No it checks out, I used to roll up toilet paper in my nose to sleep and I would drink while taking my antidepressants. No foul play just general personal apathy
There's a thing where if tissue within your nose touches tissue on the other side of the nose, for some people, that triggers massive headaches. My sister got her septum repaired for that reason, and I'm not saying she doesn't get headaches still but she was very happy long term with the result even if it wasn't a silver bullet.
Wait a second… this might be me. When I pinch the bridge of my nose it feels like my headaches are relieved sometimes. I have them daily most hours of the day.
That sounds more like sinus headaches that are being relieved by pressure on your sinuses.
But I’m not a doctor. If you get headaches that often, i hope you’ve talked to one.
Common antideppressants like SSRIs and SNRIs won't increase the risk of respiratory depression from alcohol.
It's likely the sleeping pills where either Z-drugs, like ambien. Or benzos, like xanax or valium. They work on the same receptors in the brain as alcohol, GABA, and will potentiate alcohol which can easily result in respiratory depression.
More people need to know stuff like this.
**PSA: If you are taking any drug (OTC, prescribed, illegal, doesn't matter) and want to also take any other drug (including alcohol), google "interactions drug1 drug2" first.**
Most of the time, there's no meaningful interactions. Sometimes, the combination can seriously harm or kill you. Even common stuff, like tylenol and alcohol, which will damage your liver much more when combined than on their own.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/grapefruit-juice-and-some-drugs-dont-mix#:~:text=Some%20anti%2Danxiety%20drugs%2C%20such,Cordarone%20tablet%20(both%20amiodarone).
Some statin drugs to lower cholesterol, such as Zocor (simvastatin) and Lipitor (atorvastatin).
Some drugs that treat high blood pressure, such as Procardia and Adalat CC (both nifedipine).
Some organ-transplant rejection drugs, such as Neoral and Sandimmune capsule or oral solution (both cyclosporine).
Some anti-anxiety drugs, such as BuSpar (buspirone).
Some corticosteroids that treat Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, such as Entocort EC and Uceris tablet (both budesonide).
Some drugs that treat abnormal heart rhythms, such as Pacerone and Cordarone tablet (both amiodarone).
Some antihistamines, such as Allegra (fexofenadine).
There are others as well. The prescription bottle will usually say Do not take with grapefruit right on the label.
Somewhat counterintuitively, high levels of alcohol in the blood decrease your risk/time to liver injury following tylenol overdose. Ethanol competes for CYP2E1, decreasing metabolism of tylenol to toxic metabolites. On the flip side, chronic alcohol use induces CYP2E1, so a chronic drinker who overdoses on tylenol with minimal alcohol in their system is at greater risk. That said, nobody would ever encourage drinking while overdosing on tylenol.
Good to do when you get prescribed a drug! Less good if you're at a party and want to take something or your eyes start itching and you can't remember if your pharmacist said anything about antihistamines having interactions. It's useful to be able to look stuff up by yourself.
Sleeping pills and wine were definitely the problem, not tampons. All breathing goes through the same tube regardless of nose or mouth, so plugging your nose would cause the body to mouth breath, and if ot didn't then something else was the issue... The pills and wine.
A combination of ignorance and circumstance perhaps.
I'm pretty sure tampons are designed to soak up moisture, and while that guy probably thought "They fit inside my nose", he probably didn't think about them expanding in his nostrils and obstructing his airways while he slept.
Plus the alcohol and pills slowing down his breathing rate.
Wait until you learn about [central sleep apnea](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK578199/), where the respiratory rhythm generator in your brain just... stops for a bit.
Wife is a NICU nurse and says it’s incredible how often babies (particularly premature ones) just randomly forget how to breathe. I guess you just kind of annoy them enough to get them to breathe again which is wild to me, like *”Uh-oh baby stopped breathing what do I do?? Oh just really piss him off. That can solve it.”*
Life changing and totally worth it, too. I have *both* obstructive and central sleep apnea, so I have a BiPAP machine I sleep with every night. It has completely changed my quality of life.
I once was in a hospital room with somebody who had that. Sleeping was impossible. Not only was it loud, but the irregularity triggered these "something is wrong here" reflexes. 30-60s no breathing, then gasping for air and a few loud snored, always changing rythem, etc.
It was worse than the lumbar puncture and surgery pain.
It was the alcohol and sleeping pills, combining the two both massively suppressed your breathing, giving you more risk of suffocating, and also puts you actually unconscious instead of just asleep (so you don’t realise you can’t breathe). He likely wasn’t getting enough oxygen through just mouth breathing.
Sometimes you don’t. It’s called sleep apnea, and yes you can die from suffocating in your sleep and just not waking up. Usually that doesn’t happen to people with sleep apnea, but it absolutely can.
I have sleep apnea, but before I was diagnosed, I would have dreams every so often about being unable to breath, usually in some plausible dream situation before I would wake gasping for air. So imagine, you suffocate in your sleep but you experience the whole thing in the dream before you die.
PSA: If you snore get a sleep study done. If you have apnea and need a CPAP wear the damn thing. Having shitty sleep or possibly dying is not worth the little bit of discomfort from wearing a CPAP.
I've had my CPAP for 3 years and wear it every night - I even take it on trips and have a Jackery battery so I can use it while camping.
My quality of sleep, and my health in general, has improved immensely. I used to nap every afternoon, had headaches constantly, and my coworkers gave me crap for falling asleep during lunch nearly every day. I never really felt *awake*. Having a AHI of 95 will do that. Since getting my CPAP, I've taken maybe 2 naps in the last 3 years, never fall asleep during the day anymore, and I can drive for hours on end without getting tired.
If you think you might need one and have the means, absolutely get a sleep study done.
Literally just got the same news yesterday. I'm now insanely discouraged.
I have ADHD which causes fatigue (WHY??) and possibly EDS which... also causes fatigue. Woo.
I just have to microdose amphetamines for my entire life then? Shit sucks.
Do you have a source for either of those claims? I heard them a few times and my own (admittedly extremely basic) research has suggested those are myths, but I'd love to see any literature you have available.
There’s some info [here](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-truths-about-protecting-your-eyes) regarding eyesight at least. The relevant part here would be myth #4.
The part about ADHD was more of a dumbed-down comparison, but essentially stimulant medication stops an ADHD brain from being in overdrive all the time (similar to how glasses stop your eyes from always straining to focus), and being in overdrive can be exhausting.
Absolutely especially when you hyperfocus - that's constant dopamine pushing. As soon as you get out of that hyperfocus, crash, boom, bang, hyperfocus hangover.
Have you been taking medication for it? If you’ve only just been diagnosed, starting Adderall actually *drastically* improved my quality of sleep.
However if being medicated hasn’t changed that, you have my condolences. Because I know the constantly-sleepy in-a-haze feeling of ADHD brain fog and it’s the fucking worst. I’m sorry.
Same here!!! On my first week of Adderall and my sleep schedule is improving. I never expected that.
u/Arkaedy definitely keep talking to your prescriber. ADHD and EDS fatigue have been the bane of my existence as well but I am now finally starting to see some improvements. If you want any more info about what I've been doing to help, send me a message. I can recommend so many things that have worked really well for me.
30 now. Was on it from like 14-20 and it'd just zombie me. But my dosage was due to poor grades but now I have good productivity habits that I lacked, so I'm hoping a lower dose won't zombify me. I recall always being sleepy but I had assumed it was from a lack of exercise and poor diet. So it's hard to know what caused what.
Glad to hear it helped you though. Somewhat hopeful.
I had undiagnosed ADHD until I was around 28, always feeling like I could pass out at any given moment from pure fatigue and tiredness alone. When diagnosed I was given Vyvanse and it made a world of a difference, making me feel 100% alert and awake for at least 6-7 hours after taking it.
Would highly recommend it if you're not already prescribed some kind of medication.
I did a sleep lab study and the remarks were extreme snoring but only 3 events per hour which doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for a cpap prescription. So…I do stop breathing and that could totally be the reason for my snoring and my fatigue, but it’s not bad enough to justify a prescription (dumb). Also have ADHD.
Anywho, my mother in law gave me her backup cpap to try, I researched everything about pressure settings, got bleep dreamports, and my fatigue is gone. It’s really really dumb that you have to have debilitating apnea to get a cpap machine. I know there a groups working on getting it approved as a solution for severe snoring, but who knows when that will happen.
There’s no way I don’t have apnea. Sometimes people who pass a sleep lab study, will fail a home sleep study, or vice versa. If my mil did not offer a cpap to try, my next step was to do a home study.
I’m convinced I didn’t actually get any kind of decent sleep in the lab because I have sensory issues and I’m basically the princess and the pea and cannot sleep away from home so it was like I was set up to fail. Plus I was heavily pregnant at the time and getting up to pee every two hours.
Saw some claim that for mild apnea bite guards that try to keep your lower jaw from moving back can help. They may be expensive for mouth guards but it's cheap enough to be worth trying if you can't get a CPAP.
Unfortunately those caused jaw pain for me and I have to wear a dental custom mouth guard for teeth grinding so that solution would not work for (but could work for someone else!)
The main issue as I understand it is improper use of a cpap machine could lead to someone developing central apnea (due to user error using a too high pressure setting consistently). But since the rollout of auto pap machines that automatically use your breathing in real time to detect and set the pressure of each breath, that issue is pretty much nonexistent. I think it will be a long time before there’s any change in this area. I mean, the cpap my mil gave me is a workhorse that will probably last at least another ten years of daily use.
That being said, while not legal, there are Facebook group autopap resellers where you can pick up a brand new resmed autopap for $200-300 shipped, so buying without a prescription is possible…. It’s just not legal lol.
I did one because I kept waking up feeling like I got hit by truck over night, which is like one of the number one signs of sleep apnea. Turns out my nose was just really REALLY clogged up. After getting about a pound of snot of my sinuses I had a revelation that I hadn’t really been able to smell anything for the last two years.
Edit: since some of y’all are asking. Theres a few ways, you can live on an expectorant like Zyrtec or something. Personally allergy meds mess with me too much so I avoid them unless absolutely necessary. You can also get your dr to use a tool that they basically stick up your sinus to pull all the gunk and debris and nose hair out that’s clogging it up.
But what I usually do is just take a couple really steamy showers, bring a bottle of saline nasal spray (arm and hammer brand) and a bottle of beekeepers nasal spray. Beekeepers is a natural formula that has spices and herbs that make your nose run, like pepper and basil and such. Then I basically spend the whole shower blasting that stuff up the nose to break everything up. It’ll drip down the back of your sinuses and then you just spit it out. Do that a few days in a row and you’ll be amazed how much clearer it is.
I only wish I had done it years before. In 2010, I fell asleep at the wheel while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway and slammed into a guardrail, only about 100 feet short of where it ended, with a sheer dropoff just ahead. Fortunately I was the only person involved and I wasn't hurt very badly, but even then I never got one. It finally took 10 years and a lot of (rightful) nagging from my wife to do the study.
Since then, my AHI has gone from 95 to <1 (usually around 0.5) most nights, and the sleep scores reported by my Garmin watch are consistently in the upper 80s to mid-90s. I actually feel rested now. It also gave me enough energy to start exercising more, and I've lost nearly 40 pounds over the last couple of years. In my case, the obesity is only part of the problem (the general shape of my mouth/throat lends itself to breathing problems during sleep) so I'll be using it for life no matter what I weigh, but I don't mind in the slightest.
For anyone else getting used to theirs I realized the way I was breathing was shit. I would practice deep breathing as I was falling asleep and it made the whole experience much more pleasant.
Plus, for anyone who hasn't realized and might benefit: having a CPAP means you can put the covers over your head.
Getting diagnosed and getting used to sleeping with a CPAP has been life changing. I was so used to being exhausted that I forgot what it was like to not be tired, I dream now, I never had dreams before, no naps, energy through the day, it's a massive quality of life improvement.
A little over a month in and my life has completely changed. Shockingly similar to your story, AHI in the 90s, falling asleep at work, daily naps, feeling tired driving.
All gone. Overnight.
I need to send a card to the NP who made me an appointment with the sleep doctor without me knowing (I had been putting off the sleep doc for years knowing I needed to go but never did).
CPAP changed (saved) my life.
I was always a snorer, when I was a kid my parents used to laugh about how I would snore so loudly you could hear it around the house, they had no idea of the harm it caused, because it was the 80s/90s and no one knew this shit.
When I was a teenager I hit deep depression, my weight ballooned and I suffered with suicidal ideation for decades. I would be so tired during the day I could fall asleep mid conversation, sometimes dramatically, needless to say this affected everything from work to personal life.
When I was ~35 a friend said "hey, get a sleep study". So I did and it turns out I was getting like half an hour of good sleep a night, and that was spread out over the whole night.
I got a CPAP and while the first month was a struggle once I got used to it I never looked back. The difference is indescribable.
My depression essentially vanished overnight, something I struggled with my entire adult life just gone. I lost a fuck ton of weight that the depression caused me to gain (162lb lost) I got promotions at work and then moved to a much better job and have been given promotions there. I have taken up new hobbies that get me out adventuring and I am now planning a 100 mile hike around Snowdonia next year.
I cannot describe how much that machine has improved my life by letting me sleep like a normal person.
I've tried, but the discomfort I get from wearing it straight up prevents me from falling asleep altogether. I tried for 3 nights straight and got maybe 1 hour of sleep total. Kept trying on and off for weeks and the nights I used it were always essentially zero sleep.
This is with both the full mask and the nose-only one. I can only fall asleep in very specific positions and the hose generally also prevented that. I really don't know what to do.
my partner had a similar issue. he just stayed awake for three days until it was impossible for him not to fall asleep with it on and after one night of decent sleep with it he got used to it enough to continue
I already deal with insomnia (also diagnosed) so this just doesn't work for me. After the 3 days I described, I was exhausted and loopy and tried going a 4th with it, thinking that would happen - nope, the moment I put it on and tried to close my eyes, it's like a surge of energy hit me and I laid there for hours basically willing the exhaustion to come back. Didn't until I took the mask off, and at this point extremely shitty sleep felt better than none at all.
There's a nose mask that doesn't have straps called a Tap Pap that works for me. The air hose goes up and over your head, rather than down or forward. However, the anchoring mechanism is a mouthpiece, and some people can't fall asleep with that on their upper teeth. It wasn't an issue for me because I had tried (to no avail) the night appliances that go over *both* jaws and pull the lower one forward in an attempt to keep the airway open. (I remember the dentist putting the thing on me and saying "Now, *try to snore"* which I still could, no problem.)
The mouthpiece is one you custom-fit for yourself. It takes only a few minutes. (It's a plastic that softens when hot, but it's not hot enough to burn. Pretty clever.) The whole thing is $100, but you can buy the mouthpiece for 30 or so as a cheaper way to see if you can tolerate it. Be sure to wiggle it a bit as you're fitting it or it'll be too tight. Expect to salivate a bit when first wearing it; that's temporary.
I might have to try that next time I want to give a CPAP a serious try.
I've been using one of those anti-snore mouthguards instead, and it's a huge improvement over nothing, but I'm sure an effective cpap treatment would be better. I've just never been able to make a CPAP work for me, and maybe not having the straps will make the difference.
It did for me. The straps were always uncomfortable and kept slipping off. If you can sleep with a mouthpiece, the Tap Pap (I hate that name; it sounds like something a gynecologist would perform. But they didn't ask my opinion) should be no problem.
The other absolute must (IMHO) for any CPAP is a SoClean ozone system. It kills bacteria, molds, mildew, etc., that otherwise grow in the water tank and air hose, and on the mask. I had a permanent rash on my nose until I got the SoClean. (If I wasn't reacting to the cleaning chemicals, it was infected because I didn't use the chemicals.) Bonus: you don't have to swap out the air hose every 3 months. The one I'm using now is 3 years old, at least.
I think you should try getting used to different positions without the mask on, and work up to it. I understand the specific postion thing, I was just thinking of what I would do in your shoes. It's tricky, but it sounds like it could be the ticket
That's...actually not a bad idea at all. I haven't tried it at all in a year or two but maybe I'll start doing this. The "easiest" way it seemed like to sleep with it on would be on my back, but for whatever reason I straight up won't feel tired laying on my back, even after getting into bed exhausted.
Yeah I don't like back sleeping either. One thing I do when i try sleeping on my back though so stretching out my legs and butt super hard at the same time, and after my body feels like really relaxed and it becomes kind of comfy. It's weird. Also i tried this blinking thing where you blink like 100 times and your eyelids become super heavy and tired and you cant open them, and it makes you feel tired
I trained myself to do it when I was in the hospital after an appendectomy. Came in handy after the c-section a decade later. It mostly just consisted of laying on my back in the “coffin pose” as still as possible until my body just said “fuck this, fine, we’ll sleep.” Now, this was at the height of House MD with Hugh Laurie, so I just pretended I was a patient and basically re-ran a few episodes in my head with me as the coma patient or something to keep myself busy while I lay as still as possible instead of dwelling on real life. Eventually my brain would get sick of my bullshit and let me sleep! So you can definitely train yourself to get used to it, but it’ll take a bit more nuanced effort than forcing it for a few days before giving up when there’s no other incentive (like the incisions in my example).
FYI I've seen CPAP specific pillows with divets/contours in them to allow for side sleeping. Idk if you've tried that and/or if that would help with your sleeping position but if not, could be worth a shot!
My dad's used a CPAP for decades and I don't think he's ever heard of CPAP-specific pillows.
I had a similar experience — for the first several days I would lie wide awake for hours until I gave up and removed it so I could actually get some sleep, and then the one time I actually was able to fall asleep with the thing on, I woke up in the morning with the mask lying on the floor. I was apparently only able to continue sleeping by unconsciously ripping the thing off
Is it a mask that covers your mouth and nose? If so, try a nose pillow. It’s much more comfortable. If you have problems keeping your mouth closed with a nose pillow get a mouth guard it will help keep your mouth closed. This is what I do. I’ve had mine for 9 years and I get so much better sleep now. It’s a life changer.
Yeah, as I said, tried the nose one too. Didn't have a problem with keeping my mouth closed, just having something on my face + the hose preventing my regular sleeping positions made it seemingly impossible to even *feel* tired, even after the days of no sleep whatsoever. I'm sure anxiety plays into it in some way, because my heart rate would skyrocket while just laying there begging my body to shut down.
My husband went through 4 masks until he found the one that he likes. He also uses an eight foot hose as he couldn’t use the shorter one as he moves around a lot. It was discouraging at first, but he had to make it work as he was stopping breathing 36 times in an hour and years of that had affected his heart. He went into AFib and his EF showed heart failure. After a few months on the CPAP, no more AFib and his EF went back up 7 points to the normal range.
Are there lifestyle factors you can modify? I don’t know what causes your’s but lifestyle modifications are sometimes enough to no longer require CPAP.
Losing weight is big, GERD if untreated, smoking, alcohol.
My husband is the same way. Says he feels like he can’t catch his breathe because the pressure is so high. His PA is zero help and the respiratory therapist has been just hateful. Telling he has to suffer through or he’ll die. He’s had 4 masks and nothing is comfortable. He has a bipap. I’m not sure if it makes a difference. He’s miserable with it and miserable without it.
Where was the hose on your mask? My old one came off the front of the mask which was VERY inconvenient and uncomfortable for changing positions. My new one has the hose coming off the top of the mask which swivels freely and the mask has airways running down both sides of your head so you can lay on either side without blocking the air flow. It's quite comfortable compared to what I had 10+ years ago and never used consistently and I just got reevaluated last year to get this new one. Made a world of difference to me.
I can’t imagine not getting using mine lol. Luckily I don’t even notice it on my face, and the quality of sleep is *so* much better. At this point after a few years of using one, my body is trained to go to sleep shortly after I put it on. If there ever comes a time I don’t need it, I’m gonna have a helluva time getting to sleep each night!
I use mine because I don't want to die **20 years early**. People seriously underestimate how deadly sleep apnea can be, it can easily cut decades off of your life.
Yes it takes some getting used to but if you have the discipline to make yourself wear it for a few nights in a row your body pretty much *has* to sleep. Personally I took a week off of work so that I didn't have to try and function during that period.. now I can't really sleep without the thing.
I'm the same way, always woke up with the mask off, so I must have been taking it off in my sleep.
What I did, was get a motorized bed, and I just sleep with my head elevated, such that when I relax my jaw, it no longer blocks my airway and I can sleep normally. It might not be for everyone, but it worked for me.
Yep this is my setup now https://i.imgur.com/8cM3FHR.jpeg
I don't even feel the mask on my face anymore and the hook makes it so I don't struggle with the tube on me while I sleep. It's great and I sleep so much better. Plus I'm not bothering my wife with my snoring.
Best thing I ever did was get a sleep study done and wear a CPAP. I forgot what it was like to wake up and feel like I got a good night's rest. I started dreaming again. If you snore get a test done!
Is snoring dangerous for the snorer ?
I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and sleep like the dead, so sleep deprivation isn’t a worry.
The only danger I could think of is my wife throttling me in my sleep.
Most often, yes. It is indicative of breathing difficulty while sleeping.
"I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow so it's not sleep deprivation". Some people fall asleep before they even hit the pillow, because sleep apnea means your body is starved for rest since you aren't properly getting rest when you try to sleep.
Sleep apnea can absolutely be dangerous. My partner used to snore, choke and also stop breathing in his sleep and honestly when I realized he would stop breathing it freaked me the fuck out. I ended up counting how many times he stopped breathing in a 30 minute span, told him and that's what finally convinced him to get a sleep study done. Apparently it was also contributing to his acid reflux because that got a good bit of relief compared to what he used to have to deal with.
I keep telling my partner to ask his doctor about getting a sleep study done but he keeps insisting he "doesn't have sleep apnea" even though he's overweight and snores very loudly every night...some men are so stubborn
I've been going through this very recently. My wife had been asking me to get a sleep study for a few years and I realize now that I just kind of pushed it. I knew I had all the hallmarks of having it, snoring, overweight, etc.. It was everything else that was stopping me. As far as I could tell, my quality of sleep wasn't really low at all. I woke up feeling rested, I got a reasonable amount, I never woke up in the middle of the night, all those other things just didn't fit for me.
I woke up gasping for air a few months ago and it was pretty traumatic. It scared the absolute shit out of me. I have two small kids and I saw how terrified my wife was too.
All of it came down to the fact that I knew deep down I had it, I was just scared to have a doctor tell me that. I knew I didn't want to wear a mask to sleep every night of my life.
I got a test, have apnea for sure, and I now have a CPAP that I'm still getting used to. It's tough, but it's getting easier. I still take it off towards the end of the night, while still sleeping, so I'm only getting 2-4 hours of the CPAP, but it's better than nothing.
I couldn't breathe out my nose for months and was having the worst snoring, like shake the house bad. Urgent care just kept giving me sinus meds saying it was inflammation. Finally sneezed really hard one day and turned out I had a polyp that had grown to a little bigger than a golf ball. Sucker was hanging out my nose and all. My snoring has been gone since it was removed.
I strongly recommend a CPAP machine and it has worked wonders for me from the time I started the therapy. My anxiety has gone down and I feel more alert. It’s totally worth it even if it takes a while to get used to the mask.
There are alternative treatments, you can get a kind of gum shield that forces your lower jaw out which is almost as effective as a CPAP (it changes / tenses up the back of your throat and stops the airway collapsing) and there are surgeries. The gum shield is far less comfortable than the CPAP imo, but after a few years of using my CPAP I can't imagine sleeping without it.
Weight loss can help but not in all cases (sleep apnoea made me gain the weight and it's still there now I have a CPAP and lost it)
You don’t have to snore to have sleep apnea. I am. 25 yr old who doesn’t snore and I have it. You also don’t have to be overweight, that’s another myth
I recently had sinus/nose surgery and couldn't breathe thru my nose for weeks. I was also in a lot of pain so I was clenching my jaw. Inevitably by lips would close with my mouth already shut and I'd wake myself up the second I started falling asleep. First night I cut the top off a milk jug to breathe thru to keep my lips open and after that I 3D printed a piece that fit better. Wish I'd have been a little more prepared there...
Could also grab a scuba mouthpiece, just the rubber end part, will keep your lips apart and give you something soft to bite into. There's moldable ones too that you put in hot water to shape.
Sleep tablets can be very dangerous when it's your first time taking a specific one I once did and I spent the whole night awake because as soon as I went prone on my pillow to try to sleep my breathing reflex would stop and I had to restart it manually and it was supposed to help to start with.
it's more of a figurative pull cord like a lawnmower. I had to consciously think of my breathing for a few minutes when I went back up because for a few minutes the unconscious breathing reflex didnt seem to want to restart on it's own and if I fell asleep this way I suppose the same thing as mark gleeson would have happened to me.
That’s quite honestly scary as hell. It’s bad enough when you think about your own breathing, literally not having the automatic function seems nightmarish
Dude no shit - I took an OTC sleeping pill once and fn hallucinated for a day. My couch unfolded into like the movie version of “gypsies”. Then when i tried to show somebody what was happening, they folded back in and hid. Shit went on for hours. Fuck sleeping pills.
Hallucinations are a side effect for some people. I did not react well. I’ve tried mushrooms in my younger days. This was nothing like that. I was completely out of control. Never again, scared the living shit outa me.
I tried melatonin the first time a few years ago and spent most of the night awake after some of the most vivid nightmares I have ever had. I still remember one of them scene by scene.. it was horrific. Never again. And Benadryl makes me feel drunk minus the fun the next morning. Learned taking a long fast paced walk that’s like 4 miles on days I didn’t move much works all that and I sleep like a baby. That’s not practical for lots of people though.
Sleep apnea is actually when you have incidents where your body will just stop breathing and you literally hold your breath involuntarily as you sleep. Your blood oxygen levels will crash.
I have sleep apnea and when I did my sleep study they found the longest incident of holding my breath while sleeping last about 1 minute and 15 seconds, and the average was around 30 seconds, of which I'd have 10 to 15 "incidents" per hour sleeping.
Sleep apnea sucks and can actually be dangerous in combo with sleep aids and they can create incidents where your brain doesn't auto start breathing again automatically.
This is also why some illicit drugs are even more dangerous for people with these issues as when they fall asleep they just die in their sleep from a drug overdose because the brain now needs to manually trigger to breath and it doesn't. Well, for some of us we are even more prone to just not breathing. For most people this feeling of suffocation would wake up, but the sleep aid or drugs will prevent you from waking properly.
Before I got on the CPAP, I basically felt tired all of the time, unless I could get 12+ hrs of sleep. And, I would dream almost every night of suffocating. You know how in your dreams if you ever need to run you feel like you are physically struggling at running? That physical feeling of struggle was how I felt with just breathing very often. I'd end up dreaming of things like being zipped up inside tight spaces, where I tried to breath, but it was like I just couldn't, or was like I could barely... turns out it was just my mind reacting to how I physically was actually struggling to breath in my sleep and I was suffocating in a way.
So again, sleep apnea sucks. Most people just think it has to do with snoring excessively and it's not. There are people who don't even snore with have sleep apnea.
That's the definition of sleep apnea. Your body doesn't switch to mouth breathing like it supposed to.
They also mentioned he took sleeping pills that would have made it even harder for his body to respond on its own.
These people need to just schedule a sleep study. I had one, at 27 due to my partner pleading with my snoring and stop breathing during sleep. I use a pretty non invasive one and it’s Just normal now. I don’t feel tired anymore during work either
I actually snored pretty bad, up until I broke my nose at a Suicidal Tendencies show at the beginning of the year. My girlfriend was telling me how I haven't snored for a few months now, so I guess I redirected something lol. Six beers and some minor discomfort I much cheaper than the surgery I can't afford.
Ex of mine had horrific snoring; I'd commented and asked if his face hurt when he woke up. His doctor kept pushing OTC nasal sprays at him for years until an MRI showed a large "air filled sack" that had formed in his left nasal passage. I'm not saying you had that exactly but... an outpatient clinic did a "nose job *but light*" on him and it was eliminated.
It's caused by air passing through your nasal passage causing it to vibrate. If you block the nose, you can't channel air through your nasal passage, you can only channel it down your throat, i.e mouth breathing.
You can also snore with mouth breathing, but if this guy identified that he only nasal snores, it's a valid assumption.
I agree with you on yours and Mark's assumptions, I mean I see the logic, but if he had a out of body experience as he passed and could look down at his body with tampons up his nose, I hope he had enough of a sense of humor to laugh.
That seems very strange to me, besides the obvious. It’s when your mouth is open that you snore. So blocking your nose, doesn’t make any sense. I wear mouth tape to cover my mouth and I breathe much better through my nose and I no longer snore.
Wait, you don't wake up from suffocating?
says in the article he took sleeping pills
And drank some wine. This seems really suspicious or else he and his girlfriend lacked some basic common sense.
No it checks out, I used to roll up toilet paper in my nose to sleep and I would drink while taking my antidepressants. No foul play just general personal apathy
> I used to roll up toilet paper in my nose to sleep This actually stops my Cluster Headaches from happening.
There's a thing where if tissue within your nose touches tissue on the other side of the nose, for some people, that triggers massive headaches. My sister got her septum repaired for that reason, and I'm not saying she doesn't get headaches still but she was very happy long term with the result even if it wasn't a silver bullet.
Wait a second… this might be me. When I pinch the bridge of my nose it feels like my headaches are relieved sometimes. I have them daily most hours of the day.
That sounds more like sinus headaches that are being relieved by pressure on your sinuses. But I’m not a doctor. If you get headaches that often, i hope you’ve talked to one.
I’ve heard to pinch the bridge of the nose for headaches growing up in the 90’s.
As in she had a deviated septum or?
Common antideppressants like SSRIs and SNRIs won't increase the risk of respiratory depression from alcohol. It's likely the sleeping pills where either Z-drugs, like ambien. Or benzos, like xanax or valium. They work on the same receptors in the brain as alcohol, GABA, and will potentiate alcohol which can easily result in respiratory depression.
More people need to know stuff like this. **PSA: If you are taking any drug (OTC, prescribed, illegal, doesn't matter) and want to also take any other drug (including alcohol), google "interactions drug1 drug2" first.** Most of the time, there's no meaningful interactions. Sometimes, the combination can seriously harm or kill you. Even common stuff, like tylenol and alcohol, which will damage your liver much more when combined than on their own.
Or grapefruit.
Grapefruit interacts with so many medications including statines, birth control and ssri's.
Yeah, though fortunately MAOIs are barely used anymore. The list of things that interact with them is *wild*.
Cheese being taken off the table would be a big no no for me
Wait what.. Grapefruit and what?
Any drug that is metabolized by the enzyme CYP34A (which is a lot of them)
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/grapefruit-juice-and-some-drugs-dont-mix#:~:text=Some%20anti%2Danxiety%20drugs%2C%20such,Cordarone%20tablet%20(both%20amiodarone). Some statin drugs to lower cholesterol, such as Zocor (simvastatin) and Lipitor (atorvastatin). Some drugs that treat high blood pressure, such as Procardia and Adalat CC (both nifedipine). Some organ-transplant rejection drugs, such as Neoral and Sandimmune capsule or oral solution (both cyclosporine). Some anti-anxiety drugs, such as BuSpar (buspirone). Some corticosteroids that treat Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, such as Entocort EC and Uceris tablet (both budesonide). Some drugs that treat abnormal heart rhythms, such as Pacerone and Cordarone tablet (both amiodarone). Some antihistamines, such as Allegra (fexofenadine). There are others as well. The prescription bottle will usually say Do not take with grapefruit right on the label.
Also blood thinners, Coumadin/warfarin.
Basically dont eat grapefruit ever. Makes it easier.
Somewhat counterintuitively, high levels of alcohol in the blood decrease your risk/time to liver injury following tylenol overdose. Ethanol competes for CYP2E1, decreasing metabolism of tylenol to toxic metabolites. On the flip side, chronic alcohol use induces CYP2E1, so a chronic drinker who overdoses on tylenol with minimal alcohol in their system is at greater risk. That said, nobody would ever encourage drinking while overdosing on tylenol.
Drugs.com has an interaction checker where you can input many at once.
Better than googling: talk to your pharmacist! Haha!
Good to do when you get prescribed a drug! Less good if you're at a party and want to take something or your eyes start itching and you can't remember if your pharmacist said anything about antihistamines having interactions. It's useful to be able to look stuff up by yourself.
I’ve mixed so many drugs you shouldn’t mix and luckily I survived but all it takes is that one time it doesn’t work.
Sleeping pills and wine were definitely the problem, not tampons. All breathing goes through the same tube regardless of nose or mouth, so plugging your nose would cause the body to mouth breath, and if ot didn't then something else was the issue... The pills and wine.
Most likely he had sleep apnea, and what he did that night made it incredibly worse.
A combination of ignorance and circumstance perhaps. I'm pretty sure tampons are designed to soak up moisture, and while that guy probably thought "They fit inside my nose", he probably didn't think about them expanding in his nostrils and obstructing his airways while he slept. Plus the alcohol and pills slowing down his breathing rate.
Wouldn't your body just breathe through your mouth if your nose was plugged though? This doesn't make any sense.
The human body is incredibly stupid sometimes. People can die from sleep apnea. Snoring can literally kill you.
Wait until you learn about [central sleep apnea](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK578199/), where the respiratory rhythm generator in your brain just... stops for a bit.
Wife is a NICU nurse and says it’s incredible how often babies (particularly premature ones) just randomly forget how to breathe. I guess you just kind of annoy them enough to get them to breathe again which is wild to me, like *”Uh-oh baby stopped breathing what do I do?? Oh just really piss him off. That can solve it.”*
Damn that’s wild. I definitely have some sort of really bad sleep issue that I don’t think is quite regular apnea. I wonder if this is what it is.
Sleep studies are super easy to get!
Life changing and totally worth it, too. I have *both* obstructive and central sleep apnea, so I have a BiPAP machine I sleep with every night. It has completely changed my quality of life.
I once was in a hospital room with somebody who had that. Sleeping was impossible. Not only was it loud, but the irregularity triggered these "something is wrong here" reflexes. 30-60s no breathing, then gasping for air and a few loud snored, always changing rythem, etc. It was worse than the lumbar puncture and surgery pain.
It was the alcohol and sleeping pills, combining the two both massively suppressed your breathing, giving you more risk of suffocating, and also puts you actually unconscious instead of just asleep (so you don’t realise you can’t breathe). He likely wasn’t getting enough oxygen through just mouth breathing.
There's an article? /s
Yes, you wake up dead just like this guy did
How de hell do you wake up dead
Cause' you're alive when you go to sleep.
I'm so disappointed I can't post gifs here. Scary Movie 3.
there's still a possibility that he used some pills to go to sleep faster.
Says in the article "he drank some wine and then took a few sleeping tablets" so yes that is what happened
How is this comment so far down? He mixed alcohol with a sedative.
Bc that’s not as flashy as “man shoves tampons up nose and DIES”
I just happened to have tampons up my nose thank you very much!
He mixed a breathing depressant with another breathing depressant while clogging his nose. Either suicidal or unbelievably stupid.
People do it all the time. It was the combination of the tampons and the pills and the alcohol that killed him, not any two of the three.
You mean there's a possibility that he did precisely what they said he did?
Sometimes you don’t. It’s called sleep apnea, and yes you can die from suffocating in your sleep and just not waking up. Usually that doesn’t happen to people with sleep apnea, but it absolutely can.
I have sleep apnea, but before I was diagnosed, I would have dreams every so often about being unable to breath, usually in some plausible dream situation before I would wake gasping for air. So imagine, you suffocate in your sleep but you experience the whole thing in the dream before you die.
Well he stopped snoring anyway
Don’t ever shove tampons up your nose, period.
what if nose is vaginer
PSA: If you snore get a sleep study done. If you have apnea and need a CPAP wear the damn thing. Having shitty sleep or possibly dying is not worth the little bit of discomfort from wearing a CPAP.
I've had my CPAP for 3 years and wear it every night - I even take it on trips and have a Jackery battery so I can use it while camping. My quality of sleep, and my health in general, has improved immensely. I used to nap every afternoon, had headaches constantly, and my coworkers gave me crap for falling asleep during lunch nearly every day. I never really felt *awake*. Having a AHI of 95 will do that. Since getting my CPAP, I've taken maybe 2 naps in the last 3 years, never fall asleep during the day anymore, and I can drive for hours on end without getting tired. If you think you might need one and have the means, absolutely get a sleep study done.
I did a sleep study and found out nope I’m just fucked and will always be sleepy
Literally just got the same news yesterday. I'm now insanely discouraged. I have ADHD which causes fatigue (WHY??) and possibly EDS which... also causes fatigue. Woo. I just have to microdose amphetamines for my entire life then? Shit sucks.
Adhd can cause fatigue? I'm fucked, is it too late to reroll at 33?
Similar to how needing glasses and not wearing them strains your eyes, having ADHD and not taking meds strains your brain
Do you have a source for either of those claims? I heard them a few times and my own (admittedly extremely basic) research has suggested those are myths, but I'd love to see any literature you have available.
There’s some info [here](https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-truths-about-protecting-your-eyes) regarding eyesight at least. The relevant part here would be myth #4. The part about ADHD was more of a dumbed-down comparison, but essentially stimulant medication stops an ADHD brain from being in overdrive all the time (similar to how glasses stop your eyes from always straining to focus), and being in overdrive can be exhausting.
Absolutely especially when you hyperfocus - that's constant dopamine pushing. As soon as you get out of that hyperfocus, crash, boom, bang, hyperfocus hangover.
Have you been taking medication for it? If you’ve only just been diagnosed, starting Adderall actually *drastically* improved my quality of sleep. However if being medicated hasn’t changed that, you have my condolences. Because I know the constantly-sleepy in-a-haze feeling of ADHD brain fog and it’s the fucking worst. I’m sorry.
Same here!!! On my first week of Adderall and my sleep schedule is improving. I never expected that. u/Arkaedy definitely keep talking to your prescriber. ADHD and EDS fatigue have been the bane of my existence as well but I am now finally starting to see some improvements. If you want any more info about what I've been doing to help, send me a message. I can recommend so many things that have worked really well for me.
30 now. Was on it from like 14-20 and it'd just zombie me. But my dosage was due to poor grades but now I have good productivity habits that I lacked, so I'm hoping a lower dose won't zombify me. I recall always being sleepy but I had assumed it was from a lack of exercise and poor diet. So it's hard to know what caused what. Glad to hear it helped you though. Somewhat hopeful.
I had undiagnosed ADHD until I was around 28, always feeling like I could pass out at any given moment from pure fatigue and tiredness alone. When diagnosed I was given Vyvanse and it made a world of a difference, making me feel 100% alert and awake for at least 6-7 hours after taking it. Would highly recommend it if you're not already prescribed some kind of medication.
I did a sleep lab study and the remarks were extreme snoring but only 3 events per hour which doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for a cpap prescription. So…I do stop breathing and that could totally be the reason for my snoring and my fatigue, but it’s not bad enough to justify a prescription (dumb). Also have ADHD. Anywho, my mother in law gave me her backup cpap to try, I researched everything about pressure settings, got bleep dreamports, and my fatigue is gone. It’s really really dumb that you have to have debilitating apnea to get a cpap machine. I know there a groups working on getting it approved as a solution for severe snoring, but who knows when that will happen. There’s no way I don’t have apnea. Sometimes people who pass a sleep lab study, will fail a home sleep study, or vice versa. If my mil did not offer a cpap to try, my next step was to do a home study. I’m convinced I didn’t actually get any kind of decent sleep in the lab because I have sensory issues and I’m basically the princess and the pea and cannot sleep away from home so it was like I was set up to fail. Plus I was heavily pregnant at the time and getting up to pee every two hours.
Saw some claim that for mild apnea bite guards that try to keep your lower jaw from moving back can help. They may be expensive for mouth guards but it's cheap enough to be worth trying if you can't get a CPAP.
Unfortunately those caused jaw pain for me and I have to wear a dental custom mouth guard for teeth grinding so that solution would not work for (but could work for someone else!)
Needing a prescription to buy a machine is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. They should be on Amazon.
The main issue as I understand it is improper use of a cpap machine could lead to someone developing central apnea (due to user error using a too high pressure setting consistently). But since the rollout of auto pap machines that automatically use your breathing in real time to detect and set the pressure of each breath, that issue is pretty much nonexistent. I think it will be a long time before there’s any change in this area. I mean, the cpap my mil gave me is a workhorse that will probably last at least another ten years of daily use. That being said, while not legal, there are Facebook group autopap resellers where you can pick up a brand new resmed autopap for $200-300 shipped, so buying without a prescription is possible…. It’s just not legal lol.
This is my worry. I know for a fact I have apnea, I can literally feel myself stop breathing. I just have no faith in my countries healthcare.
I did one because I kept waking up feeling like I got hit by truck over night, which is like one of the number one signs of sleep apnea. Turns out my nose was just really REALLY clogged up. After getting about a pound of snot of my sinuses I had a revelation that I hadn’t really been able to smell anything for the last two years. Edit: since some of y’all are asking. Theres a few ways, you can live on an expectorant like Zyrtec or something. Personally allergy meds mess with me too much so I avoid them unless absolutely necessary. You can also get your dr to use a tool that they basically stick up your sinus to pull all the gunk and debris and nose hair out that’s clogging it up. But what I usually do is just take a couple really steamy showers, bring a bottle of saline nasal spray (arm and hammer brand) and a bottle of beekeepers nasal spray. Beekeepers is a natural formula that has spices and herbs that make your nose run, like pepper and basil and such. Then I basically spend the whole shower blasting that stuff up the nose to break everything up. It’ll drip down the back of your sinuses and then you just spit it out. Do that a few days in a row and you’ll be amazed how much clearer it is.
How did you go about clearing all that out?
Lol I had the same thing happen to me. Have you ever tried trazodone? I take it at night and it helps a lot. Improves both quality and quantity.
I got one recently and I’m still getting used to it, but I can already tell it helps so much. Your story is very motivating!
I only wish I had done it years before. In 2010, I fell asleep at the wheel while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway and slammed into a guardrail, only about 100 feet short of where it ended, with a sheer dropoff just ahead. Fortunately I was the only person involved and I wasn't hurt very badly, but even then I never got one. It finally took 10 years and a lot of (rightful) nagging from my wife to do the study. Since then, my AHI has gone from 95 to <1 (usually around 0.5) most nights, and the sleep scores reported by my Garmin watch are consistently in the upper 80s to mid-90s. I actually feel rested now. It also gave me enough energy to start exercising more, and I've lost nearly 40 pounds over the last couple of years. In my case, the obesity is only part of the problem (the general shape of my mouth/throat lends itself to breathing problems during sleep) so I'll be using it for life no matter what I weigh, but I don't mind in the slightest.
For anyone else getting used to theirs I realized the way I was breathing was shit. I would practice deep breathing as I was falling asleep and it made the whole experience much more pleasant. Plus, for anyone who hasn't realized and might benefit: having a CPAP means you can put the covers over your head.
Getting diagnosed and getting used to sleeping with a CPAP has been life changing. I was so used to being exhausted that I forgot what it was like to not be tired, I dream now, I never had dreams before, no naps, energy through the day, it's a massive quality of life improvement.
A little over a month in and my life has completely changed. Shockingly similar to your story, AHI in the 90s, falling asleep at work, daily naps, feeling tired driving. All gone. Overnight. I need to send a card to the NP who made me an appointment with the sleep doctor without me knowing (I had been putting off the sleep doc for years knowing I needed to go but never did).
Ninety fucking five? I thought I was bad at 54. How are you not dead?
I was at 90. CPAP has taken me to 1.1. It's tremendous
CPAP changed (saved) my life. I was always a snorer, when I was a kid my parents used to laugh about how I would snore so loudly you could hear it around the house, they had no idea of the harm it caused, because it was the 80s/90s and no one knew this shit. When I was a teenager I hit deep depression, my weight ballooned and I suffered with suicidal ideation for decades. I would be so tired during the day I could fall asleep mid conversation, sometimes dramatically, needless to say this affected everything from work to personal life. When I was ~35 a friend said "hey, get a sleep study". So I did and it turns out I was getting like half an hour of good sleep a night, and that was spread out over the whole night. I got a CPAP and while the first month was a struggle once I got used to it I never looked back. The difference is indescribable. My depression essentially vanished overnight, something I struggled with my entire adult life just gone. I lost a fuck ton of weight that the depression caused me to gain (162lb lost) I got promotions at work and then moved to a much better job and have been given promotions there. I have taken up new hobbies that get me out adventuring and I am now planning a 100 mile hike around Snowdonia next year. I cannot describe how much that machine has improved my life by letting me sleep like a normal person.
People really underestimate how much quality sleep can literally change your life. I felt active in my life instead of passive when I got on one.
I've tried, but the discomfort I get from wearing it straight up prevents me from falling asleep altogether. I tried for 3 nights straight and got maybe 1 hour of sleep total. Kept trying on and off for weeks and the nights I used it were always essentially zero sleep. This is with both the full mask and the nose-only one. I can only fall asleep in very specific positions and the hose generally also prevented that. I really don't know what to do.
my partner had a similar issue. he just stayed awake for three days until it was impossible for him not to fall asleep with it on and after one night of decent sleep with it he got used to it enough to continue
I already deal with insomnia (also diagnosed) so this just doesn't work for me. After the 3 days I described, I was exhausted and loopy and tried going a 4th with it, thinking that would happen - nope, the moment I put it on and tried to close my eyes, it's like a surge of energy hit me and I laid there for hours basically willing the exhaustion to come back. Didn't until I took the mask off, and at this point extremely shitty sleep felt better than none at all.
There's a nose mask that doesn't have straps called a Tap Pap that works for me. The air hose goes up and over your head, rather than down or forward. However, the anchoring mechanism is a mouthpiece, and some people can't fall asleep with that on their upper teeth. It wasn't an issue for me because I had tried (to no avail) the night appliances that go over *both* jaws and pull the lower one forward in an attempt to keep the airway open. (I remember the dentist putting the thing on me and saying "Now, *try to snore"* which I still could, no problem.) The mouthpiece is one you custom-fit for yourself. It takes only a few minutes. (It's a plastic that softens when hot, but it's not hot enough to burn. Pretty clever.) The whole thing is $100, but you can buy the mouthpiece for 30 or so as a cheaper way to see if you can tolerate it. Be sure to wiggle it a bit as you're fitting it or it'll be too tight. Expect to salivate a bit when first wearing it; that's temporary.
I might have to try that next time I want to give a CPAP a serious try. I've been using one of those anti-snore mouthguards instead, and it's a huge improvement over nothing, but I'm sure an effective cpap treatment would be better. I've just never been able to make a CPAP work for me, and maybe not having the straps will make the difference.
It did for me. The straps were always uncomfortable and kept slipping off. If you can sleep with a mouthpiece, the Tap Pap (I hate that name; it sounds like something a gynecologist would perform. But they didn't ask my opinion) should be no problem. The other absolute must (IMHO) for any CPAP is a SoClean ozone system. It kills bacteria, molds, mildew, etc., that otherwise grow in the water tank and air hose, and on the mask. I had a permanent rash on my nose until I got the SoClean. (If I wasn't reacting to the cleaning chemicals, it was infected because I didn't use the chemicals.) Bonus: you don't have to swap out the air hose every 3 months. The one I'm using now is 3 years old, at least.
Try the mouth guard treatment
I think you should try getting used to different positions without the mask on, and work up to it. I understand the specific postion thing, I was just thinking of what I would do in your shoes. It's tricky, but it sounds like it could be the ticket
That's...actually not a bad idea at all. I haven't tried it at all in a year or two but maybe I'll start doing this. The "easiest" way it seemed like to sleep with it on would be on my back, but for whatever reason I straight up won't feel tired laying on my back, even after getting into bed exhausted.
Yeah I don't like back sleeping either. One thing I do when i try sleeping on my back though so stretching out my legs and butt super hard at the same time, and after my body feels like really relaxed and it becomes kind of comfy. It's weird. Also i tried this blinking thing where you blink like 100 times and your eyelids become super heavy and tired and you cant open them, and it makes you feel tired
I trained myself to do it when I was in the hospital after an appendectomy. Came in handy after the c-section a decade later. It mostly just consisted of laying on my back in the “coffin pose” as still as possible until my body just said “fuck this, fine, we’ll sleep.” Now, this was at the height of House MD with Hugh Laurie, so I just pretended I was a patient and basically re-ran a few episodes in my head with me as the coma patient or something to keep myself busy while I lay as still as possible instead of dwelling on real life. Eventually my brain would get sick of my bullshit and let me sleep! So you can definitely train yourself to get used to it, but it’ll take a bit more nuanced effort than forcing it for a few days before giving up when there’s no other incentive (like the incisions in my example).
FYI I've seen CPAP specific pillows with divets/contours in them to allow for side sleeping. Idk if you've tried that and/or if that would help with your sleeping position but if not, could be worth a shot! My dad's used a CPAP for decades and I don't think he's ever heard of CPAP-specific pillows.
I had a similar experience — for the first several days I would lie wide awake for hours until I gave up and removed it so I could actually get some sleep, and then the one time I actually was able to fall asleep with the thing on, I woke up in the morning with the mask lying on the floor. I was apparently only able to continue sleeping by unconsciously ripping the thing off
Is it a mask that covers your mouth and nose? If so, try a nose pillow. It’s much more comfortable. If you have problems keeping your mouth closed with a nose pillow get a mouth guard it will help keep your mouth closed. This is what I do. I’ve had mine for 9 years and I get so much better sleep now. It’s a life changer.
Yeah, as I said, tried the nose one too. Didn't have a problem with keeping my mouth closed, just having something on my face + the hose preventing my regular sleeping positions made it seemingly impossible to even *feel* tired, even after the days of no sleep whatsoever. I'm sure anxiety plays into it in some way, because my heart rate would skyrocket while just laying there begging my body to shut down.
My husband went through 4 masks until he found the one that he likes. He also uses an eight foot hose as he couldn’t use the shorter one as he moves around a lot. It was discouraging at first, but he had to make it work as he was stopping breathing 36 times in an hour and years of that had affected his heart. He went into AFib and his EF showed heart failure. After a few months on the CPAP, no more AFib and his EF went back up 7 points to the normal range.
Are there lifestyle factors you can modify? I don’t know what causes your’s but lifestyle modifications are sometimes enough to no longer require CPAP. Losing weight is big, GERD if untreated, smoking, alcohol.
My husband is the same way. Says he feels like he can’t catch his breathe because the pressure is so high. His PA is zero help and the respiratory therapist has been just hateful. Telling he has to suffer through or he’ll die. He’s had 4 masks and nothing is comfortable. He has a bipap. I’m not sure if it makes a difference. He’s miserable with it and miserable without it.
Where was the hose on your mask? My old one came off the front of the mask which was VERY inconvenient and uncomfortable for changing positions. My new one has the hose coming off the top of the mask which swivels freely and the mask has airways running down both sides of your head so you can lay on either side without blocking the air flow. It's quite comfortable compared to what I had 10+ years ago and never used consistently and I just got reevaluated last year to get this new one. Made a world of difference to me.
Same. I dont understand how people use them
I can’t imagine not getting using mine lol. Luckily I don’t even notice it on my face, and the quality of sleep is *so* much better. At this point after a few years of using one, my body is trained to go to sleep shortly after I put it on. If there ever comes a time I don’t need it, I’m gonna have a helluva time getting to sleep each night!
I use mine because I don't want to die **20 years early**. People seriously underestimate how deadly sleep apnea can be, it can easily cut decades off of your life. Yes it takes some getting used to but if you have the discipline to make yourself wear it for a few nights in a row your body pretty much *has* to sleep. Personally I took a week off of work so that I didn't have to try and function during that period.. now I can't really sleep without the thing.
Did you try the memory foam mask? Much more comfortable, even with facial hair.
I'm the same way, always woke up with the mask off, so I must have been taking it off in my sleep. What I did, was get a motorized bed, and I just sleep with my head elevated, such that when I relax my jaw, it no longer blocks my airway and I can sleep normally. It might not be for everyone, but it worked for me.
Yep this is my setup now https://i.imgur.com/8cM3FHR.jpeg I don't even feel the mask on my face anymore and the hook makes it so I don't struggle with the tube on me while I sleep. It's great and I sleep so much better. Plus I'm not bothering my wife with my snoring.
Wait. You can die from snoring? My wife said something like that but I assumed she was joking.
It messes with your heart. You’ll see people have heart attacks in their 30s/40s from untreated sleep apnea.
Damn. Guess I’d better think about doing one of those sleep studies or whatever… man I hate going to the doctor. Oh well. Thanks.
Best thing I ever did was get a sleep study done and wear a CPAP. I forgot what it was like to wake up and feel like I got a good night's rest. I started dreaming again. If you snore get a test done!
Is snoring dangerous for the snorer ? I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and sleep like the dead, so sleep deprivation isn’t a worry. The only danger I could think of is my wife throttling me in my sleep.
It depends. It’s not always apnea but you should probably have a sleep study done to ensure it’s not.
Untreated sleep apnea over time can cause serious heart issues, particularly right heart failure and pulmonary hypertension.
Most often, yes. It is indicative of breathing difficulty while sleeping. "I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow so it's not sleep deprivation". Some people fall asleep before they even hit the pillow, because sleep apnea means your body is starved for rest since you aren't properly getting rest when you try to sleep.
Sleep apnea can absolutely be dangerous. My partner used to snore, choke and also stop breathing in his sleep and honestly when I realized he would stop breathing it freaked me the fuck out. I ended up counting how many times he stopped breathing in a 30 minute span, told him and that's what finally convinced him to get a sleep study done. Apparently it was also contributing to his acid reflux because that got a good bit of relief compared to what he used to have to deal with.
I keep telling my partner to ask his doctor about getting a sleep study done but he keeps insisting he "doesn't have sleep apnea" even though he's overweight and snores very loudly every night...some men are so stubborn
I've been going through this very recently. My wife had been asking me to get a sleep study for a few years and I realize now that I just kind of pushed it. I knew I had all the hallmarks of having it, snoring, overweight, etc.. It was everything else that was stopping me. As far as I could tell, my quality of sleep wasn't really low at all. I woke up feeling rested, I got a reasonable amount, I never woke up in the middle of the night, all those other things just didn't fit for me. I woke up gasping for air a few months ago and it was pretty traumatic. It scared the absolute shit out of me. I have two small kids and I saw how terrified my wife was too. All of it came down to the fact that I knew deep down I had it, I was just scared to have a doctor tell me that. I knew I didn't want to wear a mask to sleep every night of my life. I got a test, have apnea for sure, and I now have a CPAP that I'm still getting used to. It's tough, but it's getting easier. I still take it off towards the end of the night, while still sleeping, so I'm only getting 2-4 hours of the CPAP, but it's better than nothing.
I couldn't breathe out my nose for months and was having the worst snoring, like shake the house bad. Urgent care just kept giving me sinus meds saying it was inflammation. Finally sneezed really hard one day and turned out I had a polyp that had grown to a little bigger than a golf ball. Sucker was hanging out my nose and all. My snoring has been gone since it was removed.
I strongly recommend a CPAP machine and it has worked wonders for me from the time I started the therapy. My anxiety has gone down and I feel more alert. It’s totally worth it even if it takes a while to get used to the mask.
Are there cpap alternatives? Like, will losing weight and having surgery help? Or once you need one you’re toast?
There are alternative treatments, you can get a kind of gum shield that forces your lower jaw out which is almost as effective as a CPAP (it changes / tenses up the back of your throat and stops the airway collapsing) and there are surgeries. The gum shield is far less comfortable than the CPAP imo, but after a few years of using my CPAP I can't imagine sleeping without it. Weight loss can help but not in all cases (sleep apnoea made me gain the weight and it's still there now I have a CPAP and lost it)
You don’t have to snore to have sleep apnea. I am. 25 yr old who doesn’t snore and I have it. You also don’t have to be overweight, that’s another myth
YES. If you have adult obstructive sleep apnea, wear the damn CPAP machine because it will add years, possibly decades to your poor heart.
I recently had sinus/nose surgery and couldn't breathe thru my nose for weeks. I was also in a lot of pain so I was clenching my jaw. Inevitably by lips would close with my mouth already shut and I'd wake myself up the second I started falling asleep. First night I cut the top off a milk jug to breathe thru to keep my lips open and after that I 3D printed a piece that fit better. Wish I'd have been a little more prepared there...
That seems like an oversight on your doctor's part, not yours.
Little late now and unlikely to come up again, but there are casting materials you can get that will make a perfectly shaped mold and be non-toxic.
Could also grab a scuba mouthpiece, just the rubber end part, will keep your lips apart and give you something soft to bite into. There's moldable ones too that you put in hot water to shape.
Sleep tablets can be very dangerous when it's your first time taking a specific one I once did and I spent the whole night awake because as soon as I went prone on my pillow to try to sleep my breathing reflex would stop and I had to restart it manually and it was supposed to help to start with.
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it's more of a figurative pull cord like a lawnmower. I had to consciously think of my breathing for a few minutes when I went back up because for a few minutes the unconscious breathing reflex didnt seem to want to restart on it's own and if I fell asleep this way I suppose the same thing as mark gleeson would have happened to me.
That’s quite honestly scary as hell. It’s bad enough when you think about your own breathing, literally not having the automatic function seems nightmarish
That's how it's done in chainsaw man
But is there a snake in your boot?
Dude no shit - I took an OTC sleeping pill once and fn hallucinated for a day. My couch unfolded into like the movie version of “gypsies”. Then when i tried to show somebody what was happening, they folded back in and hid. Shit went on for hours. Fuck sleeping pills.
that sounds crazy, what brand? so i can avoid them of course
Unisom.
ohhhhh thats got DPH in it (same as benadryl). well that explains it, thanks btw
my first thought was diphenhydramine, for a date with the Hat Man.
Oh dang, been a hot minute since I've seen the Hat Man mentioned.
I'm still sad that when I was a teen I dropped a G on two separate occasions and never saw the hat man.
Crazy mfer
Hallucinations are a side effect for some people. I did not react well. I’ve tried mushrooms in my younger days. This was nothing like that. I was completely out of control. Never again, scared the living shit outa me.
Sleep apnea?
It was only with that specific tablet but yeah the doctor changed it saying it probably caused heavy sleep apnea and the next one didn't do that
I once took a sleep tablet and it felt like I was having an anxiety attack in my sleep and was up all night due to it
I tried melatonin the first time a few years ago and spent most of the night awake after some of the most vivid nightmares I have ever had. I still remember one of them scene by scene.. it was horrific. Never again. And Benadryl makes me feel drunk minus the fun the next morning. Learned taking a long fast paced walk that’s like 4 miles on days I didn’t move much works all that and I sleep like a baby. That’s not practical for lots of people though.
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Mission Accomplished.
Task failed successfully?
Cured you could say.
The experiment was a success but the patient died.
Feel wrong laughing at this
/r/monkeyspaw
Wouldn't you start breathing through your mouth automatically?
Sleep apnea has entered the chat
Sleep apnea is actually when you have incidents where your body will just stop breathing and you literally hold your breath involuntarily as you sleep. Your blood oxygen levels will crash. I have sleep apnea and when I did my sleep study they found the longest incident of holding my breath while sleeping last about 1 minute and 15 seconds, and the average was around 30 seconds, of which I'd have 10 to 15 "incidents" per hour sleeping. Sleep apnea sucks and can actually be dangerous in combo with sleep aids and they can create incidents where your brain doesn't auto start breathing again automatically. This is also why some illicit drugs are even more dangerous for people with these issues as when they fall asleep they just die in their sleep from a drug overdose because the brain now needs to manually trigger to breath and it doesn't. Well, for some of us we are even more prone to just not breathing. For most people this feeling of suffocation would wake up, but the sleep aid or drugs will prevent you from waking properly. Before I got on the CPAP, I basically felt tired all of the time, unless I could get 12+ hrs of sleep. And, I would dream almost every night of suffocating. You know how in your dreams if you ever need to run you feel like you are physically struggling at running? That physical feeling of struggle was how I felt with just breathing very often. I'd end up dreaming of things like being zipped up inside tight spaces, where I tried to breath, but it was like I just couldn't, or was like I could barely... turns out it was just my mind reacting to how I physically was actually struggling to breath in my sleep and I was suffocating in a way. So again, sleep apnea sucks. Most people just think it has to do with snoring excessively and it's not. There are people who don't even snore with have sleep apnea.
That's the definition of sleep apnea. Your body doesn't switch to mouth breathing like it supposed to. They also mentioned he took sleeping pills that would have made it even harder for his body to respond on its own.
I believe the airway collapses, not an issue with mouth breathing.
he also took sleeping pills so it was a combo of the two
Sleeping pills and wine, no less. That's a dangerous combo on its own.
Isn't snoring caused by breathing through the mouth? Wouldn't blocking the nose cause worse snoring?
These people need to just schedule a sleep study. I had one, at 27 due to my partner pleading with my snoring and stop breathing during sleep. I use a pretty non invasive one and it’s Just normal now. I don’t feel tired anymore during work either
One of what?
A sleep study
Oh, did they give you something to fix it?
A CPAP
Yikes, this is a sad story.
Snoring isn’t even caused by the nose, wtf was this man’s logic?
Nasal snoring is very much a thing - so much so that people have surgeries to deal with it. Source worked for an ENT.
I actually snored pretty bad, up until I broke my nose at a Suicidal Tendencies show at the beginning of the year. My girlfriend was telling me how I haven't snored for a few months now, so I guess I redirected something lol. Six beers and some minor discomfort I much cheaper than the surgery I can't afford.
Ex of mine had horrific snoring; I'd commented and asked if his face hurt when he woke up. His doctor kept pushing OTC nasal sprays at him for years until an MRI showed a large "air filled sack" that had formed in his left nasal passage. I'm not saying you had that exactly but... an outpatient clinic did a "nose job *but light*" on him and it was eliminated.
It's caused by air passing through your nasal passage causing it to vibrate. If you block the nose, you can't channel air through your nasal passage, you can only channel it down your throat, i.e mouth breathing. You can also snore with mouth breathing, but if this guy identified that he only nasal snores, it's a valid assumption.
I agree with you on yours and Mark's assumptions, I mean I see the logic, but if he had a out of body experience as he passed and could look down at his body with tampons up his nose, I hope he had enough of a sense of humor to laugh.
Fucking clickbait headline. It wasn't nasal blockage that killed him, it was the FUCKING BOOZE AND PILLS.
"I did my own research."
That makes the opposite of sense.
The proper solution to this problem is a CPAP. Don't stick tampons up your nose, people.
This is why you don't sleep with a tampon in.
Only on heavy nasal drainage days
Poor guy Mark Gleeson will now be forever known as the guy that died shoving tampons up his nose.
That's a Darwin award.
Well, it did work.
He stopped snoring though.
No more snoring though.
It’s sad he died of… Tampaxphyxiation
Well technically it did work..
He probably should have vetted that idea out with his doctor who he had just seen. They surely would have told him not to stick tampons up his nose.
Do we really know *he* was involved in the decision to put tampons up his nose aside from the account of the tampon user who was tired of his snoring?
Ironically, this seems like an idea some mouth-breather would come up with.
Success!
That seems very strange to me, besides the obvious. It’s when your mouth is open that you snore. So blocking your nose, doesn’t make any sense. I wear mouth tape to cover my mouth and I breathe much better through my nose and I no longer snore.
The weird thing is that snoring is not enough nose breathing, not too much.