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I am looking forward to getting lost in the world of dreams with you all. I have always been fascinated by sleep, dreams and the worlds I get to explore when my eyes close. I have a love of sleep so deep, that my job revolves around it and helping others get back into the world of uninterrupted REM. Nice to meet you all!
^^ Welcome to Dreamviews, SirenOfSleep, from a fellow lover of sleep! I look forward to seeing you around the forums!
Welcome to the community! :dancingcow:
Welcome to DreamViews!
It was nice seeing you in the chat. Happy dreams!
Hi, welcome!
Could you write more about what exactly do in your job? Improving sleep seems to be a dream job :D
Hi Raipat. I am a RPSGT (registered polysomnographic sleep technologist). People come into our sleep lab for various sleep problems such as sleep apnea, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, parasomnias, etc. My job entails greeting and interviewing them as to why they are here for a study. I then place 25 different wires on them to monitor different physiological things such as brain waves, heart rate and rhythm, limb movement, teeth grinding, snoring, airflow and blood oxygen levels.
Once the patient is asleep, I am responsible for scoring the incoming data every 30 seconds. I decide from brain waves what stage of sleep, look for heart rhythm anomalies, mark leg movements, brain wave arousals and respiratory events. I look for things called hypopneas (shallow breathing that decreases oxygen levels, and apneas, where breathing stops for at least 10 seconds of time). If there are enough of those breathing events, I then put a CPAP mask on my patient. It uses positive airway pressure to create an open airway to stop the cause of those respiratory events. Everyone's amount of air pressure is different, so I have to watch and adjust as the night goes on. When the pressure is just right, my patients sleep soundly. They sometimes go into REM rebound. the longest REM session I have seen is 2 hours long.
Some interesting things about my job: Most patients go into REM around the same time 4:00 in the morning. It is as if we are all uploading info :) I have seen sleep apnea as severe as 120 times an hour with oxygen desaturations bottoming out at 50% oxygen (you want to be in the 90th %. When people have sleep apnea and other things that disrupt sleep, risks for heart attack, stroke, diabetes, anxiety and depression go way up. Sleep apnea is at its worst during REM sleep and when sleeping supine. People with severe sleep apnea never have consolidated dream sleep.
Feel free to ask me anything you are curious about.
delicious avatar so soporific
Thank you so much for the detailed description of your work routine!
I've been in the sleep lab some times (LDing there participating in studies).
How is it like to spend nights monitoring others sleeping on a regular basis? When do YOU sleep and how does this affect your dreams? ;)
Thanks for the inspiration to look for a correlation of sleeping spO2 and dream recall!