Sleep Apnea And Chronic Fatiuge

Yes and yes.I have had Sleep Apnea for years and use a C-pap machine at night to keep my throat open. I was very fatigued before the Sleep Apnea was diagnosed and began using the C-pap machine. When using the machine, I get enough sleep up to 10 hrs per night to feel good. Of course 10 hrs is hard to do. If I get tired during the day and feel sleepy, I take a nap using the machine. With the machine, I still get tired and have pain in legs,feet,knees but with the machine & 10 hr sleep I find these problems are much reduced.

I am almost 58 years of age, have never been a smoker, not excessively overweight, and exercise on a regular basis.

I have been diagnosed with Chronic fatigue Syndrome -CFS (b-19 parvo variety) and recently developed severe mixed complex sleep apnea. I am often so fatigued from the CFS/fibromyalgia that I cannot wait to get home from work to get some sleep. I have undergone sleep tests and it was so severe I was placed on a VPAP which the insurance company when it saw my medical test did not hesitate in giving me.

All of my medical tests and doctors were through the University of Miami School of Medicine a renowned university medical center. My CFS doctor is internationally known as an expert in the area.

The VPAP machine does help me at times, but often I still wake up gasping for air. It is a terrible feeling. Often after 1-2 hours of sleep I awake choking for breath. If I sit up 4-5 hours I can often go back to sleep and get say another 1-2 hours of sleep before I have to go to work. I can only imagine what is happening to my body. I have noticed that stress makes things worse.

My advice is to rid one's self of as much stress as possible as it is not worth you health in the long run. It may seem hard to divorce yourself from something or someone but there are no other alternatives. If you keep on beavily involved in a stressful situation it will only get worse.

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CPAP is what they use to see if you have obstructive sleep apnea or central/complex sleep apnea. If you get sleep with CPAP then you have obstructive sleep apnea. If you cannot sleep with CPAP then VPAP is the solution as you have central or complex sleep apnea.

You need to schedule an appointment with a doctor who will send you to a sleep center which will hook you up to many electrodes and test your sleep pattern to determine how many times you awake at night, REM sleep, check for restless leg syndrome, etc.

The next test after hat will be used with CPAP to see if that is effective and you have obstructive sleep apnea. This is where the airway is blocked by a malformation of your nasal passage, obstructive palate, or some injury that deformed the breathing airway/passage. If CPAP is ineffective and believe me you will know it as you will get virtually no or little sleep while wearing the CPAP mask.

In this case you have central sleep apnea or complex sleep apnea that has nothing to do with the airways being obstructed but result from problems in the relay from your medulla of the brain to your heart. In this case no surgery or dental mouth piece will be effective at all. Both obstructive and complex sleep apenea cause uneventful sleep but they are totally different in the ways they are treated.


I apologize for the encryptions in my post.

I have a master’s degree in rehabilitative medicine and suffer from central sleep apnea. Many dentists will say you need a mouth piece, etc. Until you have undergone the proper sleep tests you DO NOT KNOW.

to : FlowersintheYard

If the CPAP is giving you those problems then please get to a doctor who will send you to a real sleep center. CPAP is not for you and should not being doing that to you.