I have recently been diagnosed wih sleep apnea. I have told gp,s about my snoring for years and the best advise was to sleep in a separate room from my husband!
Luckily I now have a great gp who recommended me for treatment. Ok, so it means wearing a face mask at night to blow air to keep my airway open, but the dreaded snoring has stopped, hooray, now I can go visiting family and friends with out having to apologise for the racket each night.
The plus side is I now wake up refreshed and ready to face the day, rather than slump for and hour trying to come to. I now have the incentive and energy to exercise and diet. I can't believe the positive effect a simple diagnosis has made to my life.
Written by
Mello17
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I was diagnosed with sleep apnoea in February and wear a mask. It has been quite successful, although I have not had such good results as you. I am glad you are feeling so much better and can now focus on losing weight. Having to wear the mask has been a huge incentive to me to lose weight - 'cos I would really like to get rid of it! godd luck with everything.
I was the same as you and not only do you get a good nights sleep it will help your heart, stopping breathing and the jolt to restart was doing your heart no favours, I got the full face mask as the smaller one left me with a sore nose and cuts , it took a while to get sorted but so thankful to get my life back, you will soon reap the benefits of a good nights sleep and be up early and ready to go .
It takes some getting used to it felt like I had a broken nose for a few days!
I think I may have had sleep apnea as I would wake up from a dream where I was struggling for breath and find I had actually stopped breathing. It would take a while to settle again and I found it really scarey! Since losing 2 stone thankfully it has stopped which has made a great difference to a lot in life now. Luckily I don't have to wear a mask but am very glad it works for you. I do think I still snore though! Especially after a couple of glasses of wine!
I was diagnosed with sleep apnoea over 15 years ago after my husband said I stopped breathing as well as being able to rattle windows with my snoring! Over the years it had started to affect my body with having to get up in the night for the loo a lot because the apnoeas ended up with adrenalin rushes to make me start breathing again. Mine was diagnosed and my CPAP is my friend - even though I look and sound like Darth Vader at night.
My OSA is also not just related to my weight, I've got something inherited with my airways which made it worse. Like you the minute I had the machine I was feeling human again within days. Just one thing, if you drive have you informed the DVLA and your car insurer? You need to do this as if you don't, even though you have it all under control you could be fined £1000 and your insurance would be void. There is a great website called britishsnoring.co.uk/ which is the British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea society and they have lots of help and info on their forum and its worth having a look at.
Actual darth vadere is a good description, but if it helps, what the heck.
On hols sharing a caravan with my son, who said he could hear me snoring softly last night, but I got up with a very sore infected throat, so hoping that is why.
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