Need Advice 3-Months In

Hi All,

I just got sleepyhead software working with my PR 60 series on my Mac. Thanks to pugsy for coordinating this and to the coder(s) that made this happen!

Hoping I can get some advice from you all. I've tried to post some charts. Hopefully they are not too big.

I'm three months in with CPAP. First month or so I was doing great but my AHI has slowly been on the rise and now it is in the 5-10 range. You can see from the daily chart posted from a couple of nights ago that my AHI actually gets up to 25 for about an hour or so at about 5-6 AM. Also, I've not been feeling as rested as when I first started. Maybe it's seasonal as the days get shorter and I'm just more tired?

For the first two months I've switched between the PR GoLife nasal pillow mask and the PR True Blue nasal mask. Over the last 10 days I've been trying the Breeze Sleepgear nasak pillow mask. I've tried increasing the minimum pressure from 4 as high as 6 and tried playing with the mask resistance but can't seem to figure out why I've been trending upwards. The short-term rise to 25 is bothersome.

Any input would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

Looking at my chart a little closer, maybe my AHI is up because, on average, I've been going to bed a bit later.

The 2 most common culprits for seeming to need more pressure (shown by clusters of obstructive events) are supine sleeping and REM stage sleep.
Both are quite common. Some people have one or the other and some people happen to have both culprits.

REM stage sleep is normally much more frequent in the wee hours of the morning and will tend to last longer.
Given your pattern it looks like you have that culprit.
Look at this link at the hypnogram on the right below the sleeping kid and you will see the normal stages of sleep and how REM increases right before we get up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep

The most common solution is just a little more minimum pressure to give the machine a little better head start in dealing with events that seem to need more pressure.

Thanks pugsy, that makes sense. Maybe I'll move it up from 6 to 8. Any thoughts on the A-flex setting?