+- Apnea Board Forum - CPAP | Sleep Apnea (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Public Area (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Public-Area)
+--- Forum: Main Apnea Board Forum (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Main-Apnea-Board-Forum)
+--- Thread: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? (/Thread-PSG-Results-Could-this-be-UARS)
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - geauxdbl - 02-18-2020
I went down the Vitamin D road too - no benefits but it made me really aggressive and I felt like I was in fight or flight mode way more. That’s also when my heart palpitations were at their worst.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - jomama - 02-18-2020
Yeah, I've taken low amounts of D for years, but having done a lot of research, and with my own experience, I now feel like unless you are very low in D, taking high amounts of it might not actually be a great thing to do. It's kind of a hormone, after all, and one should be careful messing with hormones.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - Crimson Nape - 02-18-2020
You are aware that you can have too much vitamin D? I have mine analyzed when having my blood work done. The acceptable range is, 30.0-100.0 ng/mL. The test is known as the 25-OH vitamin D test and the calcidiol 25-hydroxycholecalcifoerol test. You might need to ask your doctor to add it to your lab work next time. Especially in the northern latitudes during winter.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - deebob - 02-18-2020
I usually sleep with my curtains shut, and also often with a sleep mask.....so the sunrising around 7 AM isn't really affecting me. Maybe I should try changing that? I tend to go to bed around midnight but I could try to go to bed earlier. It's just that lately I've developed a fairly lengthy bedtime routine that ends up taking a couple hours so it's hard to go to bed earlier if I'm doing something in the evening with friends or family and don't want to go home at like 8pm. Every evening I usually try to go for a walk, and then I have a sauna in my building that I go in every night and take a cold shower after, which has been really helpful in reducing anxiety and making me feel relaxed before bed.
But because I often get such crappy sleep I've been spending longer time in bed just to get enough rest, and I also tend to get more REM sleep in the early morning which usually makes my mood better throughout the day. I find myself more depressed or anxious if I don't allow myself that extra hour or two of sleep around 7-10 AM. I know those hours are probably not ideal so maybe I should work towards restricting that. The doctor I spoke to had advised me to try sleep restriction therapy, and only give myself a certain window, I just don't know if I want to commit to that until I know for sure there's no SDB...otherwise I'm just depriving myself of sleep AND getting poor quality SDB sleep.
I have taken Vitamin D in the past and not really noticed a positive effect, and I stopped taking it recently after geauxdbl mentioned it wasn't helpful and could make heart palpitations worse. I may take it here and there but I'm not going to take it everyday in high doses like I was before.
I have noticed that I've had some trouble inhaling at certain times in the night, possibly because the nasal pillows aren't in the best position, or maybe my nose got stuffy. But usually it isn't too bad. I am maybe inhaling a bit heavily sometimes since I'm not really used to having that extra air pressure assisting with the inhale, and I have been trying to breathe deeply sometimes when I'm awake and trying to fall asleep.
I've attached a few zoomed in shots of the snoring sections.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - Dormeo - 02-18-2020
You might try to make the time for some daytime walks. Getting into the sunlight during the day may help you sleep better at night. I was intrigued by what I read about this in "Why We Sleep," by Matthew Walker, a faculty member at UC Berkeley who does sleep research. And actually the whole book was pretty interesting to me -- you might like it.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - deebob - 02-18-2020
I usually go for walks during the day as well. This is part of what has been a bit confusing and frustrating to me, is I have tried pretty much everything under the sun that people suggest for improving sleep, and I still end up waking up frequently. Some days I will go for multiple walks, and go to the gym, and stay busy all day doing stuff with friends and family, eating healthy, taking supplements that are helpful for sleep etc. And then I still have a crappy broken sleep. This is why I continue to wonder if there is some kind of SDB that is still involved. But maybe it's just a combination of things and it won't happen over night. I feel like at a certain point a few months ago I became so anxious about sleep that I just pushed my nervous system to an extreme point of sensitivity that I've been unable to calm down ever since...so what might have started as some very mild SDB or snoring, and/or bad sleep hygiene, became something much worse as my anxiety and nervous system became overly active, and then insomnia joined the party and now it's just a big mess of issues that's harder to pinpoint exactly what's what.
I appreciate all the advice though. This forum is really an amazing place. It's like a sleep support group
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - geauxdbl - 02-18-2020
I think you’ve made an impressive amount of progress in the 1 week that you’ve been using your CPAP machine. Keep on making improvements, and just imagine where you’ll be in a month.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - Dormeo - 02-18-2020
Thanks for the fuller picture, deebob. As I mentioned earlier, I think you have a lot of insight into what’s going on with you. And as geauxdbl says, you are actually doing very well with all of this, which is something to be sure you’re folding into the mix of self-understanding.
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - jomama - 02-19-2020
(02-18-2020, 07:48 PM)deebob Wrote: I usually go for walks during the day as well. This is part of what has been a bit confusing and frustrating to me, is I have tried pretty much everything under the sun that people suggest for improving sleep, and I still end up waking up frequently. Some days I will go for multiple walks, and go to the gym, and stay busy all day doing stuff with friends and family, eating healthy, taking supplements that are helpful for sleep etc. And then I still have a crappy broken sleep. This is why I continue to wonder if there is some kind of SDB that is still involved. But maybe it's just a combination of things and it won't happen over night.
I am in pretty much the exact same boat, although my Sleepyhead reports show slightly worse flow limitations than you have. That said, I think that SDB is also not the only think causing my broken sleep. Even though I now have excellent sleep hygiene, it's not made any difference in my broken sleep.
In your case, I have a couple thoughts. One is you said that you take a sauna every night. I know this might be counter-intuitive, but the heat and then cooling may cause issues? Unlikely, but I know that, from experience, the couple times I sat in hot springs a couple hours before bed, I slept really restlessly, like my body is having trouble regulating temp (which is really important for good sleep).
Also, have you tried blue light filtering glasses? I know it sounds silly, but in my experience, they actually do work when it comes to allowing your melatonin to naturally do what it does. For example, after wearing them at night, starting 2-3 hours before bed, almost immediately, it had a positive regulating effect on my bowels in the mornings. Strikingly so. This is not actually too surprising, as there is melatonin in the gut, too. But the point is: they actually work, they actually have an effect. I also noticed that I got drowsy a little earlier. Unfortunately, it didn't help my broken sleep, but I keep using them because I feel it's good for my health at this point. This is what I use:
[Commercial Link Removed] Search Amazon for B000USRG90
[I put them on around 9pm. I don't use them when I watch TV, but whenever I get up and turn on lights, I use them. I also dim my TV a little if I watch something before bed. I've tried reading instead, but that doesn't make a difference.
Anyway, it's worth trying in your case maybe? I'm going to keep an eye on this thread, as I am always curious about other people in this same boat....
-----
Moderator Action: Commercial Link Removed
To maintain our status as an educational organization, the only commercial links allowed in this forum are to CPAP-related manufacturer websites. This is stated in the Apnea Board Rules with details given in the Commercial Links Policy section.Moderator Action: Commercial Link Removed
-----
RE: PSG Results: Could this be UARS? - deebob - 02-19-2020
At this point I feel like all of these little sleep hygiene changes are just like pissing on a bon fire. I've tried so many little things, pretty much anything that has ever been suggested, it's starting to just feel like superstitions or something. Whatever's going on is probably just much bigger, and unfortunately probably has more to do with my overall life situation. It also probably doesn't help that sleep has become the entire focus of my life right now. I almost want to just take the power away from it and stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, stop taking all the little supplements like valerian/magnesium/melatonin/Ashwaganda/ that seem to be doing nothing, and just go back to behaving the way I did a year ago when everything was 'normal'.
I had a really good day yesterday, I met up with one of my best friends and went for lunch and a really long walk along the ocean in the sunshine. We talked all about a lot of my problems and he's super understanding and had tons of good life advice. I did like 12,000 steps in the entire day. Then I had dinner with my mom, and then visited my brother in the evening. I went to bed with almost no anxiety or depression; I felt kind of 'normal'. But as soon as I fell asleep, I woke up a couple hours later, and then again a couple hours after that. And then I couldn't get back to sleep from 5AM to around 8 AM. I wasn't even anxious. I was just laying in bed calmly, just not feeling particularly sleepy. I got up a couple times, I took some CBD, nothing helped. Eventually I think I just got tired of laying there for so long that I actually just dozed off. I don't like staying in bed for like 11 hours but if I didn't do that I would have only gotten about 4 or 5 hours of broken sleep and would have got almost no REM sleep and probably felt much more depressed.
At this point I don't even really know what to do. I can't even really tell if SDB is a factor because I'm starting to experience pretty bad insomnia. The insomnia wasn't as bad in the past couple months, there were plenty of nights where I wouldn't be stuck awake for 2-4 hours. I'd experience the frequent awakenings but continue to go back to sleep, so that's what made me think it was SDB. But I still can't be sure that the frequent awakenings aren't from some kind of sleep maintenance insomnia issue. I'm also not sure if the insomnia getting worse this past week is because of the CPAP. It hasn't been particularly uncomfortable but it definitely could be causing some discomfort. I had the mask on too tight in order to prevent leaks which started to dig into my nose and hurt. So I changed that which should be a bit better.
https://imgur.com/a/lvWBP1B
My charts last night show a few weird breathing instances but not necessarily at times I woke up. I don't even really know what to look for at this point, it's so hard to tell what my problem is. I woke up at some point in between 12AM and 5AM but Oura missed it because I don't think I moved around, I just went right back to sleep. It could be around that little bit of REM around 3 AM, or earlier around 2 AM, I'm not sure. I also think I woke up sometime between 8AM and 10 AM that it didn't show.