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[zarathustra]

Zara, some additional suggestions for your sleep study...

- Bring pajamas or a t-shirt and leggings. A loose top is best, since they'll be putting an elastic strap around your chest to measure your respiration.

- Go in with squeaky clean hair, with no mousse, hairspray or conditioner. This helps the electrodes make the most accurate recording off of your scalp surface.

- Try to remember to go to the bathroom before they hook you up to the recording equipment. You can go once you're hooked up but it's kind of awkward to carry all of those wires with you.

- If you are the kind of person who needs to eat something right after you get up, bring a baggie of cereal or a granola bar.

Thanks for the tips. I was thinking about bringing a thermos of coffee so I could make the drive home safely.  ;)

[yellowtractor]

Has anyone ever had a sleep test for insomnia issues, or does it mainly help with apnea? I don't think apnea is my problem, since my problem is either getting to sleep or getting back to sleep. Would a sleep test be able to determine anything related to that?

There are all sorts of possible explanations, and yes, any decent sleep center will test for them.  My problem turned out to be neurological, i.e. misfiring neurons at each transition point in the natural sleep cycle.  Assuming you wake up in the middle of the night during the study and can't go back to sleep--as you do in real life--then a good dataset should reveal what is going on (neurologically, physiologically) by comparing the data from your initial slumber, when and how you wake up, and what happens when you try to drift off again.

I am very, very glad I had this done.  problem is not very treatable, as it turns out, but at least now I know what's going on.  I would encourage anybody who has sleep trouble of any kind to have a study--assuming your health insurance will pay for it--to see what turns up.

Elsie, you might try getting up in the night (when you wake and can't go back to sleep) and spending somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour doing something else, something physically active.  Just lying in bed feeling desperate and awful will not restart the sleep cycle, in my experience--at least not very effectively.  Ditto surfing the 'net.  My sleep doctor suggested this approach, and it's worked pretty well for me, though it's counterintuitive (and I sometimes feel very silly taking a quick walk around the block at 3 a.m. before falling back into bed).  I can usually fall asleep again much, much faster this way.

[elsie]

I'll try that. I consistently wake up between 3:30 and 4 am. My wake-up goal time is 6:30 am. If I'm lucky, I'll doze off between 5:30 and 6, but that doesn't usually happen. I've made the mistake of turning on the TV in the past. (Turning on Trainspotting at the dead baby scene is a sure sleep killer for the rest of the night.)

[anthroid]

Not to get too personal, Elsie, but... how old are you?  What's happening when you wake up--are you sweating or anxious?  Do you drink wine or alcohol in the evenings?  If so, when do you stop? 

For several years, I was waking up around 3:30 or 4 and it took forever to get back to sleep.  In the last year, I was also having hot flashes (that's usually what woke me up, in fact).  I figured out, though, that having booze within an hour or so before going to bed was making me wake up around 4, when the buzz wore off.  I stopped booze intake after dinner and I'm sleeping through the night now (being post-menopausal also helps!).

It sounds as though you get to sleep all right; you're having trouble staying asleep, though, and that is mighty frustrating, I know.  Could you be peri-menopausal?  Sleep can be difficult for the years surrounding menopause.

[elsie]

Anthroid,

I'm starting to wonder about the perimenopausal aspect. I'm 45 and a teetotaler. Sometimes I wake up with nasal congestion, but it's not always the issue. Sometimes I'm stressed and overthinking things, but it's not always the reason I can't sleep. Sometimes I wake up too warm, so it could be hot flashes.

[anthroid]

Anthroid,

I'm starting to wonder about the perimenopausal aspect. I'm 45 and a teetotaler. Sometimes I wake up with nasal congestion, but it's not always the issue. Sometimes I'm stressed and overthinking things, but it's not always the reason I can't sleep. Sometimes I wake up too warm, so it could be hot flashes.

You might want to talk with your doc (or set your a/c to 62! :~})--though if you go to WebMD you can get a sense of perimenopause and what it feels like.  I started having sleep disturbances and a very occasional hot flash around age 40, and they seemed to get worse throughout my forties; they were the worst in the last two years with pretty good hot flashes waking me up almost every night.  However, I turn 50 very soon and found out in January that I passed through menopause and am now post-menopausal--and no sleep disturbances at all.  You're probably in perimenopause and the sleep stuff is just part and parcel of it.  I didn't do anything to combat it, but some folks find black cohosh to be useful.

[wild_rose]

Anthroid,

I'm starting to wonder about the perimenopausal aspect. ...Sometimes I wake up too warm, so it could be hot flashes.

Even though I went through the medical version, I still get occasional night sweats and cold chills. I wake up so hot I think I'm on fire, and kick off the covers. Then a while later I'm freezing so I wake up and cover back up again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[elsie]

I do find, when I wake up in the middle of the night, that the back of my neck very often feels sweaty. When I get too warm at other times of day, it's more global, but when it's at night, it seems centered in my neck. So yeah, anthroid is probably right, and it's perimenopause that's keeping me from sleeping.

[zarathustra]

Back from my sleep test.  I checked in early, around 7:30 p.m., spent the next 1.5 hours getting hooked up with wires etc.  I was the only patient that evening.    I think I fell asleep around 11 or 11:30 p.m.  Got woken up around 5 a.m. Ugh.

The guy that did all the wiring and attending etc. reminded me of someone I dislike, but other than that it was (not the most comfy) OK experience.  I hear in about a week what the results are.

*yawn*  I think I need a nap.

[zarathustra]

Follow up (after calling MD's office to find out wha's up?):

Apparently I don't have sleep apnea or any kind of obstruction while sleeping, so no CPAP for me.  I am a certified loud snorer.

The only thing the doctor could suggest is visiting the eye/ear/nose/throat center.  I know I tend towards chronic sinusitis (better since I've started using a neti pot during the dryer months) and I have tiny ear-passage-ways. 

Has anyone reaped a huge benefits in their sleep from seeing the eye/ear/nose/throat people?

[ms_turtle]

Many people go this route even if they qualify for a CPAP machine. It is not unheard of for an ENT to do some sinus work and "while I'm in there, I'll look for and remove any possible obstructions." The sinus work is what is covered by insurance.

http://www.sleepapnea.org/resources/pubs/osa.html

[infopri]

Many people go this route even if they qualify for a CPAP machine. It is not unheard of for an ENT to do some sinus work and "while I'm in there, I'll look for and remove any possible obstructions." The sinus work is what is covered by insurance.

http://www.sleepapnea.org/resources/pubs/osa.html

Zara, I'm glad to hear that you don't have apnea.  This, therefore, isn't directed at you, but at others who might have apnea and are considering different treatments:

Be very careful and do lots of research before choosing surgery.  We looked into it when My Better Half was diagnosed, and generally it did not look like an appealing option, except as a last resort.  It's true, for some people, the results have been quite good--but the probability that the surgery would solve the problem wasn't quite as high as we would have liked, and there are some serious permanent side effects that we found unacceptable.  YMMV, of course, but you should go in fully informed.

[psychdiva]

Has anyone tried a jaw positioning device for snoring? My dentist told me that it's effective in 80% of his patients but the cost is not covered by insurance, so before I shell out the big bucks, I'm hoping to hear from others.