is this rem rebound?

[rkoretzky@yahoo.com]

Hi,

Feeling a bit discouraged today as things haven't been going really well. I have had two days off from work this week (Tuesday and Wednesday), both days I was at home in the afternoon and I found myself tired and drifting off to nap. For the past three days I have woken up tired (this was with taking 5 mg ambien for two nights, then half a tablet last night). This morning I also woke with a headache. I am feeling tired today.
I don't think I am sleeping especially well, although I don't remember clearly I think I woke several times last night. I am tracking number of hours that my machine is on: over the course of the last 6 nights it has been on for just under 40 hours. I do find that when I wake in the morning (and it is usually early, between 5:30 and 6:00), I want to remove the mask right away.
Is what is going on with me sounding "normal"? Could this be the rebound that Ted mentioned? Should I try to talk to the sleep doc? I should mention that I haven't even met him yet--don't have an appointment until July--all this was done with techs and RTs. Not really impressed with the way things are run either.

[Sandrich]

It's about a month now that I have been on the machine. I try my best to be complient. I switch between my nasal aire and my breeze and have been more tired the last week than in the weeks before. At times I wake up and the mask is not on, or I wake myself with mouth breathing. My dreams are more vivid and in my sleep study I saw that I was getting little or no rem sleep. I am hoping it is rem rebound and that at some point I will feel better. I am sure that there is a pschological response to have apnea. I think about sleep all the time and the first thing my wife asks me every morning is how I slept. I understand that it is a process but at times I just wish the dang process would speed up! I guess I am just saying that you are not alone and this board really helps me remember that and gives me comfort.

[Kosar]

Tony, I think you're right about thinking more about sleep. I'm now more conscious of when I crawl in bed.

'Claustro...I feel for you, as you sound really down. Don't give up...as folks around here keep talking about things getting better when we are compliant.

We've probably had OSA for years, and our symptoms aren't going to disappear like magic. So, give it more time.

You mention taking the sleep medication, Ambien. They gave me that med at midnight when I was being tested with a CPAP at a sleep lab. They woke me up at 6AM and I was home by 8AM.

But, I then slept until about 3 in the afternoon. And, was groggy the rest of that evening. Maybe the med is making you feel the way I did?
Good luck and keep coming back!

[<dizzy>]

Kosar, I had nearly the exact same result with Ambien, I thought I also slept really well at my 2nd sleep study yet as soon as I got home I slept most of the day away and still felt lousy when I awoke.

From what I read at Abien's website, you should only take it for 10 days at a time, I don't see how some of these folks can take it every day.

I've taken 1mg of melatonin for nearly 10yrs without any morning hangover from it.

[planetax]

I am pushing this topic out there again , because REM rebound is a stage of recovery that can be confused with treatment failure.I mean if you are REM rebounding you are going to feel tired and groggy and you will assume treatment failure.bUT TJNUGGENT made a good point ,REM rebound can last up to a year or more if you had apnea for more than 10 years. So, you will feel tired and groggy for a long time even after treatment starts.

[TealHearts]

quote:

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Originally posted by planetax:
I am pushing this topic out there again , because REM rebound is a stage of recovery that can be confused with treatment failure. REM rebound can last up to a year or more if you had apnea for more than 10 years. So, you will feel tired and groggy for a long time even after treatment starts.

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Why don't sleep doctors explain this to us? I believe that there are a lot of us out there that are experiening this and are thinking they are just failing at cpap. I know I was/am one of them! I had NO idea that Rem Rebound could last so long.

[teal]

what is ambien and is it helpful?

[rested gal]

quote

Quote:

I am pushing this topic out there again , because REM rebound is a stage of recovery that can be confused with treatment failure.

Well, I guess I'll push my pure layperson's theory back out there too. While I agree with planetax that REM rebound can be confused with treatment failure, I think that kind of confusion would only apply within the first week or two.

I think a worse confusion might be for people to go on and on and on feeling bad but chalking it up to "well, it must be that REM rebound that they say can last for months."

while dreaming is a good thing, I think that a month or more into therapy it might not a good sign if a person remembers a lot of dreams during the night. I do believe that's a red flag that something is not optimized well enough in their therapy to allow them to sleep peacefully. Their REM sleep is being interrupted by arousals which may jolt them far enough up to the surface for them to "notice" and remember the dream.

That probably doesn't matter much if they wake during the last dream - in the morning, just before they wake up fully for the day. But if a person is waking up during the night to the point he/she is noticing having dreams several times through the night, to me that means their sleep is still being disturbed. Perhaps profoundly. But I'm not a doctor.

I believe that still feeling bad a month into therapy (especially if a person is being aroused enough during the night to remember their dreams) should be a signal to look more closely at reasons the therapy might need some changes - different pressure, mask, or machine; controlling leaks, effects of meds, etc. A lot of remembered dreaming well beyond the first couple of weeks could very well be a sign of treatment failure, imho.

[<mario>]

http://www.psychologymatters.org/sleep.html
check this out!!