Sleep Apnea

When I was pregnant with my daughter Sidney, I was sent for a sleep study. It was truly a horrid experience! The doctor hooked about 4 wires to my scalp (glued them into my hair), one to each earlobe, one to my forehead, one to my cheek, another to my chin, one under my nose, two on my chest, one on each shin, put two belts around my waist and chest, draped the wires all over my shoulder, and then told me to "sleep well"! As if I could sleep normally when I had itchy wires stuck all over my head and body! It was a perfectly miserable experience!

That was for diagnostics. Turned out I had obstructive sleep apnea. And it also turns out that insurance companies will not cover the cost of the Continuous Positive Air Pressure (C-PAP) equipment (a machine and a breathing mask) to treat it, unless you have a second sleep study so they can determine whether the equipment helps. To be perfectly frank, if I had not been pregnant, I doubt I would have gone back for that second sleep study. Since I was protecting another life though, I just prayed that I would be able to get through it, because I would do for my daughter what I would not do for myself.

So back I went for another horrendous night. Only this time they also hooked me up to the "elephant nose". Now, I am a mouth breather. My nose is usually congested so much that I breathe through my mouth at night. The doctor insisted that I'd breath through my nose just fine once I fell asleep, but I knew better! The only mask they had at the hospital was the nose mask. They did not have the full nose and mouth mask. So I tried it. I could breathe ok at first, until I laid down. Every time I laid down, the weight of the mask on my face compressed my nose and I could not breathe! So they got a larger mask, and that helped some, but it was still very difficult to breathe. I woke about twice that night and had to go blow my nose because I could not breathe at all. In spite of that, they noted improvements on the charts.

In addition to the sleep apnea, I had restless leg syndrome. It was classed as "moderate" (on a scale, between "mild" and "severe"). The recommended treatments for that are all pretty harsh, and none were suitable for a pregnant woman, so we let that go, and just got the mask and machine.

I hated it! It was uncomfortable, claustrophobic, and I could not hear well when it was on. It took a lot of sheer determination to just put that thing on every night and keep doing that. But after about two weeks, I noticed I was no longer waking with a headache in the morning. After three weeks I no longer felt sleepy during the daytime, or when driving. After a month, I slept better with it on than with it off. And after about a month and a half, my blood sugar levels improved - not surprising unless you do not know that there has been research done which showed a strong connection between treatment of sleep apnea and improvements in blood sugar control.

There are two kinds of sleep apnea: Obstructive sleep apnea, which is caused by tissues in the back of the throat or nose which make breathing more difficult. People with this will usually snore, often quite loudly. And Central Nervous System apnea (or CNS apnea), which is caused by a lack of signals to breathe from the nervous system.

Obstructive sleep apnea is simple to treat, as there are options for CPAP, and surgical options. CNS apnea is more difficult to treat.

It turns out that certain medications can cause CNS depression and apnea in some people - Nsaids do this to me, but this is an uncommon reaction to them - several other meds also do this to me. Common ones are diphenhydramine (sleep aid), or dextromethorphan (cough suppressant).  I can tell when something has that effect on me because I will wake up feeling loggy and hungover.

The other part to my personal history is that as the apnea was treated, the restless leg symptoms reduced. They completely went away after I had my daughter. I feel they may have been aggravated by an allergy to the type of insulin I was using then, which made me fidgety and itchy - I have an allergy to something else right now that does the same thing, and I notice if I sit still for long my legs get fidgety the same as they did when I was pregnant. The doctor did say that in a certain number of cases, restless legs are aggravated by the apnea and will improve as breathing improves.

There are also a number of other sleep disorders which can make diabetes control worse. If you feel like you are always waking in the morning feeling loggy and tired, and like you never get enough sleep, or if you wake with headaches often, then a sleep study may be in order. Apnea specifically can be life threatening, and will worsen just about every degenerative condition, and speed up the aging process. This is because it reduces the amount of oxygen to the cells in the body as you sleep.

I really hated the diagnostic process. It was acutely uncomfortable. I had long hair at the time, and spent the next two days picking glue out of my hair. But it was worth it, and if I have to do it again at some point to re-evaluate the necessity of the equipment, I will do it, simply because it makes such a difference to my health.

Written by Laura Wheeler, Owner of Firelight Business Enterprises, Inc.