Central Sleep Apnea

[lighthouse33]

I just saw my neurologist this week and I underwent another sleep study Wednesday night.  So far, no results on the test.  But I did read the doctors notes from my office visit; and she states that I likely have central sleep apnea.  They have auto titrated the machine twice and have not found a setting that works for me.  I guess they are trying to see if a BI-PAP machine might work for me.  My AHI on the day before my visit was 11 episodes per hour.  I also have the Cheyne Stokes respiration, gasping for air, sometimes more than 40 seconds, often seen in patients with heart failure.  Have been on a CPAP machine for over a year for OSA.

Central Sleep Apnea is where the brain does not send out messages to the muscles to breathe.  I think this is not good news.  It is associated with Cardiovascular Disease, Stroke, High Blood Pressure, Hypertension, Diabetes, Parkinsons, Myasthenia Gravis, MS, Brain Infection, Tumor and ALS etc. 

Here are some links:

Obstructive sleep apnoea in relation to rheumatic disease

academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/52/1/15/1828140/Obstructive-sleep-apnoea-in-relation-to-rheumatic

Sleep Apnea is deadly

dailystrength.org/group/sjogren-s-syndrome/discussion/sleep-apnea-is-deadly

[JoannaP79]

Hi lighthouse, I have had intermittent episodes of horrendous apnea. I have had it so bad that I did not sleep for 6 nights and was almost delirious. This is because every time I passed into the phase where you are about to go unconscious my body would shock me fully awake and sometimes i would be gasping, heart racing etc. It's truly horrific. I have bad autonomic issues and loads of us on my autonomic support groups have it. O dont know if you are affected by autonomic issues. Some of us autonomic peeps have central and others obstructive. I went to hospital and they didn't monitor me just said it was anxiety!
I know this is a leap but I'm also on a support group for people with instability in their cervical spine and loads of them have apnea, mostly central apnea. The instability in the cervical area can causes brain stem kinking and cranial settling for some which then disrupts the sleep architecture in the brain somehow. I have this and was only recently confirmed by flexion mri Scans . I think the arthritis has contributed to the issues in my neck. Just putting it out there as no one ever checked my neck and I paid for a private scan which showed all this horrible stuff happening I had no idea about or ever would have guessed had I not been encouraged to look into it . This may not be relevant to you at all but I never ever would have guessed this was behind so much of my issues if I hadn't been encouraged to get my neck checked. Scans were done via flexion btw whereby you take images moving your head and neck and a more accurate assessment of how movement affects things can be made.