OSA and your HEART

[SuperSleeper]

[copied from our old forum]

Ever since joining this board I've been compelled to write - in detail - what I know about APNEA & HEART. It is extremely important for "ALL" of us to enter into the deep restfull (REM) sleep. It amazed me to find out how much our heart depend on this. So here is my story - take what you want from this...

I will turn 53 on the 1st of April. I suffered my first heart attack in 1999, my second 2007. I have a family history of heart disease - both mother and father's side. I refer to the summer of 2010 as the summer from hell for me. I went on short term disability in July and returned to work the first week of September. Here's why: prior to - I experienced several incedents of SVT's (Supraventricular tachycardia) and A-FIB's (Atrial fibrillation). To stop the SVT's they stop your heart for about 10 - 15 seconds. Or for those of us that are tech savy - they "re-boot" your heart. I'm here to tell you it is THEE worst God awfull feelling in the world. By the way - SVT's cause your heart to race. A-Fibs cause your heart to "flutter". I was told your heart rate should never exceed 160 bpm no mater what you are doing. My rate topped out at 240 bpm.

As a result of my previous cardiac incidents I was being treated by Dr. A and Dr. D is my primary care. It should be noted they are in different cities and affiliated with different care facilities which made it challenging at times. Both are great Dr's I trust them with my life - I would trust them with yours!!! Due to the geographical difficulties I was convinced to move my cardiac care to Dr. B who is in the same city as my primary Dr and affiliated with the same health care facility. Not a problem until...

I was convinced by Dr. B that I needed a Catheter ablation. In a nut shell - there was a problem with the electrical impulses in my heart and the only way to cure is to "burn" the short. Cut a hole in your leg and neck, insert some probes, induce the problem and burn that part of the inside of your heart. Yeah... I'm an electrician and I've never fixed a short by burning the wires. But I trusted Dr. B. After TWO ablations, ONE stenting, and ONE balloning in a two month period I still had irregular heart beats. I tried for several weeks to explain this to Dr. B and he suggested I go in for a "sleep study"!!! What the hell has that got to do with my heart. Reluctanly I went and spent the night in the hospital.

Not happy with Dr. B I put my tail between my legs and went back to Dr. A to find out what is going on. By this time I have been on my "machine" for about a week. Dr A said he was happy to see I was on Cpap therapy and he would have did this first!!! Saaaay Whaaaat??? He then went in details and explained how important it is for you to sleep to allow your heart to rest, heal, and repair and it can't do that if you are constantly waking to breath. It is possible that I may not have gone through all those "proceedures".

The bottom line is this - Don't mess around. Don't play around with Sleep Apnea. Get the therapy / treatment you need and get into it all the way. Learn all you can and take charge of your therapy / treatment and, more important, your life!!! If you follow football, you may know who Reggie White was - Hall-of-Fame Deffensive end, Played for Philly, Green Bay, and Carolina or Eagles, Packers, Panthers. He was 43 when he passed away. The following was pasted from Wikipedia

On the morning of December 26, 2004, White was rushed from his home in Cornelius, North Carolina, to a nearby hospital in Huntersville, North Carolina, where he was pronounced dead. White had suffered a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. The most likely cause of this, according to the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner's Office, was the cardiac and pulmonary sarcoidosis that he had lived with for years.[5][6] It was also stated that sleep apnea, which White was known to suffer from, contributed to his death. [ His grave site is situated at Glenwood Memorial Park, Mooresville, North Carolina.

[cate1898]

Another interesting read! Poor Jeffy1958 - sorry you had to go through those awful procedures before being introduced to CPAP therapy.

[Ghost1958]

Pretty much my own story only I had one actual heart attack and no stents.
Did have ablation though. Doc poked a hole THRU my heart from inside to outside halfway thru the procedure so that ended that.
The next 4 days were spent pumping blood from around my heart. Fun fun.

Enter a nurse prac who says go test for SA.
Did and I have it. Doc says likely had it for at least 2 decades.
Adrenaline is the bad boy of SA.
You get a hard shot of it with each apena to rouse you to breathe. Hit your heart with adenaline 70 times a night or so. Shoots your heart rate up instantly about 40 bpm then drops.
Not good. Heck id had adrenaline in my urine for years but nobody knew why. Just that i shouldnt have.
Delta sleep is where your body physically repairs itself. REM is when the brain files away the days memories etc.

I hit REM a little in the lab but skipped Delta altogether thru two cycles.

Long story short the OP is correct.
SA will kill you. It may take years it may not take that long.
If you have it get a test, machne and deal with it. If you DME and Doc are lousy take cintril yourself.
Folks go on about its a inconvience, masks hard to wear, noise, etc about being on cpap.

And it is a pain in the butt for some folks to deal with for a while.

Trust me . Having a Heart attack feels alot worse. When your in the middle of one if they stuck a cpap machine on you that stopped it youd hug the thing like your first born. And not let go of it.
Treating SA with cpap is a minor inconvenience compared to what you wind up dealing with without treating it.

[notsleep]

I to have afib that i just found out about . I had three heart restarts to try to correct this but did not work ,i was put to sleep though. i woke up the third time it does hurt a lot for on a couple of seconds.
Also had a stress test done found out everything was a okay 100% .
I did not have the ablation procedure done and chose to be on a blood thinner
My heart doc also ordered up a sleep study because sleep is very important and if your not sleeping correctly it can cause afib.
My 3 sleep studies showed i have a lot of centrals not cool so yes i take this cpap thing very serious i have wore it every night since.
At first when i was trying to find the right mask sucked but then finally i tried the DreamWear success . About half my nights i end up with 0 events and the other half no more than 2.

So for all of you just starting hang in there it takes a good month of trying to get it all to where it is bearable and just remember sleep for the body is very important

[Ghost1958]

I wouldnt recommended an ablation unless afib was simply horrible.
Alot of times it doesnt work anyway and there are risks and complications they gloss over. Mine went away after starting cpap.

If you have ablation they will putvyou on at least full strength aspirin a day . Most times a blood thinner so ablation doesnt get you out of that either.

[notsleep]

I wouldnt recommended an ablation unless afib was simply horrible.
Alot of times it doesnt work anyway and there are risks and complications they gloss over. Mine went away after starting cpap.

If you have ablation they will putvyou on at least full strength aspirin a day . Most times a blood thinner so ablation doesnt get you out of that either.

I have decided against ablation because yes it is not guaranteed and if it does work a fib can also come back .
I could just get away with just taking an aspirin but my heart doc wanted to take extra precaution on a blood thinner to avoid any blood clots that could happen from a fib.
I to hope that using my cpap improves my afib there are stories like yourself of afib going away glad to hear yours is gone.
My sucess so far is my really low numbers of events so with any luck my afib disappear too!!

[cate1898]

Ghost1958 sorry you also had a terrible experience! I wonder if you had been diagnosed much, much earlier if you could have avoided all that?

[Judy1843]

I've was diagnosed with afib 2 yrs ago and in afib actually now! I've had a very bad year in and out of hospital 5 times! The meds are not working for me and an ablation is in my future! My ahi is around 0.6 however last night it was 2.0. It always goes up when I'm in afib!

[Jimsp1]

No medical procedure is without risk but the complication rate for ablations is low and they could be a permanent solution to Afib. I had 2 ablations 3 years ago and they have stopped Afib attacks that in my case also come with a rapid ventricular response and heart rate of about 160 and sometimes a trip to the ER. They didn't put me on blood thinners after the ablations.

While ablations can be effective in stopping Afib they aren't effective in preventing the frequent PVC's
(premature ventricular contractions) that I suffer from. After the third physician suggested that a sleep study might be in order I finally relented and had one. They found I had sleep apnea in the high end of the mild range. It's been about two months now on the APAP trying to dial in settings that will consistently results in AHI's of <5. Part of the problem is the higher pressures seem to cause more of the central apneas. It's too early to see if the PAP therapy is going to help with the PVC's.

[Ghost1958]

Ghost1958 sorry you also had a terrible experience! I wonder if you had been diagnosed much, much earlier if you could have avoided all that?

Absolutely. I was an over the road truck driver. Had been for the most part since i was 21.
Gone 3 to 4 weeks at a time nobody slept with me abd when i was home any snoring or stopping breathing my wife just blamed on exhaustion.
Mid 40s I began waking up in the truck with a racing heart, crazy high BP and heart rythem out of whack. About once a month at first and off to ER whereever i happened to be.
Over a few yrs it progessed to once a week or more until I had a heart attack in Bozeman Montana.
Always woke up in that shape. Never happened while i was awake.

Long story short I was disabled at age 44, lost my semi, and kept gaving repeats of the same until a yr ago when i finally was disgnosed.
Id still be working if id had cpap in that semi yrs ago.