Posted on

Depression Causes: Add Sleep to the List?

Yesterday’s post on my sleep apnea diagnosis got a lot of response. Two big lessons from all the feedback: Far more people have sleep apnea than I knew, and those who have since been treated recall the huge mental distress caused by inadequate sleep.

Mood music:

Said one friend: “BIll, I too have sleep apnea. It’s a vicious, horrible physical problem. You don’t even realize how badly the lack of REM and deep sleep is changing your behavior and your emotional stability. Also impacts you physiologically in many and varied ways, including poor metabolism and blood pressure.”

I’ve attributed a lot of things to my occasional bouts of depression: past battles with addictive behavior, the OCD when I let it run hot for too long, personal experiences with illness and death and lack of daylight in the winter. I never really considered the sleep angle, though I suppose I’ve known about that all along.

Getting to the bottom of my sleep patterns started as an effort to deal with snoring and was more for Erin’s sanity than mine. (She’s a light sleeper, which means my snoring really messes with her own sleep quality.) But the benefits of this experience may turn out to be much deeper.

I’ve also gotten a lot of feedback on the usefulness of CPAP machines. A couple of readers reported that it was of little help. Many more readers said the device changed their lives.

Said another friend: “The first night I slept with the CPAP machine was the best night of sleep I’d had in two decades — no exaggeration.”

I’ve been told the success or failure of this depends on how accurately the sleep doctors fit me for the mask. You can bet I’ll keep that in mind when I have it done.

I thank you all for the responses. I’ll keep you posted on how the machine works.

CPAP Masks

Posted on

Pushing It to 11 with a Better Night’s Sleep

According to the results of my sleep study, I have something called sleep apnea. I stop breathing for a few seconds or a little over a minute and then snore ferociously as the breathing kicks back in. I’m told mine is moderate to severe.

Scary, you say? Not really.

Mood music:

I know a few people with this condition, including my father. It afflicts people from all walks of life: the fat, the thin, the short, the tall, the young and the old. In my case, the root cause is a nose and sinus cavity full of bad plumbing. My snout is almost always clogged, and if I’m trying to breath through the nose everything stops until the mouth breathing takes over.

The doctor showed me a computer screen full of squiggly lines that measured brainwave activity, blood oxygen levels, REM vs. light sleep, etc. Throughout the night the study was done, the squiggly lines flattened out. Most of the time it was for 8–15 seconds. In a few cases, it lasted more than a minute. Wherever the breathing flatlined, another column of lines showed my blood oxygen levels dipping below the preferred level.

It explains a lot.

That it instigates my snoring is obvious. But I’ve always had a tendency to get sleepy in the middle of the day, and I admit to occasionally falling asleep while staring at my laptop. It also explains why I’m usually out cold within minutes of lying down and opening whatever book I’m reading. I’m never adequately rested, so my body sneaks in whatever rest it can throughout the day.

By extension, it’s almost definitely making any depression I get along the way worse than it would otherwise be. I know I had a shitty night’s sleep Saturday, and I spent much of yesterday cranky as a result.

I’ve had two surgeries in recent years to deal with the snoring. One was to correct a deviated septum (I’m convinced the procedure only made it worse). The other was to snip off the uvula. Both times they also installed pillar implants in the soft palate to prop things up. Being overweight is often cited as a root cause, and there’s surely some of that in my case. But I’ve also lost a ton of weight over time, especially since kicking flour and sugar.

The solution to all this?

I’m going to endeavor to drop another 10 or 15 pounds because that can’t hurt. But the bigger solution is that I’m getting a machine to help keep the airways open at night. The continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine uses mild air pressure to keep an airway open. The devices are smaller than they used to be. Mine will be about the size of a tissue box.

I’m excited to see what a full night of uninterrupted sleep is like. Despite the breathing trouble, I’ve managed to function at a vigorous level. With better sleep, I’m hoping to push it to 11.

Frustrated CPAP Patient