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Is Low - No REM & slow wave sleep acceptable as we age? My doctor says yes

Is Low - No REM & slow wave sleep acceptable as we age? Doctor says yes.

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Slow wave(n3) morphs into stage 2(n2) as we get older due to a progressive decline in growth hormone. It is still there just not qualifiable by current scoring definitions.

 

A person should always get scorable stage REM. REM is like defragging your PC. Without it your body's computer will crash.

Well, I'm not a doctor, nor a sleep tech, but I am a CPAP user. I can tell you that my sleep study showed no REM sleep. OSA was preventing me from getting beyond stage 2 sleep, so I didn't reach REM.

 

Prior to CPAP, I was exhausted every day, was getting about 2-3 hours of "sleep" (i.e. stage 1 or 2 sleep with apnea events often), and my memory was so bad, when I looked up a phone number, I could not remember it long enough to dial it.

 

Now I feel great, and my memory has improved. And I wake up with memories of having had dreams,  which I have not experienced for years.

 

So, as for REM, I believe it is unacceptable to have no REM sleep!

 

 

 

The proportion of REM sleep doesn't change in people without sleep apnea as you age. However, the textbooks do say the the time spent in deep sleep does go down. Also, since the strength of the brain wave signals diminish with aging, it's harder to score deep sleep stages. There are a number of explanation for this, including GH that Rock mentions. Another difference is that sleep in any stage becomes more fragmented with aging. 

 

 

The strength of the brain wave is directly connected with the distance between the brain and the scull. Some sleep theorist suggest that brain shrinkage may have something to do with SWS diminishing. Fascinating stuff.

 

I love sleep! I think I'm gonna go get some.

Steven Y. Park, MD said:

The proportion of REM sleep doesn't change in people without sleep apnea as you age. However, the textbooks do say the the time spent in deep sleep does go down. Also, since the strength of the brain wave signals diminish with aging, it's harder to score deep sleep stages. There are a number of explanation for this, including GH that Rock mentions. Another difference is that sleep in any stage becomes more fragmented with aging. 

 

 

Garry, In what context do you ask the question?
Thanks to all of you. Everybody I know who has used a CPAP has had great improvement like Andy. Not me. My last 5 or r studies show 1-3% REM and low slow wave, I must must have the smallest brain on record. lol One doc thinks I have some form of central SA but, other than feeling like Andy for many years, I have no disused, narclepsy etc. I've had UUUP, Hioid bone tongue advancement & deviated septum survivors back in 1999. No help and UUUP is very painful. I just was looking for a few new paint opinions. 16 years is a long miserable time to feel tired. So buying a sleep number bed is not likely to help either. That's a different thread I started the other day. Thank you again
Did they document any alpha intrusion in your study?

Garry Conway said:
Thanks to all of you. Everybody I know who has used a CPAP has had great improvement like Andy. Not me. My last 5 or r studies show 1-3% REM and low slow wave, I must must have the smallest brain on record. lol One doc thinks I have some form of central SA but, other than feeling like Andy for many years, I have no disused, narclepsy etc. I've had UUUP, Hioid bone tongue advancement & deviated septum survivors back in 1999. No help and UUUP is very painful. I just was looking for a few new paint opinions. 16 years is a long miserable time to feel tired. So buying a sleep number bed is not likely to help either. That's a different thread I started the other day. Thank you again

Reply by Garry Conway 19 hours ago

My last 5 or r studies show 1-3% REM and low slow wave, I... One doc thinks I have some form of central SA but,

 

Were the sleep studies with or without CPAP?

 

Are you reviewing the data on your S9? What is your AHI at home using your S9? What is the leak rate?

Rooster: All in the last decade were with CPAP. They did half with CPAP & half on BIPAP last Wed night. I don't have the results yet. The study center doctor was there to interview me just before bedtime. After a fairly long interview of my history, he mentioned that he would be comparing none, CPAP & BIPAP during the night. Because I have not responded to all the surgeries & CPAP therapy which did treat the OSA, central apnea is often treated best with BIPAP. It took me a while to get back to sleep on BIPAP but I woke up feeling a little better but it may just be the same or wishful thinking. I'll post more when results are in. Thanks for asking. Cock a doodle doo

What about these questions:

 

Are you reviewing the data on your S9? What is your AHI at home using your S9? What is the leak rate?

I need to take the SD card to the vendor to havevit read, unless you know what type file format the data is in. CSV txt excel

The amount of Delta (slow wave sleep) does decrease according to age in the texts, as does the amount of REM sleep, but the decrease in Delta is more marked.  Both stages of sleep can be effected by medications, chronic pain, alpha intrusion, external discomforts, frequent urination at night, improper PAP pressure, mask leaks and a host of other things. 

 

Sounds to me like you have quite a number of questions you should be asking the sleep doc, the first of which is you pap device set up optimally for you and does it leak, and it sounds like you are working on getting those questions answered (software to read the data is proprietary for each type of machine).  Next would be a what your diagnosis actually is and do you have only one sleep disorder - there are about 84, after all, multiple disorders are not uncommon and all must be treated for you to feel rested.

OSAS is treated either with CPAP or Bilevel PAP, as well as dental devices, weight loss, positional therapy and surgery.

Central apnea is a much rarer bird and can be treated in a number of ways depending on its cause, including CPAP, bilevel PAP and medications.

Complex sleep apnea is a whole other critter which, for lack of a better description is a combination of true obstructive sleep apnea and central apnea which is driven by a chemoreflexive mechanism.  While CPAP and bilevel PAP treat the obstructive portion of this disorder, it usually only serves to unmask the central apnea and frustrate the tech attempting the titration.  There are ways to attempt treatment, the most common is servo-adaptive PAP, where a "smart" pap device adjusts pressures according to what the patient needs as this can vary greatly with the type of event the patient is experiencing at the moment. This is NOT the same as auto-titrating pap devices and specifically designed for use by patients with diagnosed complex apnea.

 

Take heart, sleep is a complex physiologic system.  It takes the right combination of sleep specialist, therapies, and persistance to resolve the more complex problems, but it can be done.

 

 

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