Help: how to minimize FL's when apparent good results are achieved with AIH ?

[Albatros]

I am a 10 weeks old Newbie.
Led to CPAP therapy, following a sleep study with very fragmented sleep, 34 AHI, a restless legs syndrome and some nasal congestion.

Anyway...
I use a face mask, F20 (no leakage and not too constraining), after the failure of a nostril nasal mask due to a mouth breathing that I can't (yet) control.

My current parameters:
Pressure 8 -12
EPR 2
Humidity 2

My AIH results are rather good: 0.5/1 or 5/6 contained in one or two clusters (positional ?).

However, to date, even if I know that CPAP can only tackle apnea, I don't feel better than before with my 34 AIH...

I am motivated by the CPAP therapy because of the intellectual challenge it implies and the great amount of experience accumulated with OSCAR and in the Forum.

The reason for my problems seems to be the permanent and significant level of my FL's.

Therefore, I would be very interested in your opinion on how to keep lower Fl's, thru the setting of the main parameters : min and Max pressure, level of EPR ..

Many thanks

I attach a general snapshot + two details about the shape of my flow rate:
-one when flow rate is very low (less than 5%)
-the other one when flow rate is high (between 25 and 30%).

[btbderek]

I too have been struggling with FL’s even though I generally feel well rested the next day, my ahi also stays fairly lower. Interested to see what some of the people have to say in here, I only recently became aware of my FL issues after posting an OSCAR chart in here. From the few suggestions I got in a post on this board, I was told that one of many reasons for FL could be due to sleep position, specifically position of your neck/chin. If your chin drops in your sleep, they said it could cause FL from your neck crimping your airway. I’m newer to CPAP so I’m nowhere near qualified to make any suggestions other than that which was passed along to me, plus I’m dealing with this myself so I’m unsure myself.

[Dog Slobber]

Your pressures are too low.

Huge variance in pressure, especially when accompanied by a lot of FLs is oten a sign that minimum pressure is too low.
Your maximum pressure is also hand-cuffing your device. You can see it want's to go higher but can't. That's also when your FLs are greatest.

Remove the maximum pressure limitation by setting it to 20. Increase your minimum I'd start at 11 or 12, watch it for a few days an see how you do.

[Miss Emerita]

By all means try the experiment DS suggests. Give it a week and let us know how that goes. If it doesn't seem to help, another experiment would be to raise your EPR to 3. But don't do two experiments at once!

[Albatros]

Thank you both.
I will experiment, to night: Pressure min 12, Max 20. EPR kept at 2.

[lynninnj]

I noticed a lot of activity on my FL line when I had a slightly stuffy nose.

Keep that in the back of your mind as well as you move forward. It might help.