I agree .i am very grateful to them. I was horrified at first at having to wear a mask at bedtime and thought about saying thanks but no thanks. However my wife urged me to give it a go and its made so much difference to my life.
Hi chazz.I was stopping breathing whilst asleep and waking up gasping for breath. So going to sleep was scary and as a result i was constantly falling asleep during the day and snoring very loudly. I had no energy and very little enthusiasm for exercise. Since i got the machine i have energy again and never need a nap during the day. Its pretty much saved my life. I wish I'd had one thirty years ago
Apart from what RealAle Tiger says you can have sleep apnea and not be gasping for breath. I used to wake up regularly but the problem is you keep stopping breathing and it affects the amount of deep sleep you get even if you don’t wake up and consequently you are tired. It is serious as you have to inform the DVLA.mFailure to do so can land you with a hefty fne and invalidate your insurance. Really serious cases will see your licence suspended until it is considered under control. When they put a machine on me to measure it. It measures how many times you stop breathing for 10 seconds or more per hour. I was stopping over 200 times a night. I was surprised to find out that a lot higher amounts are quite common in the most severe cases. A combination of losing weight, medication and the machine have brought this down to about 50-60. The department at Castle Hill that deals with this is staffed by the most pleasant, helpful staff you could hope to deal with.
It really has given me my life back. For anyone with similar symptoms My advice is to go to your gp and get referred asap
It is a major cause of it. Though not necessarily the only one. Loose skin in the throat can cause it. Most people with sleep apnea snore heavily. Since I started on the machine my wife says p/m my snoring has decreased greatly. Losing weight helps as well.
I needed to purchase a CPAP machine, but have not used it diligently most of the time because I was regularly dozing off during the day for a couple of hours or so. That cycle screwed up my sleep patterns at night. May I ask you how long it took before you started feeling the benefits of using the machine? Days, weeks, months? Did you use it every night and continue to do so. Thanks in advance for any feedback you can offer.
I noticed a difference after a few days. You do need to keep using it every night until you are at a level where you are not stopping breathing very much at all. I tend to use it for only 4 hours a night now as that is the minimum deep sleep they recommend to be safe driving (that is 4 hours deep sleep not total sleep) and I tend to get a very dry mouth using it and take it off after waking up a couple of times. Unfortunately the only way you know if things have improved is for you to have a measuring device on for 2 or 3 nights which you need your doctor to arrange.
Thanks very much. The machine I have displays the number of hours used and number of incidents/hour that happened during that period of sleep. Is that what you mean by the measuring device or is it something different?
I felt the benefit almost straight away. They told me i will need to use it for the rest of my life. I do take it off during the night sometimes as citizen says it makes your mouth dry. But the longer i wear it, the better i feel the next day. My wife and i walked the yorkshire three peaks two weeks ago in 10 hours 45 minutes. Before the cpap machine that wouldn't have been possible. I doubt i would have even started
My machine doesn’t show the number of times you stopped breathing. I was fitted up with a small device they strapped on with a load of electrodes attached to your chest. The device records it all and you send it back in for analysis. Getting it on the NHS means it won’t be as sophisticated as the one you have as they cost a fair it to buy and maintain for a lot of people. They have said I am at a level where I can come of it but I asked to keep it for longer as I find that I can get off to sleep more easily with it which is a great help as I am a poor sleeper at the best of times.
Much appreciated sir . I obviously need to be much more disciplined. I also suffer from asthma & COPD, so perhaps it may take a bit longer to feel positive progress. All due to damned cigarettes (60 years plus) - quit 3 years ago. Thanks to you too Cityzen.
Much appreciated Cityzen. Glad to hear the machine has benefitted you positively. I look forward to similar experiences - it'd be wonderful if I could attack that golf course again. Cheers gents.
Best wishes to you Urika. I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea about 6 years ago but hated the first vpap machine I was given. So didn't use it for a while, but as others have said I woke up knackered every morning and fell asleep in the afternoons. A gradual downward spiral as you are surviving literally on no proper sleep for years on end. So went to a private sleep clinic, overnight stay etc and then they prescribed a cpap machine. I use it every night all night and it really has changed my life. I have a quite high pressure, long hours job, so before it was slowly killing me. I've also had 2 episodes of PE and survived (once only just) which doesn't help with the cardio pulmonary aspects to all this. I'm not particularly overweight - 6 foot 14 stone, but out of shape, mid 50s, like my pie and pint etc! Used to be superfit until I stopped playing football. Only golf now. My cpap machine has a built-in humidifier which gets rid of the dry mouth problem. I live overseas and they recommended that. My brother got his on the NHS and he has no humidifier. My wife was recently diagnosed with it as well and now has a vpap machine - she struggles to use it every night so she just uses it some nights for a few hours, she'd like to use it more. She's in good shape, much better than me. So your size and shape are only partial indicators. I have fat and thin mates who have this problem. Its remarkably common. I also have a travel machine which is a godsend as I would hate to lug the big one around. Bottom line, if you have the symptoms described by many on here, you should go get it looked at, it may well change your life.
My NHS CPAP machine has a dehumidifier but I still get a dry mouth. Must be me as when I first started using one years ago I didn’t. It has gradually got worse unfortunately.
