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Comment by wincy | Hacker News Reader

I’m going to see a sleep doctor on Friday. I’ve been napping two hours every day from 12-2 like clockwork and I wake up feeling confused and more tired than when I went to sleep. I did a sleep study years ago and was diagnosed with OSA but always felt like I was suffocating wearing the CPAP. Tried in the last few weeks to just force myself to wear the thing and I feel like I’m stopping breathing as I fall asleep. It’s awful and a damned if I do damned if I don’t kind of thing. Hopefully it’s “just” apnea because I feel like I’m literally going crazy from such poor sleep.

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Two hour naps will likely put you into a deep slow-wave REM sleep cycle. Waking up mid sleep cycle often leads to grogginess. If you cut your naps to 25 minutes or slightly less, you avoid deep REM sleep and should wake up feeling refreshed.

"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker is a good summary on the science behind sleep. The book also recommends to not use the "snooze" function on your alarm clock. It allows you to slip back into a sleep cycle that gets disrupted multiple times everyday.

Try a 20minute nap, or at the very least try out increasing or decreasing the length by 5 minutes at a time.

You may be accidentally waking up each day at the lowest valley of a sleep cycle

You might consider experimenting with different masks and pressure settings to see if it helps a bit. CPAPs are awful but the common alternative is surgery.

Another less invasive option would be to see a chiropractor. I've watched videos claiming they help open nasal passages, but not sure if that's pseudoscience. I think surgery should always be the absolute last option.

Trying different masks, different pressure settings, or different ramp up time might help you adjust to the CPAP better. Mandibular advancement splint might be an option? It's definitely worth talking to your sleep specialist about finding something that works for you. There's a reason why sleep deprivation is used as torture, not to mention the long-term effects of unmanaged OSA

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