I'm not use if I've ever mentioned before. But I'm not over weight. In fact the last time I went to the doctors he said I could afford to put a bit on.

I say this because for the majority of people, Sleep Apnoea is a direct result of them being over weight. Period. If they lost weight, chances are they would resolve most of their snoring issues and would no longer have sleep apnoea.

I however am not in that group. It seems that me and every member of my family has some kind of design flaw in our internal throat that causes us to snore so badly that we stop breathing for a period. That's right, everyone in my family has this condition.

My father (who has never been overweight) also now has vascular dementia, which in my mind could have been aggravated, if not directly caused by him having sleep apnoea for 70 years without treatment.

My sister has it, although she is overweight, she is working on that, but even if she was "normal" sized then she would probably still have this condition.

My brother, recently got himself into a spot of trouble with the police. It seems his anger management issues were recently accentuated due to his CPAP machine not working properly.

Recently my niece has also begun to think she has it too. As yet she is too scared to get it checked out, in case she ends up having to wear a mask like the rest of us.

FULL FACE CPAP AND GOATEES

Been a while huh!?

Well I'm still here and I still have Sleep Apnoea.

I was just looking through the keywords that people use to find this site and strangely one of the things that people pick up on is using a full face mask when you have a goatee.

I must admit I was really getting fed up with the nurse telling me that any leaks I get would be caused by having facial hair. Which to be honest really annoyed me!

It's just a really lazy excuse not to follow up on any problems I was having. I had to really push to have them understand that I never suffered from leaks around my mount area, it was always just under my eyes. I have a very pronounced (AKA BIG) nose and not terribly big cheek bones, so I'd often suggest that the masks just weren't designed for people with my facial features.

I actually went through a period of about 18 months where I'd wake up in the morning with a bright red mark on the top of my nose that would, no kidding, be there ALL DAY!

After several masks, of different sizes and shapes, I managed to work out that by changing the way to put the mask on at night made a HUGE difference.

I used to align the mask from my chin, and then pull over the straps. This felt like the right place, but I'd have to pull the top straps quite firmly to stop the leaks in the cheek/eye area. Now I position the mask from the top down. So first I position the top of the mask as far up the bridge of my nose as possible. (If the mask ends up in your eyes, you've gone too far! :-) )
Having the mask right up the top of my now meant I didn't have to pull the straps so tight to get a good seal. After adjusting the bottom straps I was read to go.

I have noticed that if I change the settings on my straps at all, I tend to wake up an hour or so later and have to fine tune them to stop any leaks. But after that it's fantastic!

So if you do have facial hair, like a goatee you can use a full face mask successfully, don't fall into the trap of believing you are doomed to suffer from leaks because of it. Spend some time adjusting your mask and see which way works best for you.

Most importantly of all, don't give up!! This damn thing is a pain in the butt, however when it works it's effectively extending your life!

Good luck!

Nee Naa Nigh Nah!

It's been a while since I posted as I've really not being doing a lot about my Apnoea.

Last time I posted it was in May. Since then the following things have changed: -

1: SAD light: It being summer there has no need to use the light. Now that the day light hours are getting shorter I will start to use it again.

2: Pressure on my CPAP machine, I think I posted previously that I'd had to increase the pressure of my machine as I was beginning to snore whilst wearing it at night. This has happened because I haven't been signing at all in months, so the muscles have begun to relax again. But it took a good 3-4 months for this to happen.

3: Singing, I stopped signing for a long time. My job sometimes makes it difficult to find the time, so I took a piece of advise from a fellow singer and now, I do 10 mins in the morning and the rest in the evening. 2 x 10min sessions are much easier to fit into any busy schedule. I've been singing again for 2 weeks and should be ready to reduce to pressure again on my CPAP machine, YAY! The good thing about tonning muscles, just like going to the gym, is that it's much easier to re-tone them the next time. I could probably get away with only doing the singing every 2-3 days. But then I tend to forget and end up not doing it at all, so doing at least 10mins every day seems to be the best plan for me.

4: The gym/weight control. My weight has fluctuated a litte but nothing a bit of smart eating for 1-2 weeks hasn't been able to fix. The Gym however is another thing. Again due to changes in my work schedule it's been very hard to find the time to go. I'm seriously thinking about getting up and hour earlier and going to the gym then.

pain/tiredness /level
1/2/12

Day 218

Back in the "Sing" of things, Har har :-)

Since my lapse in singing, I have notice 2 things:-
1: Suddenly waking up almost every hour. Resulting in very poor sleep.
2: Occationally found myself to be snoring with my mask on, so I have had to increase my pressure to 10.5 !

I'm sure the sudden waking was due, in part, to have apnoea attacks. Also having to increase the pressure to combat the snoring which I was aware of, clearly demonstrates to me that the singing DID improve my sleeping and allowed me to reduce the pressure.

So I'm back to signing every day and will retain the pressure at 10.5 for a period until everything is back on track. It shouldn't take long as once you have trained a muscle it takes only a few days to re-train it.

pain/tiredness/level
1/4/10.5

Day 199

I've been a bad singer. I've been extremely busy finishing off my dimploma for life coaching that I've not been giving myself time to complete the exercises every day.

I'm not sure if this has caused my currently strange sleeping issue which is to wake up almost ever hour with a strange feeling through out my body, almost like an itching. Once awake I throw off the covers for a while and allow my body tempreture to lower a little. After that I pull over the covers again and drift back to sleep.

I'm hoping that after a couple of days catch up with the singing these strange sleep issues will subside.

One other thing that it could be is that I've also not been going to the gym on a regular basis either. So it may just be that I'm not as physically tired. Add that to the pressure of finishing my training I guess the stress from that would also give me another reason not to sleep well.

pain/tiredness/level
2/4/9

Day 172

I've been doing the singing exercises pretty much every day. I do feel a lot better although I went to a friends birthday party on Saturday, got completely trashed and didn't get to bed until about 4:30 am. So I spent most of Sunday recovering and even though today is Tuesday I can still feel the remains of the sleep disruption. But then so does everyone else that went so it's always nice to know that feeling sleeping isn't always because you have a disorder. Sometimes it's just down to having too much FUN !

Pain/tiredness/level
1/3/10

Day 164

*NEWS* Several things to tell you this week. After last weekend when my partner was ill, then I was suffering from stomach pains, sleep quality was really poor and I was also starting to have mood swings again and then I realised something:-

With everything that was going on in my life I had forgotten to do my singing exercises. Something else that really should have triggered the realisation was that I began to gently snore whilst using my CPAP machine. This is pretty much unheard of, so my first reaction was to turn the machine up a little.

After a few nights of better sleep I started up iTunes to play the singing exercises and realise that it was 6 days since I last did them! It was at that point that I also realised that I could actually feel my throat closing up. I had been feeling it for a few days but just didn't realise it.

It was like I had something stuck in the back of my throat and it was making it hard to swallow. Further evidence of this was found when I notice I had to raise my head a little to allow me to swallow at all.

All these things amazed me, it was so clearly due to me missing several days of singing. Since then I've been doing the exercises every day and can already see and feel a significant difference. The good thing about toning muscle wherever it is on the body, once you've toned it, it doesn't take long to get it back into shape after a short rest period.

I know that a university is doing clinical trails at the moment and they are due to be completed this year. But I would love to know what happens to the test subjects that have been doing the exercises, when they stop doing them for 1-2 weeks. I'm sure that they will soon notice a dramatic difference. When you are doing the exercises the change is quite slow so sometimes it's hard to tell, which is why I started this blog in the first place as now I can clearly see an improvement. But I'd love to hear what happens to others that have an extended period of not signing after they have been for several months.

For me, it really did prove, the signing has made a significant difference.

I'll remain on the raised pressure for a few more days before reducing it again.

Pain/tiredness/level
1/3/10