Rest of the Sleep Disorders Forum Posting

Posted by Honest Expert / but only mattresses on June 28, 2001 at 19:31:01:

In Reply to: Many Problems, no solutions posted by Bad Dream on June 28, 2001 at 15:57:52:

Hi Bad Dream,

WOW! I sounds like you have really been run through the wringer! I empathize with your battle.

I don't know how much you have read about sleep disorders -- particularly sleep apnea -- but you might want to get Dr William Dement's book, "The Promise of Sleep." It is available in paperback for about 15 bucks.

Things to consider (that you may already know):

Clinical depression: Sleep deprivation can CAUSE depression. If you have had sleep apnea for a long time, it is *possible* that your diagnosed depression was caused by the sleep deprivation brought on by the apnea. It is embarrassingly common for sleep apnea problems to be misdiagnosed as depression. (If you ask in the Sleep Apnea Forum, I'll bet you will find that MOST of the people there were diagnosed with depression YEARS before their sleep disorder was diagnosed, yet it was the sleep disorder that was actually behind it all.)

*IF* apnea was truly the root cause of the depression but the docs didn't know it, they may have had you on counter-productive medications for years, making the situation worse!

High Blood Pressure: This is a classic symptom of sleep apnea.

In short: The airflow gets cut off, the blood is starved for oxygen, the diaphram continues to pull on the system against the apnea blockage, the brain says "help!" and wakes you up, your throat opens back up, you start to breathe in gasps, the brain senses that the lungs are getting oxygen and says "send me some!"; the heart starts to go bangbangbang to pump the oxygen rich blood to the brain (and elsewhere), the blood pressure skyrockets (often DOUBLING!), the brain gets oxygen and you fall back instantly to sleep, everything returns to near normal ... and the cycle starts all over again.

There seems to be a carry-over effect of the blood pressure being so high during the night that shows up as high blood pressure during the day.

What I am suggesting is that both the high blood pressure and the depression COULD be caused by the sleep apnea, but because the apnea was not diagnosed until recently (and your doctors, unfortuantely, might not geddit!), they may not be taking that into account because the depression diagnosis pre-dates the apnea diagnosis by so much.

You may have a MASSIVE sleep debt that will take some time to work off. This may be why you are sleeping so long with the CPAP: your body is trying to catch up.

While it is completely possible that something else is going on, the symptoms you are describing are still in the range of "expected" for sleep apnea. I would recommend taking your questions over to the sleep apnea forum and start a lengthy discussion with some of the people there. You may be surprised at how much your story matches many of the stories there. And you may be surprised at how much you will learn that your doctors don't know!

Don't give up hope and try not to give up on the CPAP, just yet. It can be a royal pain in the a** (as they will tell you in the sleep apnea forum), but once you find a way to get it working for you, you may be amazed by the improvement.

I hope you are able to find some relief soon. Try to find small successes and build on them. Your problem did not suddenly appear; it would have built up over time. So must the solution.

Good Luck,
Honest Expert

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