Machine is recording AHI's while I am awake

Good day all,
I have been struggling with acclimatizing to wearing a full face mask so I decided to wear it while awake last night about an hour before I normally go to sleep. I am currently using a Resmed S9 VPAP S machine. After an hour and 10 minutes I looked at the data on my machine and it had registered 18 AHI's while I was awake. Is this even possible? How can I have apneas while awake? I have been on treatment now for 2 weeks and the lowest AHI numbers I have been able to produce were 18 in a 6 hour period. Any idea what may be happening?

The machine doesn't know if you are asleep or awake. It just looks a the gaps in breathing. You must have some unusual breathing patterns while awake.

For the past two weeks have you been using the machine all night, every night? An AHI is still high, are you going in for a check up anytime soon? Your pressure may need to be adjusted up or down. Are leaks under control? If not your data is probably faulty.

Everyone's breathing while awake is noticeably irregular. Your VPAP is expecting to be monitoring the steady, regular breathing of someone who is asleep. There's no way for the machine to know whether you're asleep or awake. A sleep lab can determine that, but a small machine can't do so reliably. So don't worry about those readings. I usually read a few pages of a book while I'm masked up, and my data clearly shows more anomalies during that time than after I put the book down and turn out the light.

Apneas while awake don't "count." Unfortunately, the machine doesn't know you're awake, so it will count them anyway. In a sleep lab, they use EEG electrodes to disregard anything that happens while you're awake.

The machines try to detect apneas by observing your breathing patterns in your sleep. Unfortunately, your breathing pattern while awake may look like something that would indicate an apnea while you're awake.

Get the free SleepyHead software, and you can look at the graphs on your computer, and it will be easier to figure out when you were awake and when you were asleep and ignore the events while you were awake.

Please sign up for an ID on the board and put your equipment in your profile. There's a link in my signature on how to fill it in.

I'm still in the closely monitoring my data stage. So sometimes I'll wake up too early and think there's a good chance I won't be able to go back to sleep. So I will pop out the card, but still keep using the machine in case I do fall back to sleep. If not, I don't have the "awake events" scored into my data. It's just a little easier than using a lot of extra Math to filter out events etc.

archangle wrote:Apneas while awake don't "count." Unfortunately, the machine doesn't know you're awake, so it will count them anyway. In a sleep lab, they use EEG electrodes to disregard anything that happens while you're awake.

The machines try to detect apneas by observing your breathing patterns in your sleep. Unfortunately, your breathing pattern while awake may look like something that would indicate an apnea while you're awake.

Get the free SleepyHead software, and you can look at the graphs on your computer, and it will be easier to figure out when you were awake and when you were asleep and ignore the events while you were awake.

Please sign up for an ID on the board and put your equipment in your profile. There's a link in my signature on how to fill it in.

Can you sort of tell from the Sleepyhead software when you're asleep or awake? I've been trying to track how many times I wake up at night. I can only tell from the graphs how many times I was out of bed but I'm awake more often than I'm out of bed.

Your machine does not know if you are awake or asleep nor does sleepyhead or any program to read your data. The only way to tell if you are awake or asleep is by YOU or an EEG.

Carmen wrote:Can you sort of tell from the Sleepyhead software when you're asleep or awake?

Not unless you wake up and turn the machine off so that you have a gap in the therapy line each and every time you wake up and then restart the machine. As others have mentioned, the machine just scores what it senses and it has no way of knowing if you are awake or not. The software can only report what the machine scores.

Carmen wrote:Can you sort of tell from the Sleepyhead software when you're asleep or awake? I've been trying to track how many times I wake up at night. I can only tell from the graphs how many times I was out of bed but I'm awake more often than I'm out of bed.

Depends on how smooth your breathing pattern is while sleeping vs. being awake. In my case I can tell from the flow graph simply because there is real difference in the flow pattern. Awake breathing is much more erratic than sleep breathing. Study your graphs closely and take particular note of the flow pattern when you know you were asleep and awake. I'll bet you can soon spot most of the awake periods, especially if they last more than, say, half a minute.

Carmen wrote: Can you sort of tell from the Sleepyhead software when you're asleep or awake?

If you remember not being able to get to sleep for a long time, or lying in bed for a long time in the morning before getting up, you can discount that time.

After you look at the data for several nights, making note of how you breathe when awake and when sleeping, you may be able to get a good idea of when you're awake and when you're sleeping.

You could also deliberately mark your breathing when you wake up in the middle of night if you have the presence of mind. Inhale, hold your breath for 5 seconds, exhale, hold for 5, repeat 3 times (or something similar) and you can see that on the graph if you look in detail.

It's the reason I only wear my mask just about to sleep.
I started using settling (ramp) too, because when in settling machine don't record any ahi.

If you were wide awake they proably don't count. But, I was recently in the ER with an Oximeter attached to my finger. Each time that I nodded off an alarm would sound because my O2 Sat had dropped of to 85 or less. I was sleepy, and it happened over and over. Was it an Apnea? Dunno

same problem loads when awake in bef but vary from 0 to 7when asleep also air not mask material cauae bad face itch and of sleep on side mask come of after time.
aldo definate rise in number of centeral incidents Resmed auto 9 also when pressure shoot up wake me
Please excuse any errors done on mobile phone with small touch pad

paulkellyclarke wrote:same problem loads when awake in bef but vary from 0 to 7when asleep also air not mask material cauae bad face itch and of sleep on side mask come of after time.
aldo definate rise in number of centeral incidents Resmed auto 9 also when pressure shoot up wake me
Please excuse any errors done on mobile phone with small touch pad

You'll get better responses if you start a new topic as this topic was an old one from a coupe years ago. Also, sign up and list your equipment and tell is more about the problems you are having.

But basically, the machine can't tell when you are awake or asleep.We tend to hold our breath when we move around, so it is easy for the machine to consider that an apnea. When we are new, we tend to react to the pressure and mask more, and we have trouble falling asleep. Once we get used to it, the ahi tends to go down as we sleep more and move around less.