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Permalink Reply by susan mccord on August 3, 2009 at 10:28am

Hi guys--this is interesting to me 'cause before I was diagnosed, and for maybe 18 months, I had the most vivid, long-lasting, sometimes bad dreams I've ever had. I'd often be "awake", i.e., aware that I was dreaming but still in the dream. Sometimes I was actually speaking inside the dream and yet awake enough to know I was doing it. I'd have conversations with various people, usually motivational stuff like when I used to be a therapist, same thing. Asleep having them, then that weird awakeness, but still participating in the dream. It was the strangest thing. I've never had a clue what that was about. I talked in my sleep a LOT, but freqently was awake and still did it and knew I was asleep. I'd remember them for a nano-second when I actually woke up, but never after. Since this apnea stuff got so bad recently, I haven't dreamed at all (that I know of). Last night I dreamed normal dreams, maybe a couple, and have no clue what they were about. I find this fascinating. Does anyone know what the root cause is related to apnea?

Rock Hinkle said:

i also go through phases of dreaming mike. i think for the most part it is better not to remember them because like Conn said then they are gone.

Mike said:

fascinating thread. When my wife was not treating her apnea, she had very vivid dreams that she could remember. Now that she's on CPAP, she hardly ever remembers her dreams. Myself, I rarely dreamt/remembered my dreams before CPAP, then experienced a period of vivid dreams upon starting CPAP, and now am back to not remembering my dreams.

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Permalink Reply by susan mccord on August 3, 2009 at 10:38am

Just realized I've come in on the tail end of this discussion. Very interesting stuff.....I don't get it all yet, but it's good to know it's an apnea-related phenomenon with us.

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Permalink Reply by Julia on August 3, 2009 at 11:47am

I have found this really interesting. I mostly teach history, however, I also teach psychology and teach a unit on sleep. I had never heard of REM rebound before and will have to include it in my lessons in the future.

I guess I thought there would be more dreaming with REM rebound and maybe there is. I feel pretty confident that my vivid dreaming before cpap was just a result of trying to get REM sleep in and waking up over and over and thus, recalling the dreams.
It makes perfect sense that I am getting my REM sleep in now but I am actually sleeping through REM and doing the proper sleep cycles. Since I don't wake up, I don't remember the dreams. I just expected to have even more vivid dreams that were remembered. I had never associated my recall of dreams with apnea events.

So, maybe another symptom of apnea is recalling in detail your dreams????

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