Sleep Study & New to CPAP

I recently completed a take home sleep study. I had the equipment on for a little over 2.5 hours, but couldn't fall asleep and took it off. However, the results show that I did sleep. It must have been a really light sleep. For 2.5 hours I was on my back and my AHI was 5.3/hour. I can't sleep on my back and that is why I probably I couldn't sleep with the equipment. In the prone position, it says my AHI is 16.3 (moderate) after 14 minutes. The 16.3 is per hour I think. The strange thing is I don't sleep on my stomach. So, this reading could be off. Maybe I slept on my side a little and that recorded as prone. I'm not sure.

Anyways, my total AHI reading averages out to 6.1 (which is mild OSA) even though I wasn't really asleep. My average oxygen was 95 and lowest oxygen was 91. My doctor says I have a very narrow airway.

I'm thin (160 lbs) and 34 years old. I don't fit the typical apnea stereotype. I do have terrible allergies. One of my nostrils always clogs at night, not matter what side I sleep on, making it difficult to breathe through my nose. I always wake up 2 - 2.5 hours later, have difficulty falling back, then waking up on the hour, until 6. Basically horrible broken sleep. I always wake up breathing through my mouth, on my back and my heart pounding (slightly elevated).

I have been trying CPAP therapy the last two weeks. It's making my sleep problems worst. I can't fall asleep yet with CPAP. My question. Is it really necessary to treat mild apnea with CPAP? (Although I never got a really good sleep study reading, because I wasn't full asleep on the equipment, so It's always possible my apnea is more than mild).

Is apnea really the culprit of my problems and why I wake up constantly?

The purpose of the sleep test is to qualify you to try PAP therapy. Apparently you did. That is a successful test, IMO. The rest, as they say, is details.

Now the trick is to make the PAP therapy comfortable enough and effective enough to give it a good try so you can see over time how it improves your health and how you feel.

The nasal cycle means for many of us that one nostril will almost always feel closed or greatly limited. Changing which side you sleep on (putting the clogged nostril toward the ceiling and the open nostril toward the pillow) can help you assure yourself about that cycle being OK.

Many docs and RTs think that lower pressure is easier for everyone to tolerate, so they will tend to set your machine up accordingly, with a low ramp setting or a low pressure setting. For many of us, though, especially those of us with nasal issues such as allergies, we find that a slightly higher start pressure actually makes us more comfortable so that we can fall asleep more easily. Having the right pressure, at the right humidity, with pollen and dust getting filtered out of the air we breathe can make sleeping with the hose a very pleasant experience in the long run--once we (and our brains) are used to it. Many of us allergy sufferers would use CPAP for the filtering and humidity alone, even if we didn't need the pressure to breathe well.

You have come to the right place.

Welcome.

If your AHI was in the mild range with seemingly only shallow sleep, who knows what it might have been if you'd been in deep sleep or REM. Or how low your oxygen really drops, since you saw a drop even with limited sleep. Sounds like your home test may not have had the opportunity to capture your worst case scenario. If your OSA is really that mild, I wouldn't blame you for trying some self-help tips to get it to an acceptable number. But in your case, I think that would be risky business. If it matters to you to have more details, you could request a sleep study in the lab and maybe get a pill ordered ahead of time to help you sleep. Hopefully getting your treatment dialed in for optimum effectiveness will help. I agree with JNK that too low of a starting pressure can make it hard to fall asleep. Hard to relax with a constant sense of impending suffocation. I know when I adjusted my pressure, it helped with falling asleep. If you can identify specific things bothering you, you can get more targeted responses. At 2 weeks in, it's quite likely your repeated wake-up are a part of the adjustment phase. If they persist even after you feel you've adjusted, you can look for other causes. Some meds are known to cause fractured sleep. Sleep disorders like limb movements can too. But for the time being, I'd focus one getting your treatment to your personal best and see if the other issues fall in line.