Posted by Molybdenum on May 16, 2008, at 4:33:06
In reply to Re: Slow taper from klonopin with litte side effects? » Molybdenum, posted by Phillipa on May 15, 2008, at 12:06:34
> Didn't know they used it for sleep aphnea how does it help? Phillipa
Hi,
when I stop breathing my CO2 level starts to rise in my blood. Even though I haven't taken a breath for around 40 seconds, that in itself isn't causing a problem. But as the CO2 level rises above a certain threshold, another part of the brain slightly panics & makes me take several deep breaths to compensate (hyperventilating). Apparently, it's the deep breaths that make me wake up - not enough for me to notice, just enough to stop me from entering into the deeper stages of sleep, over & over & over again all night.
So although I might be "asleep" for 8 hrs, I wake up with headaches & feeling like normal people do when they only get a few hrs sleep. Every f*ck*ng day...
In Central Sleep Apnoea, the brain just doesn't bother sending the signal to breathe. This is common in people with Congestive Heart Failure & brain injuries. Luckily that's not what causes mine. Mine is in the "damned if we know why" basket.
Obstructive Sleep Apnoea is about 10x more common than CSA. OSA occurs when your throat closes over, when your soft palate effectively blocks your airway. You'll be trying to breathe but the collapsed / obstructed airway will not let air in. So your blood CO2 rises, your brain goes into panic mode a bit & makes you gasp & snore or whatever it has to, to make you take a breath. So OSA can be treated a lot of the time with a CPAP machine with a mask over your nose / face that keeps the pressure of air in your lungs above the pressure outside, effectively "splinting" the airway open. Much like water does in an otherwise flat fireman's hose. Ok, think of a penis if you must....;)
For CSA, CPAP is generally useless & can even make it worse. So what I need is a kind of ventilator that pushes air into my lungs when I stop breathing - just enough to get me breathing on my own again. Not a full-on ventilator you've seen in hospitals for people who are paralysed or anaesthetised. I actually bought one of these pseudo-ventilator machines ($10,000) but I just can't tolerate it. I can't sleep with it - some people can, but not me. So all that's left for me is taking a tiny bit of clonazepam so that it suppresses my hyperventilation, so I don't wake up as much as I would without it. But if I take too much clonazepam, it'll bugger up normal sleep patterns all by itself + leave me sedated the next day. Viscous little circle there.
There. Totally off thread but that's the joy of sleep apnoea ;)
While I'm waffling off topic, I found out that us humans are very sensitive to CO2 but not "a lack of oxygen". That means that if you're sick of life & Babble and the PEA in your chocolate bar just isn't enough of a reason to want to live, and you decide to take a bunch of benzos & put a plastic bag over your head, your body can still panic when it senses the CO2 level in the bag getting too high - not the lack of oxygen. That's dangerous, because you might reach up & remove the bag...!
But if you stick a tube connected to a bottle of say, nitrogen into the bag with you, it'll flush out the extra CO2 and you'll happily breathe in all the extra nitrogen without panicking, 'cos the CO2 level is being kept low. Of course, your body needs oxygen so very soon you'll go unconscious from lack of oxygen...and die. But you won't go into CO2 panic & try to remove the bag.
I find it interesting because most people think it's the lack of oxygen that makes you panic "running out of air" when in fact it's not that at all. It's the increase in CO2. If you can remove the excess CO2 (by flushing with another gas or with a scrubber), you'll just drift off into oblivion....
Fascinating, ain't it?
;)
poster:Molybdenum
thread:829181
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080510/msgs/829382.html