Posted by dirtywater on January 26, 2009 at 18:15:39:In Reply to: Low oxygen right before sleep. posted by Cloud99 on January 23, 2009 at 16:01:21:
I don't have an opinion on the "body getting used to CPAP" theory, but I do know this:
Some people, myself included, react particularly poorly when changing from one sleep stage to another. This means the breathing pattern falls apart when you transition from wake to sleep, then from stage 2 to stage 1, etc. I don't know the precise neurological explanation for why this happens. My O2 sat will often drop from high 90's to high 80's just as I am falling asleep. In fact this happened in the hospital the day after my MMA operation, and it set off the alarm at the nurse's station :-) Usually the desat doesn't wake me, but sometimes it does.
I have a recording pulse oximeter device. It reports several desats per hour each night I use it. My sister was complaining of poor sleep so I had her try the oximeter. It measured zero desats the whole night... except at the moment she fell asleep, when it showed a desat from the high 90's to the low 90's. So this may be a common phenomenon.