The study is a bit artificial, being hooked up to a bunch of wires and probes and mouthpieces, so I'm not sure how much the findings reflect my normal sleep patterns. The results?
1) Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome, moderately elevated respiratory disturbance index and moderate oxyhemoglobin desaturations.Translation: I'm waking myself up a good bit at night so that I can breathe, which means I'm not getting good deep sleep. I'm also waking myself up with limb movements, probably the result of Restless Leg Syndrome. Great.
2) Poor sleep efficiency with frequent prolonged awakenings and significant sleep fragmentation.
Now they want me to come in for a CPAP study where I once again get hooked up to a machine, a different machine, a machine that shoves air into my mouth to keep my soft palate open so that I won't be waking myself up trying to breathe. If I did end up using the machine at home (which is the one thing K didn't want to happen), it could be only temporary. Losing more weight may shrink my soft palate so that it won't close at night. One of the things that would help, too, is to not sleep on my back, which I generally don't do, anyway.
My doctor also gave me some medication to control my limb movements, a medication used (in larger doses) for Parkinson's sufferers. Here is a rather humorous bit from the medication information packet:
MIRAPEX is a prescription medication used to treat primary Restless Leg Syndrome. It can also be used to treat Parkinson's disease. Just because you are taking MIRAPEX for one of these conditions does not mean you have or will develop the other.Whew, that's a relief!
