Gasping for Breath During Sleep

[Davina27]

I am a 27 yr old with no medical history, although heart failure and asthma runs in the family. I often have these episodes where I will feel like I am struggling in my sleep to breathe. The last episode I had was longer than others and it was most painful. It felt like my chest was closing up and it felt like I had a tremendous amount of pressure in my head. Usually when I have these episodes I struggle for the breath, catch it and wake up gasping for air, and with a headache. The last episode lasted longer, I struggled for the breath longer, I felt pressure in my head, I woke up gasping, with a headache, chest pain, and the inability to raise my head from the pillow for a few seconds. I had a sleep study done and it was normal. This is really scary, sometimes I feel like I am dying in my sleep. Please help me.

[LivingInHope]

If you aren't a male, you may want to change your profile.  I hope if you're a female, your boyfriend will care enough about you to marry you pronto, instead of the way it is now.  Perhaps with all the jerking and numbness a brain MRI and EEG might be things to ask a doctor about.

[Davina27]

I have had a echocardiogram done and my PCP said that the test was normal. The weird part about it is that this happens on my side, stomach, and back. The worst of the episodes happened while I was sleeping on my stomach. My boyfriend also told me that I often jerk my body while in my sleep. He says that I would have the jerking episodes maybe 3mins apart and they last for about 20 minutes before I am sound asleep. When I am asleep on my stomach, almost every night my arms go numb from my shoulder all the way to my fingertips. I am going to look in to the GI and Pulmonarry testing. Thank you all for your help. I will keep you all posted!

[Londres70]

The sleep study was normal because you didn't have an episode to record during testing unfortunately.  In my opinion, it sounds like a pulmonary/cardiac problem.  Ask you PCP for pulmonology and cardiology referrals to rule out what is causing the problem.  

Keep us posted.

[selmaS]

Have u had a GI series done to look for reflux ....try to elevate the head of the bed and see if that helps.

"selma"

[LivingInHope]

I would think a caring doctor upon hearing of your struggle would be willing to offer you options to deal with this- whether it be to prescribe asthma medication, the use of a CPAP machine, and even nitroglycerine for the chest pain to see if it helps.  Headache can come from lack of oxygen, sleeping with your head for too long in positions it doesn't like or teeth clenching or grinding.  If they think it is psychological related to dreams, perhaps they could recommend a psychiatrist to see if they can help you with that.  They might send you for pulmonary function testing while you are awake & perhaps order an echocardiogram to see how your heart functions.