minor snoring

[Hounds3]

My wife says I have had a couple sessions where I am snoring, not badly, in the night. I have an airsense 10 with a mirage nasal mask. I am getting great numbers on my myair and I feel good in the morning. the issue is my wife doesn't like snoring. I haven't been wearing my chin strap lately, I didn't think I needed it, and it tends to slip off by morning anyway. my mask fit shows excellent 2.4 l/m and my ahi was .2 events per hour (this is about where I usually am). I wonder if I am breathing through my mouth some now, or if I need to bump my pressure up a bit. I am now running start 6 and high 9. any advice would be appreciated. I have no sleepyhead data as my machine doesn't produce it.

thanks
scott

[Julie]

Just wondering why your high setting is so low at 9... most leave the high one higher unless there's a specific reason to not do so.

Have you tried raising your min. pressure even a little to see if it stops the snoring as it often will?

MyAir doesn't give as much info as Sleepyhead, and you'd get a better idea of what's what if you download and use it.

https://sleep.tnet.com/sleepyhead
https://sleep.tnet.com/resources/sleepyhead/shorganize
https://sleep.tnet.com/reference/tips/imgur

[Hounds3]

my machine doesn't produce advanced data. and since its just a cpap and not an auto I only have two pressures. my sleep study recommended an RX of 9. the start was set to 5 and I upped it to 6.

[Pugsy]

my machine doesn't produce advanced data. and since its just a cpap and not an auto I only have two pressures. my sleep study recommended an RX of 9. the start was set to 5 and I upped it to 6.

Since you don't have an auto adjusting machine when you say your starting pressure that has to be the ramp starting pressure and then it takes the ramp time period to get up to your fixed pressure of 9.

So to avoid confusion we don't talk about using ramp starting pressures in the same way as we would talk about using a minimum pressure. Ramp only affects a small part of the night at the beginning when you first turn the machine on...and only for the time frame you have selected with the maximum time being 45 minutes unless Auto Ramp is used and in that case it's 30 minutes.

So to avoid confusion it might be better if you say
"I am using fixed pressure of 9 and I use ramp for so and so minutes but I start it at 6"

Now the snores...does your wife say when she is hearing them? Is it by chance at the beginning of the night while the machine is still maybe below the 9 cm fixed pressure and still doing the ramp thing?
Or is it in the middle of the night where the pressure will be at 9 cm?
If it is in the middle of the night....has she noticed if you are on your back or not?

Snores are usually an indication of the airway trying to collapse...but your AHI is low and leaks are low so they don't seem to be growing up into full blown apneas or hyponeas because if they were your AHI would likely be higher.
Usually a few snores not that big of a deal except in your situation they are waking the wife up and we don't want her sleep to be disrupted.

Without the data to see exactly what is happening and when....about all we can do is guess and the fix for snores is more pressure.
Fortunately snores are usually fairly easy to kill or reduce....so you would need more than the 9 cm if the snores are happening in the middle of the night. Maybe just 0.5 to 1.0 cm more.
If they are happening at the beginning of the night only then maybe shortening the ramp time or starting higher with the ramp would do the trick.

So ask the wife
1...when she is hearing the snores
2...are you on your back when she hears them

[D.H.]

Is the snoring early in the night? If so, perhaps it happens before you ramp up to full pressure. If this is the case, you might want to consider a higher starting pressure and/or a shorter ramp time.

[Hounds3]

I will ask my wife for more data....thanks for the info. I will get back after I talk to her.

[Hounds3]

wife said it was in the middle of the night, and that I was kind of on my side, and that she thinks she heard more air like the machine was ramping up. I am wondering if the mask was pulled away from seal.

[Pugsy]

Might be that the mask lost its seal and the machine tried increasing the flow a bit in an effort to maintain pressure.

Unfortunately without the detailed data we can only guess. Obviously if you did have much of a leak then that could account for sub optimal pressure allowing the snores to happen and more pressure wouldn't necessarily be the best fix...fixing the leak would be the best thing.

[Goofproof]

I will ask my wife for more data....thanks for the info. I will get back after I talk to her.

I hope you were given a Full Data Wife, it's harder to change the wife than to change machines. Jim

And more costly!

[greatunclebill]

with a no data machine, your doctor knows no more than you do about how it is working. you can thank him for that. it's sad because insurance pays by billing code and no data brick or fully data capable are the same code, same price in most cases.

[Hounds3]

I am going to assume that I rolled all the way on my side and the mask seal broke from my face a bit. I am going to have my full data wife wake me up next time so I can see if that's the issue. its odd that when I first got my cpap I slept on my back, but now that I am sleeping so well I am rolling onto my side more just like I used to. its good for sleeping and maybe not so good for cpap. I will explore this possibility before I up the pressure since my ahi readings have been so good where they are it. it will be a few years before I upgrade to a better cpcp. I wish I knew then what I know now, but back then I was just told to go to the med supply and pick up my cpcp equipment. which is just what I did. thanks everyone for your help.

scott

[Pugsy]

Sometimes my full data husband reports that there was some weird sounds coming from the machine or me. Unfortunately he's also not all that detailed in terms of the data he gives me.
He is smart enough not to wake me in the middle of the night for his data reporting though.
Usually it's the next day and I get the report "your mask was leaking last night"...and I go look at my reports and yep..it did.

I slept through it...he didn't...and we don't want our spouses to have to have their sleep messed up..
so if it persists and you can't seem to fix it then maybe look at a different mask or altering the fit of this one to better accommodate moving around.

[Hounds3]

I might have a new idea. from what my wife was describing I may have been mouth breathing for a bit. I quit wearing my chin strap a few days ago as I didn't think I needed it. its kind of a pain. I wore it again last night and my wife heard no snoring. go figure. I wear it again for a while and see if I get any more issues.

[DeadlySleep]

My first three wives were full data. They gave me personal evaluations night and day. I'm a slow learner, finally found a wonderful lady who just goes with the flow.

[Hounds3]

This is my only wife. She’s full data, but a very good wife. I can’t afford another one. Haven’t got this one paid off yet.