What diagnostic tests should I ask my doctor to do to determine cause of my tiredness and sleep difficulties?

I am 43 year old male, and am feeling overall poorly. I am strong and all that, but I just feel weak and tired, and I have difficulty getting good sleep. I recently was diagnosed with sleep apnea and am using the CPAP machine, but I still wake up tired and cant maintain my sleep through the night. I still drag through the day with tiredness, weakness, and depression. A friend suggested a series of tests his naturepathic doctor took him through including hormone levels check, hair, and spittle test...but he didnt know what the other tests available to determine chemistry and nutritional deficiencys might be. Wondering if anyone could advise me on what tests to have my doctor adminster.

Sleeping 02 sats - your blood oxygen level while sleeping. It needs to be mid-to-high 90s or you wake fatigued, have anaerobic metab and are setting yourself up for cancer.

You might consider another opinion. Sounds like heavy duty stress and or depression to me. I am no doctor, but have gone through some of the same things. I am also a shift worker. Rotating shift is the worst. If you are a shift worker, look on line for help...there are some things you can do that do not require medicine.

Go to the same doctor who diagnosed your sleep apnea and tell him you would like a CPAP titration test. This will determine whether or not your CPAP machine is set at the correct setting. It may not be set high enough.

Also request a test called a polysomnogram, which is a sleep study that will monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, snoring intensity, the number of times you move when you sleep (and if those movements arouse you into wakefulness, even though you're not aware of it), how long you're in REM sleep, which is the most restful state of sleep.. all of these things have an effect on the level of sleep you reach in a night and can have a BIG effect on your daytime level of alertness and ability to function.

Hope this helped.

See an endocrinologist and check thyroid, cortisol, gh (IGF-1). Low cortisol will make you extremely tired yet you will have a hard time sleeping at night. Do you have the most difficult time getting going before 10 am?

About 60% of the persons suffering from sleeping problems are overweight , so weight reduction, avoiding alcohol may help .More details and remedies at http://nosleep.in/sleepapnea.html