14 minutes of sleep

[oo 1]

Check this out, friend sent it on from back in the UK

 

 Quote:

For almost two decades, Philip Skeates woke up dog tired, even though he had just spent a good 12 hours in bed. He would get up for breakfast, then stagger back to bed until noon. By eight at night he was nodding off.

 

Eventually his wife persuaded him to seek medical help. Her husband, 39, was completely exhausted, and she was suffering too.

 

To the amazement of experts, he was diagnosed with one of the worst cases of sleep apnoea - a condition that causes the airways to close - that had ever been seen in Britain.

 

It meant that Skeates stopped breathing every 40 seconds or so during the night. He would briefly wake up, without properly regaining consciousness, and then fall back to sleep. And the process would begin over again.

 

Doctors estimated Skeates was only actually sleeping for a few seconds at a time, and for less than 15 minutes in total every night. "Every day I would get up feeling exhausted," he said. "I couldn't concentrate and I was ratty with my family. I couldn't understand it because I would fall asleep in my chair by 8pm and not get out of bed for 12 hours. But in fact I was hardly getting any sleep at all. It was miserable for me and it just wasn't fair on my family."

 

He finally visited his GP because his snoring - an effect of the condition - was so loud that his wife, Lisa, 40, a teaching assistant and their three children, were kept awake. She also became alarmed at how quiet and still her husband became in between the bouts of loud snoring.

 

Skeates was referred to the Great Western hospital near the family home in Swindon, Wiltshire, where his sleep was monitored and the results were startling.

 

Doctors found he stopped breathing 90 times an hour. "The doctors said it was one of the worst cases they had ever seen," he explained. "I was really only getting 14 minutes of sleep."

[nzlegend 1]

sleep apnoea is suprisingly common....it sometimes happens to me, if I sleep on my back. I can stop breathing for up to 10 - 15 seconds and then spurt back into breathing. It freaks my wife out. It started happening a few years ago.

I like sleeping on my back but I cant anymore, I have to sleep on my side or stomach which case I sleep like a log. On rare occasions now I wake up super tired in the morning I know I have rolled onto my back in the night, but now that I know its almost like I have a sensor in my brain stopping me from rolling over, I frequently wake up it the exact some position I went to sleep in.

Apnoea has many causes, mine is positional another common cause is obesity, the sumo Yokozuna hakuho suffers from it.

 

Skeates wife above must be pretty simple if it took her 20 years to deduce that something wasnt right with her husbands sleeping style.

[HelperElfMissy 42]

My hubby has sleep apnoea also.

 

I have been trying to get him to do a sleep over for years, and then just today my MIL told me the results of FIL's sleepover that I picked him up from just before we left for Japan. HE stops breathing 60 times in one hour and they are trying to get him wearing one of the breathing masks that pushes air in forcibly - not going well - but at least they are trying to do something about it.

 

Bizarre that here is THIS thread the same afternoon I have been talking about it with her!

 

It is so debilitating when they are not sleeping though ... it effects every part of thier life - not to mention physical well being. I am glad my hubby's is not so bad - his is worse after a few beers too!

[snowmonkey 0]

I get grumpy if I don't get at least 7 hours.

 

I often don't sleep as well after drinking, so I need to be really drunk if I want a good sleep!