I've been on cpap for 8-9 years. It only improves my quality sleep slightly. Still feel exhausted and bad every day. Over the years I've had several sleep studies, many doctors appointments and much money spent to no avail. Still hanging in there though and I keep trying new things with hope that someday I will get relief.
No meds, just fish oil and D3. In the past I had been prescribe quite a few sleeping meds, none of them helped. I'm not overweight, 5"11" 180lbs.
I've been on the forum for 5 years and use Oscar. My cpap therapy has been optimized long ago. AHI is around 1 most nights and the events that the machine is recording are false, they are just sleep wake junk. My breathing is pretty erratic through the night likely due to a lot of physical activity.
I consciously wake around 8-12 times every night of my life. I suspect the problem is still breathing related and this is obviously why I'm exhausted all the time. Often I feel quite bad when I wake, especially in the morning after a whole night of restless sleep. For people that can't relate I tell them it's like having a hangover every day.
Around the same time I developed apnea I also started moving around in my sleep a huge amount. I end up in different positions all the time. With all my moving around the only time I consciously wake up is when I'm on my back. That is when my apnea is at it's worse so I suspect the problem is still breathing related. The pattern is the same every time I go to sleep. Go to sleep on my side, move around in my sleep a bunch especially when I get to rem stages, end up on my back where I wake up, adjust mask blankets and body position and go back to sleep on my side. This happens every half hour to hour every single night. Once in a while I hear myself snoring when I wake up.
I'm not able to stay sleeping on my side since I move a ton in my sleep. They only way to accomplish that would be restrain my body in a side sleeping position. Not being able to change positions once in a while would be to much pressure on joints and cause to many aches. I've sort of given up on that idea for now.
My latest thoughts have been on mouth guards. If I'm always waking on my back then possibly I'm still struggling with breathing. When laying on my back, my jaw moves back quite a bit even with my mouth closed. This does noticeably restrict airflow. Maybe if I correct that jaw position it will help in some way. I also suffer from bruxism(teeth grinding) so a mouth guard would hopefully be dual purpose. I've also had poor luck with all full face masks since my jaw moves so much and the masks always leak, thus I use nasal masks. I've also have never had a chin strap that helps, they seem to just pull my jaw back further.
I've talked to a couple people now that have said cpap didn't work for them but a mouth guard did. I figure it's certainly worth giving it a try. I've been studying some of the mouth guards and was hoping I can get some feedback on your experiences. Which ones are most comfortable? Which ones to avoid? Which ones work or don't work? From what I've read the MAD(mandibular advancing device) is probably what I'm looking for. They can adjust the position of the lower jaw. Sure looks like a lot of hardware to put in your mouth.
SnoreRx, ZQuite, Vital Sleep, Sleep Tight seem top most of the lists when I did a search. I'll try anything at this point.
