeling.  So I don't purposely nap without my machine.  That's just the way it is.

Unfortunately for folk like you and I and many others, taking a nap without your machine is a bad idea.  

Not everyone has issues with napping without their Cpap.
We're just lucky.  

[Moemah123]

I have a follow up question. I have used the wellue O2 ring and noticed lots of heart rate spikes into 70s, 80s is this considered normal? Is this because ASV is maybe increasing pressure or it corelates to motion and if I should be concerned? Appreciate the help!

[Crimson Nape]

While you seem to have a bunch of spikes, I would be inclined to call them artifacts.  The heart rate doesn't change that abruptly and that fast.   Were you having a restless sleep?  Even something like scratching an itch with the probe hand could cause spikes.

[Moemah123]

I am not exactly sure, I mean it felt like a normal night when I woke up. But when I started to look at different nights in the app I noticed this trend and got very worried. I am not particularly sure what you mean by artifacts if you don't mind explaining. And yes I am worried about how it spikes and then falls back is this normal? I have added a hard pillow beside me to make sure I don't toss and turn much

[hh9797]

Without looking at the data I could wager a guess, the exact same reason why many people take a while to start feeling the effects of the therapy working. If you are use to getting a terrible nights sleep then when you start the therapy there is a good chance that you will sleep for a little while and then wake up in the middle of the night not being able to get fully back to sleep because you are so accustom to getting so little sleep your body doesn't know what to do when you get better sleep and as such makes it hard to properly sleep at first even if your apneas are controlled, think of it like your internal alarm clock being screwed up because your internal alarm clock that is use to going "ok well you got about 3 hours of sleep so it must have been about 7 hours so time to get up for work" is still programed to go "ok you got this much sleep must be time to wake up" which now means you are waking up 4 hours early because your internal alarm clock is basing the wake up time based on how much you slept and not the actual time. It take a while to actually adjust to getting proper sleep and so you don't notice the changes right away. 

That also means that while it goes unchecked you are just use to having difficulty breathing and so don't notice the issues when you nap because the air flow is "normal" for your sleep, once you adjust to the new normal of actually being able to properly breath if you sleep without your treatment and have your old normal happen it will in turn feel like you are suffocating because you are no longer accustomed to that lower air flow. 

So basically what would be happening is prior to getting treatment you could nap without feeling like suffocating because you were use to the breathing issues you then adjusted to being able to properly breath and so when you go back to not using the machine the old issues can return but this time because you are not numbed to that feeling since it is no longer "normal" for you, you notice it a lot more then before.

This could be slightly off of what is actually happening but it makes logical sense, kind of like how for a long time I was perfectly fine being up working a 22 hour shift, taking a 30 minute nap, working another 18 hour shift, driving an hour home to work sleeping a single hour then driving an hour back to work to work another 12 hours when machines broke down while others questioned "how can you function like that" and to me it was just like "eh it's perfectly normal to me so I don't notice it at all", but as I start to get better sleep if I return to the old sleep patterns I am absolutely dead that day. (I still don't get much sleep yet but that is a mix between still getting thyroid hormones correct and still not being use to sleep sleeping and so waking up after about 4 hours with difficulty getting back to sleep) And yes I do realize how stupid it was for me to be working 52 hours within a 72 hour time span and then driving a total of 5 hours during that time while on no sleep, but to me at the time it was just a "normal" amount of sleep.


The more and more you get to "normal" the more and more you will notice how bad your breathing was if you end up having the same breathing issues like when you are napping without your machine, when you are use to a certain thing you don't notice how bad it is for you until you no longer have to be use to it and then have it happen again.

[Dormeo]

I want to address one question in the original post. For some people, fairly low pressure levels successfully treat their apnea; for others, it takes higher pressure. This is true across the range of mild, moderate, and severe sleep apnea; it doesn't necessarily take more pressure to treat worse apnea.