Some success at long last!

[FG_Rick]

The 04:00 to approx 5:00 ugly on last night's report....you needed more pressure than the machine could deliver due to the max limit of 12. It wanted to go higher to prevent the apnea events. My best guess is you were probably on your back during that time and maybe in REM stage sleep.

Any special reason you are limiting the max to 12?

Pugsy,
My sleep doctor set the machine to a max pressure of 15 I think, back in 2015. My problems that caused me to give up on CPAP for 3-4 years were because I would wake up with the CPAP machine roaring like a jet engine, my mask was leaking like crazy, lots of high pressure air being forced on me in a breathing rhythm that did not match how I was trying to breathe. It was uncomfortable and kind of scary. He wanted to keep the pressure high in order to get my AHI under 5, which we never accomplished. He left the sleep program at the hospital and I learned how to reset the parameters myself so I lowered the max pressure to something I could tolerate, but the experience didn't feel that much better. FF to this year. I restarted CPAP on my own, found CPAPtalk, got Sleepyhead then Oscar, adjusted things a bit more but really didn't get achieve a breakthrough until the past few weeks when I learned how to side sleep for most if not all of the night.
So tonight I am raising the max pressure back to 15 and I will update here with results.

[FG_Rick]

So I raised the max pressure on my PR REMstar Auto A-Flex to 14 last night... couldn't bring myself to go higher yet. Here is the result.

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Woke up when the pressure was flat-lining at 14. Obviously not high enough to solve my back-sleeping OSA. I turned the machine off then back on to reset the pressure at min, then turned on the side and slept well the rest of the night. I will try a higher max pressure setting tonight, but when the machine actually hits those highs, I get mask leaks and then it is just constantly blowing to compensate and I can't deal with it. It feels like it isn't sensing my breathing rhythm any more and I can't get it to get back in sync with me, so I turn it off.

[Pugsy]

When you fit and seal the mask at 8 cm you can expect it to fail at 14 cm. Try a higher pressure fitting at the beginning of the night.

[FG_Rick]

I did raise the max pressure to 16, but it was not necessary since the pressure never got higher than 10, which is good. No back sleeping! My question is about the rapid breathing during the final 45 minutes or so. I woke up with my heart beating faster than normal, but my Sleeptracker app showed that the uptick in heart rate was just at the tail end of the graph, not the entire rapid breathing event shown here. I also am posting additional graphs for Tidal Volume, Minute Ventilation, Inspiratory Time and Expiratory Time. I'm certainly no expert in interpreting these graphs. It seems to me that if I was breathing in normal amounts of air with each breath, then a higher Respiratory Rate should result in higher Minute Ventilation, right? But that is not indicated, so maybe it was shallow breathing? The Minute Ventilation graph is denser because of more data points, but not really higher. Any thoughts?

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[ChicagoGranny]

should result in higher Minute Ventilation, right? But that is not indicated, so maybe it was shallow breathing? The Minute Ventilation graph is denser because of more data points, but not really higher.

The scale is too broad on the MV chart. Change the scale on the y-axis to something like 0 - 20. The line will look very different.

My question is about the rapid breathing during the final 45 minutes or so.

You might have been awake or drifting in and out of sleep without knowing it. There is no use worrying about the charts in this case.

I woke up with my heart beating faster than normal, but my Sleeptracker app showed that the uptick in heart rate was just at the tail end of the graph, not the entire rapid breathing event shown here.

An increased heartbeat upon awakening is normal. The least body movement as you are awakening will cause a heart rate increase.

More importantly, how did you feel today?

[ChicagoGranny]

BTW, trying to juxtapose the three graphs you mention is complicated. It's easier to just zoom in on the Flow chart.

[FG_Rick]

The scale is too broad on the MV chart. Change the scale on the y-axis to something like 0 - 20. The line will look very different.

Thanks, I hadn't realized I could change the y-axis, but now I can, and the graph is more useful to me.

[FG_Rick]

After experiencing 7 days of AHI under 1.5, I had a not-so-successful night last night (AHI 2.64). I had raised the Max pressure up to 16 to see if it would control the UA's when I roll over onto my back during the night. I also had raised my Min pressure from 8.5 to 10, then to 11, for two reasons:

1. Thinking that a higher Min. pressure would shorten the time that the REMstar needed to ramp up to Max pressure when there is a series of events.

2. Thinking that a higher Min. pressure might force me to breathe more deeply and give me higher blood oxygen levels, perhaps making me feel less foggy in the morning. My recent low AHI levels haven't made me feel correspondingly brighter and peppier in the morning.

What I see on the graph is that it took more than one hour for the pressure to ramp up from 11 to 16. Maybe the events weren't concentrated enough to bring on an all-hands-on-deck kind of response. It does look like the events stopped after the pressure plateaued at 16, so maybe that's a good thing. Hopefully I can leave it there for a while and get more data.

It's interesting that my Resp Rate was subdued during the period when most of the events were occurring. When there were no events, I was breathing faster.