Maybe need a pressure increase?

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
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Pugsy
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Re: Maybe need a pressure increase?

Post by Pugsy » Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:26 am

Pressure pulses are nothing more than little puffs of air that the machine uses to determine if the flow reduction it is sensing is related to the airway tissues blocking the airway (obstructive) or the airway is open (central) and you may or may not end up with a flagged event when a pressure pulse happens. Often the air flow reduces..the machine will do the pressure pulse to try to figure out why but then the air flow increases and the reduction doesn't last long enough or wasn't enough of a reduction to earn a flag.
Pressure pulse numbers don't really point to much of anything except the machine doing its job. Now if you were seeing something like 100 pressure pulses per hour and a low AHI...then we might wonder what is going on that there are so many reductions in airflow that don't end up with flags.

Tidal volume
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_volume

Yours is normal. There's a very wide range in normal and what you are seeing in variations is normal. My ranges are similar but maybe not quite so high sometimes but then I am tiny (4 ft 11in) with small bone frame so my lungs are most likely going to be smaller than yours.
Lots of things affect tidal volume...body size, sex, altitude, and even with those norms there are wide ranges of norms.

Yeah 4 hours or less I am pretty much in zombie territory...usually with a bad headache and often nausea.
Night before last 3 1/2 hours (If the FitBit is to be believed) because of the damn dog....geez...if it's not one thing it's another.
I felt horrible pretty much all day yesterday and I can't always get a nap to make up for it.
Per just the clock 4 hours but the FitBit says even less than 4 hours of actual sleep and near as I can tell it's probably fairly accurate.
Have you thought about using something like the FitBit (mine is the Charge 2) to attempt to identify sleep stages and arousals?
It's not perfect but so far it seems fairly close. On my "restless" nights I see a lot more arousals flag (not quite awake) than I might remember.
Now a couple of times I was fully awake and checked the time and no awake flag...which is why I say it isn't perfect...but for the most part it seems
fairly accurate.

I ended up taking some meds last night to ensure that the chances of waking up and not going back to sleep were minimal as long as the damn dog stayed asleep (and I drugged her too ) so per the FitBit I got 7 1/4 hours of sleep and with minimal arousals flagged and I remember maybe 2 very brief awakenings...one of which was the cat walking over me.
I would prefer to minimize the drug taking but I simply had to try to make every effort to get more sleep last night because I have some stuff I just have to do today and without the sleep I knew I wouldn't feel up to doing anything.
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get some sleep.
And before anyone wants to blast me for drugging the dog....it was Benadryl per the vets instructions because she is having itching issues (old dog with dry skin issues) she just got a full dose allowed for her size instead of a partial dose.

My sleep quality issues...I am pretty sure either stress related or the usual pain related (old body and lots of arthritis) and while I thought I had the pain issue part managed better my mom was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and the bulk of my insomnia issues seem to have popped up with that diagnosis. So I understand stress related....now fixing it...easier said than done.

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