A better night - I think?

Hi Folks,

So last night I started the pressure at 10, tightened my full face mask since I realised I was getting a lot of uncomfortable leaks at higher pressures and it felt like a much better nights sleep. I don't recall being awake much at all and I felt pretty good at 7am (we'll see how the day goes )

Here's the data. Are there any obvious things I need to do after this? I can still see the snores (although there are less of them) so I might actually raise the minimum again since it looks like when the pressure goes below 15 I snore.



Thanks everyone for their input - it has been invaluable. I know after the first 2 nights I felt very isolated and as a pretty technical person I hated the feeling of just trying the same thing hoping it would eventually work. We are all different and it's unlikely the same therapy will work for everyone.

Thanks,
KC

If I were you, I'd leave everything as is for a few weeks and see if you feel more rested and your numbers show improvement. Our brain doesn't like changes, so it needs time to adjust and not cause frequent arousals.

Get rid of the calendar, allowing more important info below the colored strips to show up.

I would give the 10 cm minimum 2 or 3 more days and if this trend you see from last night stays consistent I would try a little more minimum. I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time at 10 cm minimum and your machine certainly doesn't want to either.
Even though the AHI itself isn't horrble....I don't like the clutter that is also showing up...the stuff that isn't part of the AHI..the snores and FLs.

I don't like changing things after one night of data unless the results are just plain obviously horrible for some reason or other.
I also don't have a lot of patience which is why I say 2 or 3 more nights and not longer. If it were me and I had this report in front of me...I would increase the minimum sooner than later if this was what I was seeing as a trend.

Now there is a chance that this last night report was a fluke off night bad night and that's why I wouldn't change anything for a couple more nights.
I have had those fluke off night bad nights...in fact after over 8 years of therapy I still get them from time to time...so I know they happen but I don't want to be chasing those fluke nights all the time. I would be chasing my tail all the time.

Pugsy wrote:I would give the 10 cm minimum 2 or 3 more days and if this trend you see from last night stays consistent I would try a little more minimum. I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time at 10 cm minimum and your machine certainly doesn't want to either.
Even though the AHI itself isn't horrble....I don't like the clutter that is also showing up...the stuff that isn't part of the AHI..the snores and FLs.

I don't like changing things after one night of data unless the results are just plain obviously horrible for some reason or other.
I also don't have a lot of patience which is why I say 2 or 3 more nights and not longer. If it were me and I had this report in front of me...I would increase the minimum sooner than later if this was what I was seeing as a trend.

Now there is a chance that this last night report was a fluke off night bad night and that's why I wouldn't change anything for a couple more nights.
I have had those fluke off night bad nights...in fact after over 8 years of therapy I still get them from time to time...so I know they happen but I don't want to be chasing those fluke nights all the time. I would be chasing my tail all the time.

Thanks - I'll keep it this way for a few days. The only changes I've made since I started are to raise the minimum from 4 to 10 and tighten my mask, I realised at high pressures the air was leaking around my eyes and waking me.

When you say 'fluke off bad night' is it the clutter you mean? This is probably my best night by far. I'll post them all in a new thread.

Fluke just means an off night...could be exceptionally good or exceptionally bad....different from what we see on average night to night.
When I was first starting therapy fluke for me was an exceptionally good night surrounded by bad nights. With time and experience the roles got reversed. So there is some truth to the "give it time" thing. Hard to do sometimes though when the knee jerk reaction is to go kill something with more pressure.

Clutter is what I call the stuff shown and flagged but not included in the AHI itself. It's possible to have a really low AHI and still have a really crappy night's sleep (and feel like crap during the day) if there is a lot of "clutter" potentially disrupting sleep.
Those snores and FLs are indication that the airway might be trying to close off...and close off enough to disrupt sleep but not earn an apnea flag of some sort. Snores and FLs are a couple of the things that the auto adjusting algorithm will try to reduce with more pressure. So sometimes that's why you see an increase in pressure with no real OA or hyponea showing up around it.

Your "clutter" isn't horrible and since you are reporting that you are feeling good and sleeping good then I don't know that I would do much to try to clean up the "clutter". Sometimes doing more "cleaning up" creates other issues that end up messing with sleep and how a person feels. You end up swapping one tiny problem for a much bigger problem and it simply isn't a good trade.

My suggestion would be to limit the maximum pressure to about 15 or 16. Your flow limitations and snores are going to drive your pressure increases to near max pressure anyway and it doesn't appear that there's many reasons (events) to let that happen.


Den

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