Tuesday, September 11, 2012

How I Beat Sleep Apnea

It's been about a year since I stopped using the CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine.  In fact, I don't know whether I really needed it to begin with.  My story:

Over the past few years, I had found it increasingly difficult to swallow pills and sometimes felt like my throat was closed up, making it difficult to breathe.  My husband told me that I was snoring a lot, especially when sleeping on my back.  At the same time, one of my brothers had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and was put on a CPAP machine.  My family has long suspected that our father, who loudly snored and snorted his way through the night, also had sleep apnea.  But what drove me to the doctor was waking up with my heart pounding and gasping for breath.

My doctor found that my blood pressure was sky-high.  I had never had high blood pressure before--but I was fairly freaked out about the panic attacks I had been experiencing.  Finding nothing else obviously wrong, she referred me to a sleep doctor.

The sleep doctor put me through 2 sleep studies: the first one without and the second one with a breathing mask.  In both studies I was hooked up to wires that measured leg movement, sleep position (back, side, stomach), eye movement, brain waves, breathing and a microphone for recording snoring.  I got copies of both studies, which I compared.

Without the breathing mask, I had several episodes where I stopped breathing for 10 seconds or longer.  Most of these happened when I was sleeping on my back and were labelled as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).  That type of sleep apnea is from blocked airflow and is common in obese people.  It also becomes more common as people age.  My results indicated that I had mild sleep apnea.  However, my sleep quality was good because I went through all five stages of sleep, including the dreaming REM sleep.

With the breathing mask, I did not have any OSA but I did have central sleep apnea (CNA), "which results from a problem with how the brain signals the breathing muscles. This type of apnea can occur with conditions such as heart failure, brain tumors, brain infections, and stroke" (Web MD).  That's scary stuff!  My sleep quality was also poor and I did not attain REM sleep.  Nevertheless, the doctor prescribed me a CPAP machine.  He also gave me speech pathology exercises, which I performed daily.  They didn't seem to make a difference, however.

So, I used the CPAP machine for at least 4 hours a night over 90 consecutive days, as required by the insurance company.  However, that machine never agreed with me.  First of all, I looked like a monster!  Talk about a self-esteem killer.  And almost every morning I woke up with a bloated feeling and burped all day.  I tried a face mask but it was too tight and uncomfortable.  I then tried a nasal mask and slept better, but still felt bloated the next day.

The doctor had started me off with a pressure setting of 7 (the machines go from 4 to 20).  I told my neighbor, who uses a CPAP machine, about my bloating problem and he said the air might be blowing into my stomach.  So I called the doctor and he lowered it to 6.  Same bloating problem.  Then he lowered it to 5.  By then I also had an upset stomach all day combined with burping. The doctor prescribed Nexium, but I didn't want to take drugs to combat the side effects of a machine that I was really starting to hate.  Instead, I tried eliminating coffee, then wine, then anything acidic I could think of--to no avail.  That CPAP machine was ruining my quality of life!  So into the box it went.

I turned to the internet and found the website http://www.ihatecpap.com/  After reading through that, I decided to try using Sleep Right strips (since I have a deviated septum), and sleeping on my side only.  (I absolutely love sleeping on my back, so that was difficult to give up).  Both of these changes decreased my snoring and enhanced my sleep quality, but I still couldn't swallow big pills very well and had trouble breathing sometimes, even during the day.

At my next dentist appointment, I told her my story.  First she suggested using dental appliances and then she looked in my throat.  She told me my soft tissues were sagging in the back of my throat!  She gave a mirror.  I looked at my almost closed throat and then at her completely open throat.  No wonder I couldn't swallow pills.

She recommended that I should see an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist about surgery to remove the excess tissue.  Although I did get as far as making an ENT appointment, I did not want surgery.  Then--what do you know--I broke my right ankle and had to cancel my appointment.

Stuck at home with an elevated foot and the laptop on my lap, I began to explore other options, such as learning the didgeridoo.  Several explanatory youtube videos later, I knew that I did not really like the sound of the didgeridoo, did not have the desire to learn how to play it, and would never be able to master the circular breathing required to play one.  So then I turned to exercises.  I knew that the speech therapy exercises hadn't worked for me--but would there be other exercises that targeted the throat?

I read that singers rarely had sleep apnea because singing kept their throat tissues tight and then happened on a website that advertised a 3 CD set of singing exercises "specifically designed to reduce snoring caused by lax muscles in the upper throat." Just what I needed!  The website is:  

http://www.singingforsnorers.com/  

I ordered the set but wasn't ready until April to get started on it.  Once started, I sang the  exercises daily for one month before going on to the next CD.

These exercises have made a big difference in my life.  My throat tissues have lifted--I can even see the top of my throat again when looking in the mirror.  I can swallow pills again, too and I sleep a lot better (still on my side, unfortunately).

I finished the daily singing of the third CD in July.  I had emailed Alise in June, told her my progress, and asked her how I should maintain my throat muscles after finishing her program.  She said that I would need to continue to sing the exercises a 2-3 days a week for the rest of my life.  That's OK with me, but my poor husband!  I try to sing when he's out of the house.