Been using CPAP for a week, need sleepyhead advice

[K34RT]

Hey guys I'm new to the forum and I'm a young guy who recently got diagnosed with mild OSA after months of dealing with symptoms. So I've been using an APAP for a week and I'm still trying to interpret the sleepyhead data to make sure my setup is optimized, as I'm still not feeling any significant benefits from treatment. Hopefully you guys can give me some guidance and comment on my sleepyhead data below and indicate if there are any leaks/adjustments needed.

http://www.imgur.com/wBaZ3aO

[Pugsy]

I see at least 2 breaks in therapy where you turned the machine off briefly and then turned back on.
So...how many wake ups are you having during the night? Any idea as to why the wake ups?
How long before you go back to sleep?
How much time do you spend awake with mask and machine on?
Do you normally get 8 to 9 hours of sleep using the machine?
Do you take any medications of any kind? If so what are they.

Your leaks are fine. Well within the machine's ability to compensate.

When you say you don't feel any significant benefits yet (after one week which really isn't very long in the grand scheme of things) exactly what is it that you are wanting to improve?

Only thing I see on this report is maybe a few too many hyponeas but they are clustered around known awake times so I wonder if they are even real or not....that's why the questions. If you spend a lot of time awake on the machine then there's a good chance some of what is flagged isn't real and thus not part of the evaluation and we ignore them. If you are waking often then that in itself can delay "feeling better" because of the wake ups themselves messing with the normal sleep cycles.
If you are sleeping soundly, going to sleep quickly and minimal amount of time spent with mask and machine on while awake then those events are probably real and with the pattern....maybe you were on your back or maybe in REM sleep since the worst of them is during the time we normally have more REM.
If that's the case then a little more minimum pressure to hopefully help prevent those events from happening. I don't think the maximum needs to be messed with...unless on other reports you see the max being pegged out a lot.

Next time you post an image turn off the pie chart so the statistics will come into view. No need to redo this one though (at least for me) because I pretty much already know what they will show.

One week isn't really long enough to give expectations a fair chance of cpap helping but it doesn't hurt to try to optimize things a little bit while we are giving it a fair amount of time.
I know we read about people who had the overnight "miracle" but those people are really in the minority. Most of us (myself included) took weeks and months to see much change in unwanted symptoms.
I had a couple of symptoms go away in a couple of weeks but some other symptoms last a lot longer before they faded away.

[K34RT]

Thanks for the in depth reply! So both of those gaps in the machine use were from waking up. And it's been quite a while since I didn't wake up atleast once during the night, usually to go to the bathroom. I never have an issue getting back to sleep I clonk right out. The symptoms I'm trying to resolve are feeling tired/sleepy, poor mood and feeling foggy. I'm by nature a back sleeper and always have been, but lately been working on sleeping on my side. Do you think in light of this information it would still make sense to try move my min pressure from 6-->7?
Thanks for all the help.

[Pugsy]

I think moving the minimum to 7 is well worth trying given what all you have said.

I am concerned about 2 pee breaks in the night from a young guy.
Young guys don't normally have the issues with the prostate that cause nocturia.
Have you been evaluated for other potential culprits for the nocturia?
OSA is one potential culprit but when OSA is the culprit the nocturia usually goes away with effective therapy.

[K34RT]

So I've moved up the pressure to 7 and will keep you posted after a few nights of use to get an accurate result. In regards to the waking up, I used to have prostatitis however that has since been resolved. The thing is when I wake up its not with the urge to pee, its more like "hey I'm awake, may aswell take a piss".

[Pugsy]

I used to have prostatitis however that has since been resolved. The thing is when I wake up its not with the urge to pee, its more like "hey I'm awake, may aswell take a piss".

Ahh..that I think I understand. More out of habit than a full bladder feeling because there used to be a strong urge with the prostatitis maybe.
When I had the nocturia due to untreated sleep apnea I would wake up almost hourly with a painfully full bladder...often dreaming I need to go find a place to pee and couldn't. Hate those kinds of dreams.

There's a difference between "I'm awake might as well go pee and OMG I am going to pee the bed if I don't get up RIGHT now."

[K34RT]

So this is from last night! http://imgur.com/a/pxTRB

There's a few things to note:
-overall the past 2 nights my ahi has dropped to stay around 3.5, which is good
-when I first put on the mask and later after I went back to sleep, it started to ramp up to 10 (max) for some reason, even though I don't have the ramp feature on
-it looks like the minimum pressure is in a relatively good spot because the pressure is consistent, other then those pressure probes due to the Dreamstation algorithm
-the leak rate is nice and low and only a few short peaks here and there
-realistically those cluster of hypopnea and clear apnea are just false reads around my wake period, so AHI is likely lower
-I only woke up once last night which for me is pretty solid

What are your thoughts on the things I've written above? Right now I think the main thing I want to resolve is that annoying increase in pressure that wakes me up/keeps me awake initially! I feel like if I slept throughout the whole night without waking up due to the bloody pressure I would feel better. Should I bother lowering the max pressure to reduce the pressure range?

[sgcpapuser]

What are your thoughts on the things I've written above? Right now I think the main thing I want to resolve is that annoying increase in pressure that wakes me up/keeps me awake initially! I feel like if I slept throughout the whole night without waking up due to the bloody pressure I would feel better. Should I bother lowering the max pressure to reduce the pressure range?

use the ramp. Set the starting pressure to the highest u feel comfortable. U can use the default ramp time of 30min since it seems from the graph u fall asleep within 30 min

For the PR Dreamstation, u need to manually press the ramp button after you started the blower.

[K34RT]

What are your thoughts on the things I've written above? Right now I think the main thing I want to resolve is that annoying increase in pressure that wakes me up/keeps me awake initially! I feel like if I slept throughout the whole night without waking up due to the bloody pressure I would feel better. Should I bother lowering the max pressure to reduce the pressure range?

use the ramp. Set the starting pressure to the highest u feel comfortable. U can use the default ramp time of 30min since it seems from the graph u fall asleep within 30 min

For the PR Dreamstation, u need to manually press the ramp button after you started the blower.

I should have used better terminology. I don't struggle to fall asleep with my pressure starting at 7, its the fact that occasionally it increases to my maximum pressure (10) sometimes for no apparent reason when I'm still awake. You can see it on the image that I linked. It's as if the machine thinks I'm asleep and is responding to an event, which is likely just me swallowing etc

[sgcpapuser]

I should have used better terminology. I don't struggle to fall asleep with my pressure starting at 7, its the fact that occasionally it increases to my maximum pressure (10) sometimes for no apparent reason when I'm still awake. You can see it on the image that I linked. It's as if the machine thinks I'm asleep and is responding to an event, which is likely just me swallowing etc

Then i would try using the ramp anyway. Set the starting pressure to 6-7. At least while the ramp is still activated, the machine will not activate any large changes to the pressure. So if the machine thinks it should go to 10, that would be the time u have fallen asleep

[K34RT]

Ah now I follow you! So in essence I will use it like a preventative thing to stop it from unnecessarily increasing the pressure while I'm awake?

[sgcpapuser]

Ah now I follow you! So in essence I will use it like a preventative thing to stop it from unnecessarily increasing the pressure while I'm awake?

Yup. that's what the ramp feature is for. The xPAP will only "get serious, down to business" after u have fallen asleep." Once u get used to the machine, u can turn off the ramp if u want. That might help in reducing the Aponea/ snore during the REM stage