Another Thank You to CPAP Talk

[70sSanO]

Since losing a bunch of weight my AHI has gone off the charts. I had a new sleep study and found out that my pressure should be set a 6CM (down from 12). Unfortunately, the study was done when I was sleeping on my side.

Back at home, my numbers were still crazy because I usually sleep on my back. So I pulled out an old paintball 4 pod harness and loaded in 8 tennis balls into it. Obviously when you have enough tennis balls to hold an ATP tournament there was no way I could sleep on my back. But sleeping on my side was not too comfortable on my hips and I didn't sleep very well, great AHI, but a little too tired none-the-less.

So back to the CPAP forum where I stumbled across a thread that mentioned using a cervical collar. So hitting the search function (it is actually a very good feature) I found a lot of info. It seems that mars had this long post and Julie has a bunch of them (especially one on low pressures) on using a cervical collar to keep the chin up and the airway open.

Suffice to say, I have been collared for over a week and my numbers have dropped dramatically and, I am able to sleep on my back. Since I still get centrals in the 3-4 range I'm not always under a 5 AHI, but my obstructives are way down. I'm seeing my doctor next week with stats in hand to see if he wants to pursue the centrals, but I am feeling great again.

So thank you all!

John

[Julie]

Anytime!

[mars]

ditto as per Julie

anyone trying this for positional therapy make sure you get the right size for you

http://www.nextag.com/soft-cervical-col ... ducts-html

but research all you can first, and use an oximeter.

see also viewtopic/t70205/-Mars-Given-OK-On-Posi ... rapy-.html

cheers

Mars

PS don't believe what I say just because I am a good-looking guy with a beautiful cat, check out everything for yourself

[70sSanO]

Thanks mars for the suggestion.

For this first go around I just picked up a cheap one from the drugstore. I can see that it probably won't hold up over the course of time. But the collar(s) will probably follow the same course as my pillow collection.

I have a CMS D50+ that works pretty good. The first few nights with the collar the readings were pretty good. I'll probably run it for another night this weekend.

I put everything in perspective... before using a collar my worst numbers on CPAP with my weight loss were: an AHI of 19, an obstructive event that lasted 107 seconds, and an oximeter reading that got down to a 67 saturation level... I'm much better now.

John