Pressure changed after nearly a year

[msradar65]

I spent a week with friends who said despite my use of CPAP I was still bring down the house with snoring. So I checked the data and sure enough there was a lot of snoring and averaging 6-8 apneas a night. This is at a pressure setting of 8cm. So I bumped the pressure up to 10 and saw some improvement but not enough. The next night I went to 11!! Voila!! I am a new person sleeping like a baby again.

[jabman]

I also had to change my pressure from 11 to 12 some time after my first year.

[msradar65]

Well, I have gone from 8 to 11. I have gained some weight which I am trying to take back off. I am hoping if I loose some more weight the pressure will go back down. I do know I am sleeping much better. I am sleeping sooo good that I don't even move at night...My sore neck is telling all! lol

[jabman]

Well, I have gone from 8 to 11. I have gained some weight which I am trying to take back off. I am hoping if I loose some more weight the pressure will go back down. I do know I am sleeping much better. I am sleeping sooo good that I don't even move at night...My sore neck is telling all! lol

I had lost close to 40 lbs since starting treatment last year so the pressure change was kind of a shock to me. Just goes to show that weight does not play that much of a role in OSA ( at least not mine).

[Ticman]

Well, I have gone from 8 to 11. I have gained some weight which I am trying to take back off. I am hoping if I loose some more weight the pressure will go back down. I do know I am sleeping much better. I am sleeping sooo good that I don't even move at night...My sore neck is telling all! lol

I had lost close to 40 lbs since starting treatment last year so the pressure change was kind of a shock to me. Just goes to show that weight does not play that much of a role in OSA ( at least not mine).

I had a similar experience. I was titrated at 6 but never could breathe right so I bumped it to 7.6. That was 5 years ago and I weighed 18 pounds more then. I have an APAP now and found I am running at 11 now. Sleeping much better now.

[Sheriff Buford]

I've bumped up my sleep study-pressure from a 13 to 14. I've felt much better. I've woke myself up a few times lately by snoring. Think I should try a 15 and see what happens?

Sheriff

[Ticman]

Sheriff,

Have you tried going back to auto and setting 14 to 15 for the range? Should be able to see the next morning which one you are at.

[kteague]

Similar experience here. Recently upped my pressure a notch just to see how I'd do with it and if it would help. Not that my numbers were bad - they're always enviable. Not sure how much other factors played a role, but there was another level of sleep improvement at the same time as the pressure increase. Can't check the numbers since I'm using my non-data backup machine.

[sol]

Pressure is like alcohol over time as you get used to it you,ll need to drink more in order to get the same effect .

[jabman]

Similar experience here. Recently upped my pressure a notch just to see how I'd do with it and if it would help. Not that my numbers were bad - they're always enviable. Not sure how much other factors played a role, but there was another level of sleep improvement at the same time as the pressure increase. Can't check the numbers since I'm using my non-data backup machine.

For me I had seemed to be sliping backwards. I was getting tired earlier and started nodding off at work. My numbers on my graphs looked ok, upping the pressure did the trick.

[Sheriff Buford]

Sheriff,

Have you tried going back to auto and setting 14 to 15 for the range? Should be able to see the next morning which one you are at.

Tic: I ran a thread here a while back discussing the auto-pap. I was feeling sluggish, but I had great numbers. I went back to straight cpap mode and felt much better. I had many responses here saying that many forum members have done the same (gone from auto to straight cpap). The reason I came up with is that in the autoset mode, resmed has a 7 second delay before it responds to any event. This is for temporary holding your breath while turning, reaching for something, yawning, etc... If a real apnea event occurred, the autoset will not respond for 7 seconds. The machine may need an additional 4-6 seconds to treat the event, so there's a total of 11 to 13 seconds that my body experiences an apnea event before being treated.

My thoughts were if I could eliminate the 11 to 13 seconds of untreated apnea events by using a straight cpap blower.... then I may feel better. I have been using straight cpap mode for about a month and I seem to feel better. As some here have suggested, I'll go back to auto-pap mode two or three times a year to make sure I'm on the right track. This theory may not accommodate you, but makes sense to me. Food for thought.

Sheriff

[mdboze]

My new settings dropped my AHI from 5-6 to 0 - 1, and I feel great!
Sometimes the smallest changes can make BIG differences! After 1 1/2 years at the same setting.

4 Weeks ago, I got the new TrueBlue mask from Respironics. It did not quite feel/work the same as my old Resmed nasal mask so I tweaked my setting to match the mask, and BAM ! Dropped my AHI from 5-6 to 0 - 1 !
I noticed a BIG difference in how I feel MUCH better.

Summary of my changes:

EPAP Min : 6 (no change)
EPAP Max: 6 (old epap Max setting was 10)
Pressure Support Min: 5 (old PS min setting was 7)
Pressure Support Min: 14 (no change)
Max Pressure: 20 (no change)
Mask change to Respironics True Blue
Started taking Nuvigil . (the AHI did not lower until I change my settings a week later)

OH... and I feel GREAT

Years ago, I had so many difficulties, and bad settings, that once I got close to AHI = 5 and stopped feeling like crap, I was happy and thought I had the ideal settings. I never thought I would be able to get my AHI down to the 0-1 range.
Thank you all: DSM, Banned, restedgal, ecocyber, JohnBFisher and others for being here. This support group means so much to me, and has helped greatly. Without it, I probably would have been stuck with the same bad settings and not known what to do. (my original bad settings 2 years ago, were ALL set to 12, not allowing the AutoSV to do anything.)

Lesson learned: Stick with it. Never give up, Keep tweaking until you find your sweet spot. AND, find a support group that understands and can advise.

[Ticman]

Sheriff,

Have you tried going back to auto and setting 14 to 15 for the range? Should be able to see the next morning which one you are at.

Tic: I ran a thread here a while back discussing the auto-pap. I was feeling sluggish, but I had great numbers. I went back to straight cpap mode and felt much better. I had many responses here saying that many forum members have done the same (gone from auto to straight cpap). The reason I came up with is that in the autoset mode, resmed has a 7 second delay before it responds to any event. This is for temporary holding your breath while turning, reaching for something, yawning, etc... If a real apnea event occurred, the autoset will not respond for 7 seconds. The machine may need an additional 4-6 seconds to treat the event, so there's a total of 11 to 13 seconds that my body experiences an apnea event before being treated.

My thoughts were if I could eliminate the 11 to 13 seconds of untreated apnea events by using a straight cpap blower.... then I may feel better. I have been using straight cpap mode for about a month and I seem to feel better. As some here have suggested, I'll go back to auto-pap mode two or three times a year to make sure I'm on the right track. This theory may not accommodate you, but makes sense to me. Food for thought.

Sheriff

I understand what you are saying but, just to be clear, I meant to set the minimum pressure to 14 and max to 15 in auto mode. Should be easy to see if you need 15 that way. Of course I guess it would be just as easy to switch to 15 in CPAP mode.

[rested gal]

Pressure is like alcohol over time as you get used to it you,ll need to drink more in order to get the same effect .

I don't think that's true of CPAP pressure.

It's not unusual for some people to need more CPAP pressure than what was originally prescribed, for any number of common reasons that have [u]nothing[/u] to do with needing more because of getting "used to it."

1. Aging -- muscles and soft tissues getting more slack as the person gets older.

2. The prescribed pressure was lower than ideal in the first place.

3. Weight gain.

4. Medications and/or med side effects.

5. New (or worsening) other health conditions.

[msradar65]

I'm glad to hear I am not alone. In my case...stress has cause a good bit of weight gain since I was diagnosed. I am working on the weight issue. But in the mean time. I feel much better since increasing the pressure.