Nothing seems consistent for me right now

[Midwest]

I'll have a good night followed by two bad, then maybe another good night or a not so good night. I'm in a love hate relationship with CPAP right now.

[Pugsy]

So what is going on?
I have good nights and bad nights but they have nothing to do with cpap or sleep apnea or my equipment.

[Midwest]

I'm a little confused on this term.

[Midwest]

So what is going on?
I have good nights and bad nights but they have nothing to do with cpap or sleep apnea or my equipment.

Not sure what is going on. I know my data shows more clear airway apneas on the bad nights. I'm not sure I know exactly what those are. I suspect it is some kind of emergent central apnea, but it goes up and down.

[Pugsy]

How is your sleep quality during the night? Waking often tossing and turning more maybe?

Just how many centrals are we talking about?

You might want to do the education needed so you can figure out if those centrals are real or not.
If they aren't real they don't matter except for the fact you probably aren't sleeping so great for some reason.


http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
watch all the videos especially the last one.

[Midwest]

How is your sleep quality during the night? Waking often tossing and turning more maybe?

Just how many centrals are we talking about?

You might want to do the education needed so you can figure out if those centrals are real or not.
If they aren't real they don't matter except for the fact you probably aren't sleeping so great for some reason.


http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
watch all the videos especially the last one.

I take it then that the term "clear airway" and "central" are closely related but not the same. After all, how can a CPAP machine tell just from pressure changes if a signal was sent from the brain or not? My thought is the machine can't conclude whether a central is real or not, hence the term "clear airway apnea".

I could be very suffering from just plain old tossing and turning as I'm still adjusting to things. I have noticed that my best nights happen when I get comfortable quickly and just fall asleep. The worse nights are when I think about the machine.

[Pugsy]

The term central and clear airway apnea are essentially the same.

The airway is open but there is no air flow and the machine does measure air flow. These machines do a very decent job distinguishing between open airway and closed airway no air flow.

While a true central apnea involves lack of effort to breathe because the brain doesn't tell us to breath...we can also simply hold our breath and same thing happens....no air flow for lack of effort.
The machine only measures the air flow. It has no way to know if you were holding your breath or the brain did anything.
It just calls them like it sees them and it's up to us to decide if what it sees is of a concern or not.

[Pugsy]

A couple of nights ago I had an AHI of 3.11 night....some centrals and some OAs. 22 events total.
Unusually high AHI night for me so I took a little bit of time and zoomed in on each event.
All the centrals were arousal related and all but 3 of the OAs were arousal related.
Only 3 out of the total of 22 events were asleep related and thus real.
We can have false positive OAs and hyponeas as well as central/CA.

I also had a particularly crappy night's sleep that night. Lots of tossing and turning and fighting the insomnia monster who came to visit because of some pain issues as well as stress issues.
The high AHI night was related to just crappy sleep which was caused by stuff unrelated to OSA or my equipment.

[Midwest]

A couple of nights ago I had an AHI of 3.11 night....some centrals and some OAs. 22 events total.
Unusually high AHI night for me so I took a little bit of time and zoomed in on each event.
All the centrals were arousal related and all but 3 of the OAs were arousal related.
Only 3 out of the total of 22 events were asleep related and thus real.
We can have false positive OAs and hyponeas as well as central/CA.

I also had a particularly crappy night's sleep that night. Lots of tossing and turning and fighting the insomnia monster who came to visit because of some pain issues as well as stress issues.
The high AHI night was related to just crappy sleep which was caused by stuff unrelated to OSA or my equipment.

Are you using the Oscar software that people often talk about here?

[Pugsy]

I use both OSCAR and SleepyHead.
I started using SleepyHead when it first was born back in 2011.
OSCAR is based off the last version of SleepyHead.

[Midwest]

I use both OSCAR and SleepyHead.
I started using SleepyHead when it first was born back in 2011.
OSCAR is based off the last version of SleepyHead.

Wow, I just took a look at my data in OSCAR! Up until now I was just using the software app that came with my machine and it doesn't go into a whole lot of detail, you can't see a timeline like you can with OSCAR, just AHI, number of events, usage and mask leak. With the OSCAR I can see when each event took place during the night, and most of my events are taking place either before I fall asleep or shortly after waking up. My actual sleep time is rather clear of events! This is going to take away a lot of my anxiety.

Thanks!

[Pugsy]

Glad to help.

Using the DreamMapper app is okay as long as everything looks fine and dandy and not real exciting. Good for a quick on the fly glance if someone wants to look.

But if everything isn't fine and dandy and there is any question at all about anything we simply have to take the time to dig a little deeper and it isn't all that difficult or time consuming.

Awake stuff that gets flagged....simply doesn't count. We have to be asleep for it to be real and matter. No way to tell when something got flagged by looking at the app data. It's hard enough sometimes when looking at the software details but most of us have a fairly good idea when we went to sleep and woke up and can eyeball it enough to relieve anxiety about higher than the want to see AHI numbers.
Beginning and ending of a sleep sessions...very likely false positives or what we call sleep/wake/junk SWJ for short.
Middle of the night stuff can also be SWJ when we wake often tossing and turning and such. Our awake or semi awake breathing is just more irregular than we think or notice but the machine thinks something is going on because it is different than our asleep breathing.
All the machine knows to do is flag the irregularity as some sort of apnea event. We have to decided if we were awake or asleep when it got flagged.