Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick Lee
What are the telltale symptoms of sleep apnea?
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Tired all the time. Easily fall asleep during the day. Thats what everyone says.
But the #1 symptom is snooring very loud followed by stopping breathing for a period then snorting causing you to almost wake up then repeating the process many times each night. When you wake up in the morning with your uvula (normally small) stretched to over 1" long and actually laying on your tung - getting sucked down your throat when breathing in and then flapping out over your tung when exhaling almost choking you - then you know you've got it. When no one will stay in a motel room with you. When in college and kids in the next dorm suite complained of the snoring. When your wife and family are about at wits end dealing with the snoring. When they race to bed to try to be asleep before you turn in and actually ask you to please wait for them to fall asleep before going to bed. If it takes some time each morning to have your mouth recover from sleeping and you have to be careful in the process or risk damaging something in your mouth. I could go on and on. I had all this and more.
With cpap my mouth feels the same when I wake up as when I went to sleep. I use to get horrible hangovers. I have not had a hangover since using the cpap machine. Before I could never get enough sleep. Now I can rarely sleep more than 7 hours and feel like I am rested every morning. I can go a few days on 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours sleep and then I need a good nights sleep of 7 hours.
After my initial exam and sleep study and before using a cpap my doctor made an incredible understatement. He told me that I had no idea what a good nights sleep was and that I was in store for a surprise.
This is why I say that those who say they try the machine but cannot use it are blessed because they really do not have the problem. Or it is minor and not requiring treatment. My wife loves the sound of the cpap machine. The newer ones are quite and very small for traveling.
My wife read about sleep apnea in the paper and urged me to see a doctor. Before that we had never heard of it. That was 10 years ago and I have never spent a night without cpap. Almost did in England once when the current fired my machine in the middle of the night. I stayed up the rest of the night and had a new machine before dark the next day.