Not recovering from your concussion? Undiagnosed sleep apnea could be the problem.
 

I received a concussion and after a year I still had not recovered. I went to countless doctors and spent an enormous amount of time trying to get help, but nothing worked.

I want to encourage anyone struggling to recover from a concussion to go get tested for sleep apnea ASAP! 2-3 months after I got treated for sleep apnea (CPAP) my concussion symptoms disappeared.

I’m certain that my inability to recover from my concussion was directly tied to my body not getting quality sleep.

I have this theory that there are thousands of people out there that are not recovering from their concussions due to sleep apnea. Please help me spread the word!

Thanks,
Brian

Brian,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. We discuss sleep issues, apnea and PCS frequently. A reminder is good.

Early on, I had serious problems with CSA that would make my days miserable.

Do you have OSA, Obstructive Sleep Apnea or CSA, Central Sleep Apnea ?

Has anybody suggested seeing an ENT to see if a surgical intervention would help ? A deviated septum, enlarged turbinates, enlarged tonsils or adenoids and some other anatomical issues can be corrected. I recently had a septoplasty and turbinoplasty.

The week of recovery is well worth the improvements. For me, it was not the cause of my apnea. I caused me to have bloody noses during the dry winter. But, the improvement in my breathing is amazing. I know others who have had tissue tightening with a laser procedure that resolved their OSA.

Do you have any residual PCS struggles ?

Thanks Mark. I don't know what kind of sleep apnea I have, but the CPAP does the trick for me. I don't have any residual concussion symptoms. The only exception is occasionally I will bump my head and the headaches will come back for a week and then disappear. I haven't been to ENT for years and will keep in mind what you said.

I'm glad to hear you already discuss sleep apnea as an issue for concussion recovery. It was such a huge deal to me wish I had known that from the beginning would have said me a terrible year.

Brian

Brian--what kind of test did you do to determine the apnea? In hospital or one of the home tests? Also, what kind of symptoms were you battling while you still had PCS?

CPAP success usually means Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure devices use air to blow the obstructions out of the way. It usually requires a sleep lab test to get a CPAP prescribed. Sometimes, an at home test will be done first if your insurance company is cheap and needs pre-auth. Then, a sleep lab test is done to test out the effectiveness of a CPAP. Many go straight to the sleep lab and get a CPAP fitted during the night after observing OSA. There are many permutations of how the system works depending on insurance and local preferences.

I did the home test. My main long lasting symptom was headache although I had that "foggy" feeling, light sensitivity. The headache was from the concussion not sleep apnea. A common apnea symptom is headache.

I love my CPAP!

Riggs: i went through similar testing and also have really poor sleep. Were you actually able to sleep in the sleep center for a reasonable amount of time? I had trouble with all the wires so unsure how accurate that data is.

This is really coincidental, but I just got back to work after visiting my physiatrist, where we were talking about my ongoing sleep problems, esp since I had to stop taking Ambien CR. He mentioned in passing a researcher that he remembered who found that it is common for TBI patients to develop sleep apnea, sometimes a few years after the injury, and that they more often develop obstructive than central sleep apnea.

Years ago, before I had my surgeries for OSA, I used a CPAP. The insurance is often crazy! They wanted me to rent a machine (not state of the art) for a month at a time for a few months. While I can see that they don't want to pay for machines that might not help people, my doctor actually told me to just go online and buy one outright -- it was cheaper than one month of the rental, and it was a much better machine! My out of pocket cost was much less, and it was mine to keep. I just brought it with me to the lab to have it calibrated to my pressure needs. After I had my surgery, I didn't need it anymore, and I was able to give it to a friend who didn't have insurance at all.

I'd love to see that research. There is nothing about TBI or PCS that would cause OSA. But, OSA can make PCS much worse. So, someone with mild OSA can be much more symptomatic since the PCS brain is much more sensitive to oxygen levels.

CSA can be caused by neck issues that lead to inflammation that interrupts blood flow to the autonomic nervous system that controls breathing. That was my problem. Once I learned sleep postures to prevent causing neck inflammation, my CSA came under control and was rare. This lead to a stability in my PCS symptoms. No more zombie days.

One of the difficulties with CSA is very few pulmonologists ever see a true case of CSA. Plus, CSA often coexists with OSA. Treating the OSA can reduce CSA to a manageable level so the OSA diagnosis appears to be proper. I had CSA without any OSA but the pulmonologist was determined there was nothing wrong unless it was OSA if he was not able to trigger a CSA episode. My wife counted 16 CSA episodes in one hour. The take home test was worthless because the system did not record properly. Trying to schedule a second test was problematic.

Every time I tried to get a sleep test, the doc wanted to test for OSA only. It can be difficult to get a proper diagnosis if the problem is CSA.