I've discussed this before but I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in December 2020 and went on a CPAP machine February 1, 2021. It took a little getting used to but now it feels strange to NOT have it on at night and I'm sleeping better than I have in years.

Over this past year I've realized that my A-Fib (atrial fibrillation) where your heart beats out of whack has disappeared. My cardiologist didn't seem overly concerned about it to the point where he wanted to put me on meds or get surgery but still it's a shitty scary feeling when your engine is misfiring on all cylinders.

I just had my yearly biometric screening at Quest which is part of our health insurance: we get money toward our HSA if we get our vitals checked, weight, blood drawn for cholesterol and blood sugar tests etc.

My BP over the past few years has not been great, it's not horrible but it was always a little past what they now consider high blood pressure. Well this year when the Quest person checked it, it was EXCELLENT; something like 116/70!

The ONLY major lifestyle change I've really made in the past year is the CPAP, that must be keeping my heart from getting stressed when I sleep and not waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing like I just ran a hard sprint or feeling like I was drowning is also nice to see go away!

Has anyone else realized any good benefits with this therapy?

That is great news! Happy for you.

I am so glad you're benefiting from your CPAP. I have heard thousands of similar praises. Quality sleep adds years to your life, so get out there and live it!

I must be the exception that proves the rule. I've been on CPAP for 4 months now, and I can't tell any difference. I'll probably stick it out a couple more months, but I don't know that it's doing anything for me.

I know CPAP works wonders for most people, I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones.

I won't even take a nap without wearing my cpap. The few times I've unintentionally fell asleep without it, I wake-up feeling like a bag of crap. I been on cpap therapy since Feb. 2018. Never felt better.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
I must be the exception that proves the rule. I've been on CPAP for 4 months now, and I can't tell any difference. I'll probably stick it out a couple more months, but I don't know that it's doing anything for me.

I know CPAP works wonders for most people, I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones.

I highly recommend you intact your sleep doc to discuss this. Don’t give up. It might be a simple adjustment or change needed. My first machine and therapy didn’t work well for me, doc made changes and all went very well then.
.

I started it ~1995 for 10 years. It saved my life too. Plus it led
to losing 100 #. That helped too.

No longer need CPAP. It led to also gaining control of various comorbidities.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
I must be the exception that proves the rule. I've been on CPAP for 4 months now, and I can't tell any difference. I'll probably stick it out a couple more months, but I don't know that it's doing anything for me.

I know CPAP works wonders for most people, I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones.

I highly recommend you intact your sleep doc to discuss this. Don’t give up. It might be a simple adjustment or change needed. My first machine and therapy didn’t work well for me, doc made changes and all went very well then.
.

Another vote to don’t give up! Talk to your doctor, get a second opinion, and/or tweak your setup. If you have sleep apnea, it’s a long term treatment as well as a short term benefit. When the literature talks about congestive heart failure being a result of apnea, that was all I needed to hear to begin using a CPAP!

Used a CPAP for years and felt great. I haven't used it for a long time but I did drop almost 60# since then.

I’ve had a cpap for close to 4 years now. One problem I had was the air volume was too high. I found how to turn it down and adjusted it a little each week until I found a better setting, that didn’t make me have an air smothering affect.

I made sure to check that my number of incidents each night didn’t increase. When I hit the point it started to increase, I adjusted the pressure up. I let the Dr know my next visit, he wasn’t to happy until I explained how I did it and checked the stats and saw I used it close to 355 nights the past year. I only didn’t use when camping.

I have used a CPAP for about 15 years. I can't sleep without it. My afib however got worse and just went thru ablation. Hopefully between the 2 my body doesn't reject me anymore.

I love my CPAP enough to have upgraded mine and my wife's units at the end of 2021 so the insurance paid for them with no deductible on my part.

We have the Airsense 11 machines so I have notified my healthcare provider that I will have two machines available should anyone need one.

She found a home to my old System One machine with one of her patients who needed a CPAP and couldn't find one that was available.

I need one. The stupid VA is so backed up that it's 8 weeks to get a regular physical and that doesn't include a sleep study so I just suffer.

I don't sleep very much, probably average 4.5-5 hours a night and sleep like shit when I do sleep.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
I need one. The stupid VA is so backed up that it's 8 weeks to get a regular physical and that doesn't include a sleep study so I just suffer.

I don't sleep very much, probably average 4.5-5 hours a night and sleep like shit when I do sleep.

Can you go outside the VA to at least get started?

It may be worth going to a sleep specialist and seeing if they’d let you do a home sleep study first, pay out of pocket for it to see what’s going on.

Before I knew I had sleep apnea, it was causing me to have high stage1/low stage 2 high blood pressure.
I was doing everything right (diet/exercise/etc.) but still had high blood pressure. The meds my Doc put me on actually dropped it lower than he liked.
Then the light bulb in his head went off and he asked if I snored, woke up in the middle of the night, felt overly groggy in the mornings, etc. When I said yes to all his questions he said "I bet you have sleep apnea - let's get you signed up for a sleep study."

Turned out I was having 50 episodes per hour and was diagnoised with severe sleep apnea.
I never knew until then that the lack of a good nights sleep was taxing my heart and causing the HBP.

Within one week of using the CPAP, my blood pressure was back within normal ranges and I was off blood pressure medicine.