Posted by SleepyTimeGal on August 19, 2008 at 13:17:52:In Reply to: Another Rookie Question :) posted by IrishBoy on August 19, 2008 at 08:42:39:
Let's think about this for a minute.
RDI stands for respiratory distress index; yours is 34 events per hour. That means that every two minutes, your brain/body is going into an arousal panic because you are not breathing. Now, even if you spend 8 hours in bed, just how effective is that going to be when you don't breathe consistently enough to get into the deep sleep stages where body restoration takes place?
Every cell of our body needs oxygen in order to effectively generate energy. Sleeping blood oxygen is supposed to maintain between 90% and 95%. Yours fell to 77%. How effectively do you think your body is going to convert exercise to energy and burn off 70 pounds? Not likely to happen; you'll just become more exhausted.
On the unappealing scale, hauling CPAP with your luggage hardly registers a blip. Get the darned thing, start getting adequate sleep, dump the alcohol, do your exercising and weight loss (much more effective with CPAP), and you won't have to worry about early senility from your 77% blood oxygen. You'll still have a functioning brain at age 60, which some of us don't have because our longstanding apnea wasn't diagnosed until after that age.
In short, your situation is serious and severe.