Sleep, part three

I got the results of my polysomnogram back the other day. From a scientific point of view, this is very interesting: there are several graphs each showing differing states on the timeline (sleep state, body state, oxygen saturation and snore volume). From this, I can see that there were times that I thought that I was awake when in fact I was asleep, although the sleep was of low quality.

I'm not too sure how much can be read into the fact that only 25% of my sleep was rem-sleep. I don't know what the usual fraction is, and also one has to bear in mind the unusual circumstances of the test. What is much more important is the number of breathing "events" - these were on average one a minute! Which means that I have severe sleep apnea: no surprise that I am always tired during the day, and often nod off for a few seconds if I'm not doing anything.

I have a return appointment with the sleep doctor on Thursday, during which he will no doubt recommend treatment with "CPAP, or continuous positive airway pressure, in which a controlled air compressor generates an airstream at a constant pressure".

One subject which I intend to bring up is the fact that I often suffer from headaches upon rising on a Saturday. This is particularly annoying as these can often ruin my one day off from work. I remember mentioning the subject to my family doctor, and naturally he asked what was different on a Friday. Now I that mention this, I recall that I blogged on this subject earlier this year. Anyway now I have a different hypothesis. It's obviously not due to caffeine withdrawal, as I don't drink caffeinated drinks (I had to give up drinking tea as it prevents iron absorption). No, I think that the cause of the headache is that I sleep two to three hours longer on Friday night, and in that time, the apnea causes less oxygen to be absorbed. The extra hours of sleep mean that the body has more hours of oxygen deprivation, and that's what is causing the Saturday headaches.

Migraines are a separate subject, and they generally start in the early afternoon. So even if my hypothesis is correct, it won't explain the migraines.