APNEAS 30 SECONDS OR LONGER

[DeeCPAP]

How dangerous are they? My SleepHead software shows quite a few of them, like 5 or 10, but more that last around 10 seconds or so.
For my total time in apnea, it's sometimes 4 or 5 minutes despite having a low apnea score. Since I only sleep about 6 hours a night
it seems like too much of the time I'm not breathing and it's not a good sleep. Comments?

[Julie]

An apnea is not even considered valid until it's at least 10 seconds long and people routinely have them for at least a minute if not more. If things are otherwise working better for you I'd stop looking for problems. And it's unnecessary to capitalize your subject line - it translates to yelling at people in computer culture.

[SleepyBobR]

Most of my obstructive apneas are quite long, some up to 45 seconds. Fortunately, there's not many of them. Most nights I'll sleep 4 hours between events and then have a cluster of 3 or more, each lasting 30 seconds or more. At that point the pressure goes back up and that's the end of it. I think it has to do with REM sleep but who the hell knows for sure.

[DeeCPAP]

An apnea is not even considered valid until it's at least 10 seconds long and people routinely have them for at least a minute if not more. If things are otherwise working better for you I'd stop looking for problems. And it's unnecessary to capitalize your subject line - it translates to yelling at people in computer culture.

I didn't realize capitalizing subject headers was considered yelling. My apologies to the group.

My SleepyHead data is showing 40 "events" but a low AHI. My data shows something is very wrong with my sleep, better on some nights than others, supported by symptoms of daytime grogginess. It's not "looking for trouble". It's seeing trouble, figuring out what's wrong and trying to resolve it. Logical?

Poorly treated sleep apnea can be deadly, as you know.

[DeeCPAP]

Most of my obstructive apneas are quite long, some up to 45 seconds. Fortunately, there's not many of them. Most nights I'll sleep 4 hours between events and then have a cluster of 3 or more, each lasting 30 seconds or more. At that point the pressure goes back up and that's the end of it. I think it has to do with REM sleep but who the hell knows for sure.

Thanks for your reply. As I mentioned in a previous reply, I've had over 30 events with a low AHI during a 5 hour sleep. Here's more info I find confusing:

Total time in apnea 00:17:05
Time over leak redline 0.660%

[DeeCPAP]

An apnea is not even considered valid until it's at least 10 seconds long and people routinely have them for at least a minute if not more. If things are otherwise working better for you I'd stop looking for problems. And it's unnecessary to capitalize your subject line - it translates to yelling at people in computer culture.

I didn't realize capitalizing subject headers was considered yelling. My apologies to the group.

My SleepyHead data is showing 40 "events" but a low AHI with five hours sleep. My data shows something is very wrong, better on some nights than others, supported by symptoms of daytime grogginess and fatigue. It's not "looking for trouble". It's seeing trouble, figuring out what's wrong and trying to resolve it. Logical?

Poorly treated sleep apnea can be deadly, as you know.

[Julie]

You can have 1,000 events, but if your AHI is low, it means the machine did its job in addressing the events. Stop looking for trouble!

[Guest]

You can have 1,000 events, but if your AHI is low, it means the machine did its job in addressing the events. Stop looking for trouble!

I don't see how you could possibly have 1,000 events and a low AHI. But I am a guest so what do I know, please esplain.

[Okie bipap]

If you are using an XPAP machine, the AHI is the number of events that were not treated by the machine. Those events treated by the machine never get reported.

[DB]

hey julie...stop being such a douche bag.

[DeeCPAP]

If you are using an XPAP machine, the AHI is the number of events that were not treated by the machine. Those events treated by the machine never get reported.

Thanks for your reply, Okie. So the events are apneas and hypoapneas that were noticed and fixed by the cpap machine?

I raised the pressure for the high and the low recently and didn't pull the gear off my head for two nights in a row. Maybe there's an "aha" here? A problem possibly resolved -- I hope!

[TASmart]

How dangerous are they? My SleepHead software shows quite a few of them, like 5 or 10, but more that last around 10 seconds or so.
For my total time in apnea, it's sometimes 4 or 5 minutes despite having a low apnea score. Since I only sleep about 6 hours a night
it seems like too much of the time I'm not breathing and it's not a good sleep. Comments?

=======

depends how low your O2 goes and for how long

TASmartass will tell you they dont matter if your AHI is good

As your data shows the surrogate statistic aka score is meaningless when you have long apneas

Not having good sleep is not just dependent on apneas
although they can disrupt it somewhat or even worse there are many other things that can disturb your sleep

what you need to worry about is the O2 and whether you are getting brain/heart damage from lack of O2
worse your heart rate goes way up when the O2 goes down and you could have a heart attack
best case you are just tired from the heart being worked so much like you were running wind sprints constantly

Never ever said that

[Guest]

If you are using an XPAP machine, the AHI is the number of events that were not treated by the machine. Those events treated by the machine never get reported.

Thanks for your reply, Okie. So the events are apneas and hypoapneas that were noticed and fixed by the cpap machine?

I raised the pressure for the high and the low recently and didn't pull the gear off my head for two nights in a row. Maybe there's an "aha" here? A problem possibly resolved -- I hope!

The events you see in your AHI score are those that were NOT suppressed by the cpap which is why you can feel the diff.
Yes, with an auto raise the starting pressure and the high limit by 1cm every other day while checking your Sleepyhead chart for improvement. When you see your events come under control keep an eye on things to make sure they are stabile.

[DeeCPAP]

How dangerous are they? My SleepHead software shows quite a few of them, like 5 or 10, but more that last around 10 seconds or so.
For my total time in apnea, it's sometimes 4 or 5 minutes despite having a low apnea score. Since I only sleep about 6 hours a night
it seems like too much of the time I'm not breathing and it's not a good sleep. Comments?

=======

depends how low your O2 goes and for how long

TASmartass will tell you they dont matter if your AHI is good

As your data shows the surrogate statistic aka score is meaningless when you have long apneas

Not having good sleep is not just dependent on apneas
although they can disrupt it somewhat or even worse there are many other things that can disturb your sleep

what you need to worry about is the O2 and whether you are getting brain/heart damage from lack of O2
worse your heart rate goes way up when the O2 goes down and you could have a heart attack
best case you are just tired from the heart being worked so much like you were running wind sprints constantly

Never ever said that

Can you take an O2 reading at home while sleeping? No need to answer, it can wait until later.

Now, when talking about getting a good sleep, this question just came to mind: Wouldn't the machine kicking in to resolve an event and create a near awakening"? Or maybe it's fixed so smoothly the brain/nervous system wouldn't detect an issue.

[Pugsy]

Can you take an O2 reading at home while sleeping? No need to answer, it can wait until later.

You would need to wear a pulse oximeter that records all night.

: Wouldn't the machine kicking in to resolve an event and create a near awakening"? Or maybe it's fixed so smoothly the brain/nervous system wouldn't detect an issue.

Well some people say that the machine changing pressures disturbs their sleep but they must get disturbed by the tiniest of change because the changes/increases when the machine is wanting to fight something happen ever so slowly. With apap mode the pressure increase takes place over minutes...not seconds.
Now with ASV machine..yeah seconds.
APAPs go up slowly and come down slowly. It might look like a big jump initially on the software pressure graph but if you zoom way in on things so you are seeing maybe 3 or 5 minutes of pressure increase you will see the change is really rather slow.

Let me see if I can go back and find you a good example to look at. Give me a bit. I have to go way back in my data to find the machine that works like yours.

About the events...unless you are having a dense cluster (large number withing a short period) I doubt they could be harmful from an oxygen standpoint...now from an arousal standpoint the events could do that and the arousal in turn gives you crappy sleep.
Most of us can hold our breath for 30 seconds and not even see a drop if wearing a pulse ox watching it. The exception might be someone with an already compromised lung issue.
Now 10 of the 30 second events within say a 10 minute time frame is one per minute and that could be a problem.