help interpreting first set of data?

[forgetcolor]

pugsy, thanks for all that info. it really helps me understand what's going on. as soon as I read your words about awake breath holding I knew you were right. i do that a lot and notice it with the machine (sometimes i just leave it on my face even if i've awakened enough to read for a bit).

yes, sleep fragmentation is an issue i've dealt with for a while, although it has gotten worse in the last six months. its causes are multiple and include: hip pain (bursitis), back pain (coccydynia), environmental (1. asynchronous nature of sleep pattern with my wife, 2. my cat who can get noisy and wake me up), and the of course the sleep apnea. i've been engaged in a long path of health care to deal with the pain issues (including cortizone injections just last week in the hip). no question i wake up in order to turn over to the other hip, and in fact that action has become more awake-inducing now that i have to also deal with the cpap hose path. the cat is the one I haven't been addressing, but i'm going to start tonight by locking him in a little 'apartment' space i've setup with all his essentials where he can't wake me up.

thx

[Pugsy]

My cat tried to bite my mask the other night. This was after he had terrorized the little pug dog that sleeps with me which caused the dog to walk all over me trying to get away from the cat.
Those cats are sure trouble makers.

the cat is the one I haven't been addressing, but i'm going to start tonight by locking him in a little 'apartment' space i've setup with all his essentials where he can't wake me up.

Work on your fragmented sleep as best you can. Pain is sure something I can relate to. If you continue to have a lot of hip pain talk to your doctor about alternatives. Remember anything that causes sleep fragmentation messes with the normal restorative powers of sleep and while the cpap machine will do its job, there are often other things which also mess with how we sleep and thus how we feel.

[forgetcolor]

I loaded the data up into ResMed. I picked a recent day, just a few days ago and here's what I found:



THis looks like OSA events happening all the time to me. Am I reading this right? Somehow this graphical representation seems a lot more daunting than the calm-looking AHI curve. Some of these are quite long (37 sec, 26 sec., etc).

[forgetcolor]

Hmm, ResMed is interesting. Some of the summary numbers are pretty different. And perhaps more useful.

Apnea Index: 3.2
-Obstructive: 1.3
-Central: 1.6
-Unknown: 0

Hypopnea index: 0.6

AHI: 3.8

This is for the first 30 days. Definitely lower numbers than sleepyhead. It also confirms Pugsy's read of the graphs that centrals are about half the events.

It's still quite scary looking at the detailed daily graphs of all my apnea events. I wonder what the heck that looked like before CPAP?? (I was diagnosed with an AHI of 15.4, so I guess that gives me a clue).

Is it reasonable to presume that with continued use of CPAP these apnea events (at least the OSA ones) will fade away and stop happening? How does an OSA even happen when the machine is on?

[Pugsy]

Is it reasonable to presume that with continued use of CPAP these apnea events (at least the OSA ones) will fade away and stop happening?

As in having zero obstructive apneas or hyponeas? Even someone without an OSA diagnosis can/will have a few random apnea events during the night. If you are wanting a zero or thinking a zero is going to happen then quit thinking that. While some people do manage to have zeroes from time to time it is not a realistic goal.

How does an OSA even happen when the machine is on?

Usually not a perfect pressure to hold the airway open. Sometimes they just happen.

Sometime people have more events when sleeping on their back or in REM sleep. This is quite common and sometimes people need a bit more pressure for an occasional event that seems to "beat" the pressure and go ahead and happen anyway. Sometimes a bit more pressure is needed for those events in supine sleeping or REM sleep.
Sometimes more pressure used to kill the obstructive events will cause more centrals to occur. Not the thing to do obviously.

Give yourself some time. See where things want to level out and stop trending downward.

[forgetcolor]

So now it's been about 3.5 months on cpap. Things have been progressing well through most of it, but the last week has been rough. I haven't even been looking at the data lately, but today I downloaded it to see what's going on. Today I'm feeling really bad, like I used to right before I started cpap and right after, when it was really hard. But it's also shown me how far I've come, because before a week ago I hadn't felt like this in quite a while. No question the cpap is doing its thing, and I continue to adjust. Before this week I would have said that, while they still have a ways to go, things are getting better and better.

You'll notice a 3 day hole in the data about a week or two ago---I had a really bad cold and couldn't breathe through my nose so just gave up on cpap for those days. They're the only days since I got the machine that I haven't used it.

so here's some data:




And data from last night (? --- it says june 19 when *my* go to bed time actually started on jun 20, but maybe it still calls it from the night before):



One thing from the summary I see is that my AHI is up recently. Not a good sign. When I look at my peak AHI graph, it also doesn't look so good to me. Looks like it got pretty good in April but then got worse again (not sure why it has that big hole in the data in May---the same hole is in resp rate, tidal vol and minute vent). Leaks look bad in May, but ok since. Maybe that's why the data is missing on AHI for that month?

Any thoughts on these graphs? Any ideas if I should be changing something? I see my sleep doc next week for a checkup, but I've found he's not too interested in these numbers. AHI maybe, but the rest not so much. He was most interested in the compliance number at my last appointment.

I've been tightening my mask periodically as it seems to get looser over time (Swift/FX).

Thanks for any help!!