New to Cpap Hope to learn

[azuraz]

Here are the Sleepyhead screens from Saturday and Sunday night.
Do you think I need to bump the max a little bit?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/95pwh0mp7k0sk ... 8.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0mk2nnptktccc ... 8.png?dl=0

Thanks in advance for the replies.

[Pugsy]

Yeah, I would increase the maximum if it were me. I don't think you will need much but try 15 max and see where it goes. If it only needs to go to 13 it won't go any higher.
If that doesn't reduce the FLs a bit then try 1 cm more minimum and see what happens.

[azuraz]

I have got a couple more nights of data to have a look at.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m18y2knq1b8bt ... 1.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2zn7uhcggwray ... 0.png?dl=0

Glad I have this site to review the data.

Maybe a little more minimum yet?

[Pugsy]

Yeah....little more minimum and a little more maximum also.
Maybe 1 cm each.

How are you feeling and how are you sleeping?

[azuraz]

I take Zopiclone, which gets me to sleep generally fairly quickly.
I am suffering from depression and anxiety and am on citalopram for that.
I feel poorly. Hungover most of the time from the medications.
I guess if I can get good results with the machine, that is one item off the check list going forward.
This all is a result of an extremely noisy mechanical heart valve I had added to my body 4 months ago.
Recovery has been a brute.

[Pugsy]

Okay...some potential medication side effects messing with how you sleep and feel.
We can do the best we can to at least optimize the therapy and at least hopefully take sleep apnea issues/side effects out of the mixture.

These machines can only fix so much and what they fix is sleep apnea stuff but they don't do such a good job with stuff unrelated to sleep apnea.


At least you didn't tell me you were feeling worse on cpap.

I don't know what all of the usual symptoms you might be having...I had the killer AM headaches and the nocturia and those things went away probably in the first month of therapy but the stuff like poor sleep in general and daytime energy levels and the need to nap during the day...those all took much longer and the improvement was more gradual.

[palerider]

https://www.dropbox.com
https://www.dropbox.com

https://sleep.tnet.com/reference/tips/imgur

[Pugsy]

Yes...it would be helpful if you could use imgur and embed the images so that they show up in your post.
Dropbox takes forever to load for me and I am not known for my patience.

[azuraz]

Ok, I will give it a try. using June 27 screenshot as a test.

[Pugsy]

Good job. Got it perfect right from the start.
Thank you so much. It helps a lot to have the image right in front of me instead of on another tab and having to bounce back and forth.

[yaconsult]

Welcome to the forum.

I have had my mechanical aeortic valve for about 10 years. Soon, your brain will tune out the sound of the valve and you won't hear it anymore. In a quiet room, people with very good hearing can hear a faint ticking, but you won't.

The INR blood tests at least monthly, on the other hand, you're stuck with. And watch the vitamin K content - eating a big spinach salad can have a surprisingly large effect on INR.

[azuraz]

Welcome to the forum.

I have had my mechanical aeortic valve for about 10 years. Soon, your brain will tune out the sound of the valve and you won't hear it anymore. In a quiet room, people with very good hearing can hear a faint ticking, but you won't.

The INR blood tests at least monthly, on the other hand, you're stuck with. And watch the vitamin K content - eating a big spinach salad can have a surprisingly large effect on INR.

The sound I am experiencing is not a valve click, but an intense thumping, sometimes more sharp like a snap. If my blood pressure stays on low side of "normal" the sound is not as intense. As you say I am getting a little more used to it. It is very hard to go back to sleep when your head and ears are moving with your pulse.
I am self testing INR weekly and confirming monthly with a lab test. Sticking to a very conservative diet, no alcohol or major changes so INR has regulated good.
Thanks for the Welcome

[azuraz]

Last two nites of sleep data. Minimum pressure raised to 8 last night.
Seems to be working okay. What do think, should I leave well enough alone for awhile.

[Pugsy]

If you are sleeping decently and feeling decent during the day then I think I would stop the tweaking for right now and give it a bit of time.
See if you have more good nights like last night.

If I some point you want to try to reduce the Flow limitations a bit more you could try a little more pressure but it isn't something that is critically needed at this time unless they are waking you up often.

You are at the "tweaking" stage where it's not critical that you change something unless you just want to experiment a bit.

At some point we have to stop changing things and let things settle down and let the body get used to things. You will have nights that are good and probably not so good and even bad without changing anything. What is important is the overall trend...more good nights vs more not so good or bad nights.

[Okie bipap]

When I was experimenting with different settings for my machine, I would try to get at least two weeks of data before making any changes. If the settings looked like they were pretty good, I would often go a month or more before doing more tweeking. I have been on my present settings for over three months and I will probably leave it where it is.