First Sleepyhead Data - Please Help

You need to get the provider/clinical manual for your machine.
I think I have a link for it. Give me a minute to find it....Is your machine the Icon +....the plus makes it the latest model.
Will send you a private message with what I have.
The manual explains how to change the pressure.

If it were me I would just do a 1 cm increase in that minimum pressure..that's all. Technically you probably don't need it in terms of AHI control but it's just an idea to try to maybe break up the clusters and maybe give you better sleep. I can't guarantee that it will help the sleep...but it's worth a try.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with your machine. The minimum pressure thing is something we see often with all the various apap brands. It just goes with apaps. The machines can't respond as quickly as they need to in an effort to prevent the airway collapse...they just can't. They don't increase the pressure in the blink of an eye like people think they do. Instead they go up more slowly and sometimes the airway collapses before it can get to where it needs to be.

Yes, it is a plus model.

Oddly, the girl at the medical device company I got the machine from kept asking me if I wanted to bump up the min pressure, but I kept saying no because I wanted to stick with the orders the doctor gave. I think we settled on bumping it up one cm, which is where it sits now.

Again, I REALLY appreciate all of your help!

(oh, and I do have the manual at home. I didnt know it contained this info. Because, I'm a guy, and you know, we dont read manuals!! )

Here's something about low pressures...sometimes we just don't feel all that comfortable with low pressures. That's probably why the girl suggested increasing it a little. Often people feel like they are suffocating at those low pressures. We won't suffocate but it can sure feel like it and if we aren't comfortable with our breathing we can't sleep well.
So even though the pressure is effective therapy wise...it isn't so comfortable...so it's not unusual to use a little more than is technically needed just from a comfort aspect of things.

I screen my sister using my APAP for OSA...tried to get her to use 4 cm pressure but that lasted about 15 seconds...she ripped that mask off screaming that I was trying to suffocate her. We had to use 6 cm just to get her comfortable and that was a barely comfortable at that. That's someone who never ever used cpap before in their life.

Interesting. I have yet to have the feeling that I couldnt breathe. I have also never used the ramp feature.

I think that 8.5 that my machine seems to work at most is a pretty low pressure, no? If so, does that mean I have mild to nearly no apnea? I am hopeful that I can lose the 25 pounds I've gained and get back off of the machine. Not sure if thats realistic though. I do know that since I've gained weight, my tiredness has gone through the roof. That makes it harder to exercise because I am so beat down all day (esp after work).

IronSooner wrote:I think that 8.5 that my machine seems to work at most is a pretty low pressure, no? If so, does that mean I have mild to nearly no apnea? I am hopeful that I can lose the 25 pounds I've gained and get back off of the machine. Not sure if thats realistic though. I do know that since I've gained weight, my tiredness has gone through the roof. That makes it harder to exercise because I am so beat down all day (esp after work).

Unfortunately the pressure needed has nothing to do with the severity of the OSA. It's all about the airway tissues themselves.
A person can have 100 apnea events per hour and get the "severe" diagnosis and maybe 6 cm pressure is all that is need to hold the airway open and another person might have a "mild" OSA diagnosis with maybe 12 apnea events per hour and they may need 20 cm to hold the airway open.

Pressures used has nothing to do at all with the "severity" of the OSA. It just has to do with how floppy your airway tissues are and how much pressure is needed to keep the tissues from flopping closed.

Will losing the extra weight help you maybe get off the machine...in all honesty we simply don't/won't know that for sure until if and when you lose that weight and have a follow up sleep study to see if the loss of the weight translated into less floppy airway tissues. Never hurts to hope and losing unwanted pounds is always good for a person.
When I was diagnosed...I weighed in at 112 pounds...weight had nothing at all to do with my floppy airway tissues. Losing weight wouldn't have helped me at all.
My issues seemed to be related to menopause...where everything starts to sag and that includes the tissues in the airway.

But by all means...lose the excess weight if you can...and maybe you will be one of the lucky ones who don't need the cpap machine...it never hurts to try and nothing but good comes out of losing excess pounds.
Unfortunately there are no guarantees...remember skinny people get OSA and floppy airway tissues too.

Not everyone feels suffocated at the lower pressures...you are probably one of those people. Means nothing really except you are lucky in that regard but you still may actually sleep better and feel better with a little higher pressure. I see if often enough to suggest it as an option when people are not feeling as good as the numbers say they should feel.
I also know that the numbers don't tell the whole story. Wish it were that simple because getting a nice low AHI is relatively easy in most situations. The problem is that there are so many other things out there that mess with our sleep that the machine can't fix because it is designed to fix sleep apnea....not stuff unrelated to sleep apnea. CPAP can't fix bad sleep no matter how much we want it to if that bad sleep isn't caused solely by sleep apnea and even then there's no guarantee that a person will experience the "miracle". It's just more complicated than people realize or want to accept.

As usual, great stuff.

Do you think I should call the Dr and ask for a sleep study? Remember that my last sleep study was two years ago. About seven years ago, I was very overweight, and was diagnosed with sleep apnea (among other things). I had a sleep study then, and got a machine. Then I had a weight loss surgery, lost 100 pounds, and had another sleep study. The Dr then said I didnt need a machine any more (yay!). Then, I gained about 25 pounds back, started having tiredness issues and went back to the Dr. He didnt give me a sleep study, but gave me this auto CPAP and said come back in three months (it takes MONTHS to get an appt with this guy). Since the machine doesnt seem to be helping, I am wondering if there are other problems that might be seen with an actual sleep study (all of my sleep studies have been in lab - I hate them). I am also wondering if I should go to the GP and get blood work done to see if there are other issues.

Its a wait to see if the machine works eventually or take action now type of situation. I am not sure what to do.

I understand where you are coming from. If it were me I would probably want a real sleep study so that I know exactly if I am fight OSA or not and to what extent.

Do you have an overnight pulse oximeter so you can check oxygen levels? While no desats doesn't always mean no OSA...it might be a tool that points to a real need for CPAP without doing the sleep study.
Just be aware than no real desats don't mean no OSA...just means no desats.
But if you do have significant desats then you have a clear cut answer that something is likely going on at night.

You can buy your own or often the DME will supply one.
I got mine from here.
http://www.pulseoxstore.com/Downloadable-Pulse-Ox.html
Quite reasonable if you don't get one of the fancy ones...which I didn't because I only wanted to spot check mine.