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night sweats
I suffer from drenching night sweats almost every night, so much so that I have to change the sheets and my clothes. I am currently taking Effexor (antidepressent). I have taken the sleep quiz and seem to have alot of the symptom of sleep apnea, except that I am a 27 year old, non-overweight female. Any advice / similar experiences?
Follow-up 1 / I suggest you call your doctor
As this is the third posting in a row that I have responded to today I will try to be brief (you can read the others as they are right below yours and will add useful information to what I say below). My advice: GET YOURSELF TO A DOCTOR RIGHT AWAY! I base this advice (which you did ask for) on these specific criteria: 1- Your statement that you "have alot of the symptoms of sleep apnea" combined with the words "except that I am..." sounds strangely (to me) like my description (in another of today's postings) of the denial that usually accompanies sleep disorders. If you snore and are sleepy during the day then (in my never-to-be-humble-opinion) you most certainly should seek evaluation and diagnosis as you most likely do have OSA. By the way, I started my "journey" with OSA before puberty (yes, I have always, always snored and had hypnopompic hallucinations since childhood according to all members of my family) when I weighed less than average for my age. Later, when I did start gaining weight rapidly (a very common side-effect of OSA) I was only 23. By 27, my doctors were blaming all of my symptoms on my obesity. And the story just gets worse from there on. I will not continue now as I think I've made my point (at least I hope so). Mary, I feel you need to understand that your age and weight--right now--do NOT at all eliminate your chance of belonging to the "OSA-club." The only criteria that worries me are these two: "if you snore and are sleepy, you need to be evaluated." I will digress here a moment with this rant: I have real trouble, as do many other patients and doctors, with the "blame-the-patient" diagnosis of obesity as the "common cause" of excessive daytime sleepiness. And, I have even more trouble with the fact that most of the OSA information available now still proudly promotes the idea that middle-age overweight men are the "most common" sufferers of OSA. So what? Does that imply cause and effect? The true answer is "NO, it does not. There is a correlation, but no empirical research has ever answered the question of what exactly that relationship is and what it means." These facts are not mentioned by most doctors, much to the detriment of many people who could be helped. So, the bottom line is you (yes, YOU) could have OSA regardless of your age, gender, or your weight right now. 2- Night sweats are a common symptom of OSA. 3- Your treatment for depression is a VERY common situation for undiagnosed sufferers of OSA. Your sweats may be a side effect of the drug (I don't think so, but it is possible). More likely is that your treatment for depression with drugs came about as a misdiagnosis of the cause of your depression. (Most OSA sufferers go through this phase of depression leading to drug treatment leading to no improvement leading to the doctor giving up on them. Sad but true.) So, I hope my advice is clear: you need to see a doctor right away. I recommend a specialist in pulmonary (lung) medicine rather than an ENT (ear, nose, throught) as they are surgeons and will likely not want to treat with CPAP first (but that is a whole other line of discussion). The best place to start is by calling your local hospitals and asking if they have a sleep clinic. Also, you can follow links on this site to certified clinics. Good luck,
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