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[CPAP] New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
#1
New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
Im 32 recently decided to start taking my health more seriously and My wife has told me for years that i stopped breathing in my sleep. So I had a sleep study done and I do have sleep apnea. My report said I'm having 129 events per hour. I've always snored loudly as a child. Other than the loud snoring and the breathing thing I feel fine. I wake up and feel normal I don't get excessively tired throughout they day although around 2 or 2:30 I seem to hit a wall but its nothing crazy. I don't fall asleep when I watch tv or anything like that. Is that normal? Also I get my cpap machine today and the full mask was really bothersome to me during the study. I want to try a nasal mask and I'm not really a mouth breather. Im just feeling a lot of anxiety over this whole thing
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#2
RE: New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
I think some of us that may have had this issue for a long time may not really know what good quality sleep feels like. Our idea of what feels normal is likely not in line with what is normal, despite what we think.

The scale for diagnosing sleep apnea is:
AHI 0-15: mild
AHI 15-30: moderate
AHI 30+: severe

Yours was 129.

Good luck with the CPAP tonight... let us know how you feel tomorrow. Most people don't wake up feeling great the next day, but some do. You might even feel worse for a while, but you'll be sleeping better.
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#3
RE: New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
Please, please, please don't follow in my footsteps.

I probably had sleep apnea for decades. My daily tiredness just got worse and worse until I was literally a walking zombie. I was often falling asleep at my desk at work in the afternoon. What tipped the scales were some driving events where, falling asleep at the wheel briefly, I nearly killed myself and my wife.

I'm now on CPAP therapy and feel much better. Like many others, I had some significant teething pains getting used to the device. However, because I owned the fact that it was either CPAP or death (you may think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not), I persevered through it, determined that I would never again sleep without the CPAP. And yes, that meant that there were two times where I got zero sleep one night and about 4 hours of sleep the next night. And here I'm talking about, except for the brief times trying to fall asleep in bed with the CPAP device, spending the rest of the time downstairs watching TV trying to get tired enough to fall asleep despite the CPAP. All night.

But everything's fine now, right? Wrong. Undoubtedly because of the extensive time I had untreated apnea, I am now dealing with a heart arrhythmia, heart palpitations, and, while I can't blame my high blood pressure entirely on my apnea, I wouldn't be a little bit surprised if it was a contributing factor. But at least now I'm going in the right direction.

Get it treated sooner rather than later. Anxiety is normal. Discomfort is normal. Only a small percentage of people (I call them "freaks of nature") take to CPAP right away, and they make me absolutely green with envy.
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#4
RE: New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
I take this very seriously and I will never sleep without the machine again. If I have to stay up all night I will. Do you guys think the snoring will go away also my wife has told me I say some pretty funny and weird things some nights
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#5
RE: New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
Hi Dante334,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
GREAT to hear that you are getting a CPAP machine and that you are determined to make it work.
Good luck and feel free to ask any questions you have.
trish6hundred
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#6
RE: New to board and Recently Diagnosed...
Snoring is the result of a partial obstruction to your airway, where your breathing causes the obstructing soft palate tissue to vibrate. If you get an auto-CPAP machine (unlikely unless you have asked for it), it treats snoring as an indication of an impending apnea event and increases the treatment pressure, so your snoring should pretty much stop, except for perhaps occasional brief periods.

If you get a fixed pressure CPAP device (much more likely), then it depends. It is theoretically possible that your treatment pressure would be enough to stop your apneas, but not enough to stop your snoring. However, that is a very thin line, and it is much more likely that a treatment pressure sufficient to reliably stop most of your apneas will also significantly reduce if not completely eliminate your snoring. If it turns out that you still snore, you could try increasing your treatment pressure slightly to try to eliminate it. BUT, read below.

If you are going to make changes to your settings, it is very important to establish a reliable baseline. One night's results are NOT generally indicative of overall results. In one night, my treatment pressure from my auto-CPAP device could range from 11-15 cmH2O all night, and the next night my treatment pressure could range from 15-19 cmH2O. It has happened, and is why I have gotten myself an auto-CPAP device.

Also, if you are new to CPAP, it is vitally important that you become accustomed to it. This means getting used to wearing a mask. This means getting used to airway pressure. This means finding a mask that works for you. Different people have different levels of difficulty with different parts of the acclimation process. And there are freaks of nature (which I say while green with envy) that just take to it right away.
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