[Symptoms] Connection between apnea and neurological weirdness

[McMartin]

Hi.  I have significant obstructive and central apnea.  I also have idiopathic hypersomnia and/or narcolepsy (without cataplexy).  The apnea is now well-controlled with cpap asv, which I use daily and it keeps my AHI >0.5 or less.

What I noticed before I started using the CPAP was there seemed to be a connection between apnea events along with neurological weirdness in my sleep.  Symptoms like leg & foot tingling, restless leg, and also triggering a morton's neuroma in my foot and sciatica in my legs to start hurting randomly in the middle of the night, also calf & foot cramps, and other weirdness would periodically attack me in my sleep, and I came to realize it seemed to be linked with a bad apnea cycle.

Ok.  So, my body and brain are starved for oxygen, and this sets off internal alarms, which makes sense as a layperson.  But I think there is more going on, as if my brain seems to be making war on me in my sleep.

Now that I use the cpap regularly these incidents are quite rare, but still happen from time to time.  Last night was a doozy.  It was like my entire body was light show with nerves misfiring and doing weird stuff from head to toe.  Everything that could light up with numbness/tingling or nerve pain did, from head to toe.   This was accompanied by troubling fitful dreams that seems to go on forever, as I rock & rolled with this stuff going on in the borderland between sleep and wake, until I finally fully woke up and realized that I had to pee. And also I felt like I had got hit by a neurological bus.

I have also a post-apnea feeling I have learned to identify, a sort of panic attack when I wake up from an apnea attack cycle. Heightened anxiety, tight chest, etc which I think of as a ptsd my body has after years of untreated apnea.

Anyway, the question embedded here is if anyone can point to resources about connections between apnea and other neurological issues.

The other question here is that my cpap log does not seem to indicate anything unusual while this was going on.  I was getting the crud beat out of me, and nothing registered?

Insights welcome please.

(I am trying to figure out how to get an Oscar log excerpt in here)

The last time you used your ResMed AirCurve 10 ASV... was last night
Your device was on for 6 hours, 33 minutes and 2 seconds.
You had an AHI of 0.00, which is under your 7 day average of 0.14.
Your EPAP pressure was under 5.5 cmH2O for 95% of the time.
Your IPAP pressure was under 11.66 cmH2O for 95% of the time.
Your average leaks were 0.00 l/min, which is equal to your 7 day average of 0.01.

[SarcasticDave94]

Here's a link to the OSCAR charts wiki on setup, taking screenshots, and then attaching them to a post.

https://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.ph...ganization

[Dormeo]

I wish I knew the answer to your question. This might be of some help:

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/ab...e-at-night

I suspect it would be valuable to consider the pain problem independently from the sleep apnea problem. The untreated apnea may have been triggering more pain episodes in the night, but it could be that you have other, less frequent, triggers at work.

Could you primary care physician refer you to a neurologist and maybe also a rheumatologist? It would also be good to rule out infections and heavy-metal toxicity, though from what you've recounted, both seem unlikely to be at the root of your problem.

[seversoll]

In 2001 I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea.  That came about because I was waking from very bad cramps at night. I also had large scale twitches as in and entire limb, shoulder or muscle group.  A few months after the SA diagnoses I was diagnosed with Cramp Fasciculation Syndrome.  It's a rare one.  The neurologist that diagnosed it was looking through his books of rare diseases to find it.  He had never heard of it. Later on a Mayo Clinic neurologist confirmed the diagnoses, but was skeptical until the test results came in.  Years later a neurologist diagnosed me with Restless legs.  

All connected?  Maybe.