maf79, glad to hear you feeling better. can I ask you,  are(were) you using humidfier at highest level?

I started to feel that too much humidity in the air decrease the concentration of oxygen which might affect quality of sleep too
as I lowered humidity level I started to feel better. I wanted to see if other people with same experience of being tired with CPAP, have high humidity set on their machine

I initially had it set at 2.0. Then I was getting a dry mouth and sore throat from breathing through mouth while sleeping. I bumped up my humidity to 2.5 and then to 3.0. Then I got rained out and I have bumped it down. I'm still definitely not fully adjusted, but I'm not nearly as tired as I was last week.

I have been using a CPAP for a month and really feel no difference. Hard to compare it to anything as the first 7-10 days were really uncomfortable due to getting used the the nasal pillows I use. I do find I dream most nights (at least I remember some) which is more than I remembered previously, but I really do not feel the "way better" I was told I should feel when using the CPAP. I also do not sleep very long - maybe 5-6 hours as compared to the 7.5-9 I usually slept before. There is no way I can go that long now. Strange...

I don't know what it is, but I experienced something akin to a hangover the first week of APAP therapy.  I'm using the same machine as WILLIAMCO - but with Breeze headgear and nasal pillows.  I'm starting to feel better now, but could still sleep when I have to get up.  I wake up in the middle of the night now and can't go back to sleep.  It feels like I've gotten enough sleep - but I'm NOT getting up at 3 or 4 a.m.!  I just change positions, turn my MP3 player on, put the ear buds in my ears, and try to go back to sleep.  Most of the time I can go back to sleep, but I'm groggy when I have to get up later.  Maybe I'm getting too much sleep now?  When I had my sleep study, I spent over 80% of my time in Stage 1, about 10% in Stage 2, 5% in Stage 3, no time in Stage 4, and about 5% in REM (it was only about 3-1/2 minutes total!) - so I wasn't getting any quality sleep before therapy.  I think I'm doing pretty well now because I'm dreaming now, I don't get sleepy during the day, I don't have to take a nap after work, and I don't have to go to bed at 9 p.m. anymore.  I think our bodies just have to adjust to the different sleep cycles and getting better quality sleep.  I don't really know though.

Have any of you gotten any answers about why you are more tired after CPAP? I have a mild case of OSA (AHA of 9.9) and have been using CPAP at a level of 10 since 5/5/09. After the first month with no relief, I went back to my doctor (a neurologist). He scheduled me for a battery of blood tests and a brain MRI - everything came back normal. I told him I feel worse after sleeping with the CPAP, so he suggested I try in for two weeks without it to see if any difference. Without the machine, I wake up 4-5 times each night, so I'm tired in the morning. With it, I don't seem to wake up at all, but feel MORE tired in the morning. So last night he scheduled me for another sleep study to check the pressure, to be followed by the MLST (nap test) today if the pressure was ok. Well, they played with the pressure last night and got it up to 17, so they said I didn't need the MLST today. The tech said I got a good amount of sleep and a lot of REM, but I feel worse today than I have in the last 3 months. At one point in the test last night, I had to ask them to turn the pressure down - I felt like I was suffocating, almost drowning with too much air pressure. Any insight would be helpful.

jpino9179 wrote:

Have any of you gotten any answers about why you are more tired after CPAP? I have a mild case of OSA (AHA of 9.9) and have been using CPAP at a level of 10 since 5/5/09. After the first month with no relief, I went back to my doctor (a neurologist). He scheduled me for a battery of blood tests and a brain MRI - everything came back normal. I told him I feel worse after sleeping with the CPAP, so he suggested I try in for two weeks without it to see if any difference. Without the machine, I wake up 4-5 times each night, so I'm tired in the morning. With it, I don't seem to wake up at all, but feel MORE tired in the morning. So last night he scheduled me for another sleep study to check the pressure, to be followed by the MLST (nap test) today if the pressure was ok. Well, they played with the pressure last night and got it up to 17, so they said I didn't need the MLST today. The tech said I got a good amount of sleep and a lot of REM, but I feel worse today than I have in the last 3 months. At one point in the test last night, I had to ask them to turn the pressure down - I felt like I was suffocating, almost drowning with too much air pressure. Any insight would be helpful.

I guess an important question here is, yes you feel more tired in the morning, but do you feel less tired throughout the day?

I just came to this realization that most mornings where I sleep a full night with the machine I actually feel MORE groggy in the morning than without it.  My theory, and I'm not doctor, is that because I actually got deep, restorative sleep that night my body is recovering from that and 'waking up'.  On nights where I take the mask off early in the night and sleep without it, I wake up feeling more alert.  I think that because I don't ever reach the deep, restorative stage 3, 4 and REM sleep my body just stays more awake.

The difference for me is that although I am more groggy in the morning I feel MUCH more rested and alert after I wake up some.

Quote:

I started to feel that too much humidity in the air decrease the concentration of oxygen which might affect quality of sleep too
as I lowered humidity level I started to feel better. I wanted to see if other people with same experience of being tired with CPAP, have high humidity set on their machine

Now I have found the opposite..me level was set for 1 or 2 (Florida) for about 5 years... By accident it was turned to the highest setting and I used it like that for about a week until I realized it... can't say I felt less tired however, my eustation tube and sinus issues have decreased with the higher humidity.  Yet another thing that we need to tweak to our indivdual needs


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I am A ZOMBIE! 20 years+ undx'd. BiPAP Auto M 14/9. Nasal Swift&F&P Flex Fit 431 Full Face. RLS/PLMD, Primary CNS Hypersomnia, Sleep Paralysis, Parasomnia, Degenerative Disc Disease, Clinical MS, Fibromyalgia, COPD plus other past dx's..what's next?

I have been on treatment only 4 nights so far.  But I found that today I am reaally feeling the tiredness.  I feel asleep during a meeting at work and was woken up by my head hitting the table..   However, I feel better than I did before treatment,  I am sleepy yes.  But the brain fog is not there, and I feel like I have more engery.  And my family is telling me that my mood is much better.  That I am a happier person to be around.

So go figure,  I still show a high AHI and AI number on the machine.  And I am waking up now and then.  But my wife says that when I am asleep I am sleeping soundly.  So maybe it has to do with sleep debt and the body learning to adapt to a new thing.  Have been using the humidity set at 3 and 4.

I've been using my REMstar Auto with a Swift LT mask for 3 nights now.  I don't feel tired, at least nothing like I used to.  When I picked up my supplies from the DME, I told her that the tech used a medium nasal pillow to do titration with and I had no problem.  She looked and said that she believed that I should use a small.  The first night I was having trouble getting to sleep and it just didn't feel right with trying to exhale using the small nasal pillow so I got up and changed to my medium and slept very soundly.  I have slept great for 3 nights without using the humidifier, no soreness on the inside of the nose, a little sore second night on the outside, used a little Lansinoh cream and everything was great.  The funny thing with me is that I feel like for the first few hours after waking that my nostrils are stretched out.

It has taken nearly a month to get used to my CPAP machine.   When I used the machine at home, the machine made a lot of noise and the mask "sucked" in and out so much that it kept waking me up, and the airflow was weak.  I tried adjusting the humidity level but with no luck.  Then I spent a weekend at a friend's house with the machine, and the machine worked beautifully.  We found the problem--the wiring in my house was faulty so that the power to the CPAP was irregular.  Thank goodness we found out before the wiring started a fire!  After the rewiring, the machine is quiet, gives me a strong flow of air and the mask has stopped that sucking bit.

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I am not buying the idea that waking up tired after CPAP is a normal thing because we have been in deep sleep and we need to recover from that deep sleep

deep sleep is not a disease and doesn't need recovery- deep sleep should set us up to be alert

although Humidity issue is a personal issue and it hits each person differently, yet I think it might be a pressure issue, that pressure is not high enough

remember, if you have AHI of 6-7 you will still feel tired as well as you have AHI of 50 and all inbetween- but the feel of tiredness is different from AHI to another - we might feel more tired but it actually different level of tiredness
if the machine is not lowering your AHI below 5 we will still feel tiredness but different feeling than AHI of 10 or 15 or 50 etc,  
for me it helped me great deal to raise my pressure..I am a firm believer in Titration by symptoms

I am wondering about the neurologist who ordered a battery of neurological tests before trying higher pressure 1 or 2 cmh2o
you should investigate the more probable before the less ones

williamco wrote:

I am not buying the idea that waking up tired after CPAP is a normal thing because we have been in deep sleep and we need to recover from that deep sleep

deep sleep is not a disease and doesn't need recovery- deep sleep should set us up to be alert

although Humidity issue is a personal issue and it hits each person differently, yet I think it might be a pressure issue, that pressure is not high enough

remember, if you have AHI of 6-7 you will still feel tired as well as you have AHI of 50 and all inbetween- but the feel of tiredness is different from AHI to another - we might feel more tired but it actually different level of tiredness
if the machine is not lowering your AHI below 5 we will still feel tiredness but different feeling than AHI of 10 or 15 or 50 etc,  
for me it helped me great deal to raise my pressure..I am a firm believer in Titration by symptoms

I am wondering about the neurologist who ordered a battery of neurological tests before trying higher pressure 1 or 2 cmh2o
you should investigate the more probable before the less ones

I didn't mean to make it sound like waking up tired is a disease that you have to recover from.  Perhaps I didn't properly convey my thoughts here but when I said 'recover' I meant 'wake up'.  I have never been a morning person and it's always taken me about an hour for the fog to clear but once it does, I'm really very active and energetic the entire day.

Unfortunately since being diagnosed with OSA those days are few and far between.  I need several nights in a row to get back to 'normal' and those only happen maybe once a week, usually around the weekend.

I truly don't feel as tired when I wake up after a night where I somehow took the mask off early and again, I can only imagine it's because I never get into the deep stages of sleep.  However, these are the days where I'm struggling to stay awake the entire day.

In my sleep studies I only spent like 5% of my time in stage 3 sleep and never progressed beyond that.  It makes sense to me that I spend more time waking up all night than I do getting any real sleep so I feel more alert when I get up to do my daily routine.

You are welcome to your opinion but I can't deny that that hour of groggyness usually turns into a really great day for me.

ApexAZ: I didn't mean to dispute your symptoms or interpretations of your symptoms- you are your own doctor when it comes to sleep because you know yourself better

I was just throwing the idea that good sleep should lead to alertness, no ifs or buts - but may be there are other factors with you that you know it better than anyone

williamco wrote:

ApexAZ: I didn't mean to dispute your symptoms or interpretations of your symptoms- you are your own doctor when it comes to sleep because you know yourself better

I was just throwing the idea that good sleep should lead to alertness, no ifs or buts - but may be there are other factors with you that you know it better than anyone

I know and really I agree with you I just wasn't sure if I had communicated my thoughts poorly.  I agree that a good night of sleep should result in alertness and in my particular case it does, only after an hour to have my coffee and wake up though :)