When you look at the sleeping pill section in the drugstore there are a myriad of OTC (over the counter)products to help us sleep.They have little bottles of liquid to help you sleep after your five hour energy and red bull powered day.  They have products to help you achieve lucid dreams.  They have herbal remedies, melatonin, and benadryl- some quite reasonable priced.  I don't know what effect these products have on sleep architecture.  It may be a good idea to run the ingredients past your doctor. Then we have the many prescription pills.  It all makes me think that sleep is a precious commodity that people will pay to achieve.

I used to think that all there was to CPAP therapy success was to strap on the mask and use the machine 100% of sleep time (including naps).  Then I found out without deep, restful, rejuvenating sleep the body does not heal itself.  Many medicines change sleep architecture and they may prevent us from attaining the deep sleep  and REM sleep we need.  My inability to have an AHI under 5 was attributed to the many medicines I take by the sleep doctor.  If you're having trouble, getting less than optimal results from your therapy,  and still feeling tired despite using your CPAP 100%- look at your medicines as part of reviewing sleep hygiene.

Some people continue to have excessive daytime sleepiness despite good sleep.  There are wakefulness drugs like provigil (available now as generic) and nuvigil which I took for three years.  There are daytime sleep tests to rule out narcolepsy and to diagnose Hypersomnia (sleep too much and fall asleep easity).  The test is called the MSLT (multiple sleep latency test) and is usually done after a nightime sleep test.  It consists of multiple cycles of two hour wake periods  followed by 20 minute naps.  There are usually five cycles.  Narcolepy is determined by how fast you fall sleep and time of onset of REM sleep.

This forum is about CPAP in all it's forms, sleep, insomnie- anyt topic related to sleep.