1rst Post and Sleepyhead Report

[jonc123]

Howdy! My first post on the forum. Was diagnosed with hypertension recenly. Doc asks me if I snore and I tell him, "I don't know...I'm busy sleeping but my wife says I do!" Well, to make a long story short, he sent me in for a sleep study. It was done at a place that only does sleep studies in a large metropolitin area. I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea/sleep related hypoxia AHI 12.8. I do have the complete sleep study report. My first night on CPAP was 9/26/14. I have a Respironics System One 60 series Auto. I actually have two of them, one came from the sleep center and one from cpap.com for travel. The one I bought at cpap.com has the heated humidifier tube. It will be used for camping.

Already downloaded Sleepyhead. These are a few screenshots, I have eliminated some of the clutter from looking through the posts on this forum some of it is not needed. The big question would be from lurking here, "How do I feel?" Well...I didn't go get a sleep study because I was sleepy. I went because my cardiologist sent me. I am kind of thinking in the past week I am seeing improvements during the day such as more energy, not wanting to fall asleep at my computer like I was before and being more awake when driving. I guess the treatment is working. I have not had a reduction in blood pressure as of yet, I check my blood pressure daily (through diet and exercise & daily pill it is now below 120/80 most times I check it...have lost 13 pounds and another 17 to go.

My machine from the DME is locked, I'm not going to mess with it yet. My other one I can do with it whatever I want, but I have it set for straight CPAP at 11 for now like my insurance machine. I may want to try out the auto part of it after I have used it for a time.

What a wonderful forum...glad to be here. Graphs below any comments welcome. My average AHI since I got hosed up is 1.9 and seems to be getting better. I am concerned about the "leaks' section...don't know if it looks good or bad. I use nasal pillows.

Jon

[bwexler]

Which mask are you using? Do you notice the leaks? Do you wake up with dry mouth?

Your therapy looks good so far, but answers to these questions may help provide some fine tuning.

[Pugsy]

The machine would flag large leaks if you went far enough to reach large leak territory...I didn't see any such flags unless they are very faint. Look up on the events graph and right below CSR is LL...that's large leak.

The Respironics machines report total leak which is the mask's intentional vent rate plus any excess leak.
Respironics says that they can adequately compensate for leaks up until we reach large leak territory...They never give us an exact number because it can vary between the mask used and the pressure used.
At your pressure...large leak territory is probably up around 90 L/min.
You rarely get that high with the leaking and even if you did for a brief time it isn't the end of the world.

SleepyHead has a way of making mountains out of mole hills when it comes to leaks. It's because of the scale used. SleepyHead uses scale based on the max leak and if the max leak isn't very high ...then the ups and downs are going to look worse than they are.

So in terms of therapy effectiveness...leaks are not an issue for you from what I see on these reports. The machine can handle what we are seeing here.
Now if those leaks are waking you up then of course they are unwanted because anything that wakes us up is unwanted...but just from the leak number iself...the bulk of the night your leaks are well within the machine's ability to compensate for leak.

[Pugsy]

When you see those increased leaks that sort of plateau a bit on top. Those may be a little mouth breathing leaks. Hard to tell for sure but if it is...it's not very much and doesn't last all night and certainly within the machine's ability to compensate.
The machine will flag mouth breathing as leaks...a leak is a leak no matter where it comes from.
Not enough to seriously negatively impact your therapy anyway...if that is what is going on.

[jonc123]

I do wake up sometimes with a dry mouth and air escaping from my mouth. I would say at least once a night. Mask is the Nuance (nasal pillows). My wife says I sometimes "whistle". I guess thats the air making noise from between my lips....most of the time when I wake up to this my mouth is pretty near shut, but air coming through my lips. It's possible I wake up more often....if I do, I don't remember it. I am pretty sure I have the nasal pillows adjusted properly, Whenever I do wake up, I have never noticed it leaking no matter the position I was just in.

[jonc123]

I went ahead and orderes a chin strap...took a couple nights to get adjusted to that. After mentally studying my sleeping habits along with some information from my wife I think the breathing through the mouth may be waking me up more than I think. Below is a new graph using the chinstrap. I am waking up less than before and maybe more refreshed. Here is an example below of the flattest looking line:



I also got to try out the second machine I have while camping in the back of Motel 7. Motel 7 is my pickup with a campershell. I lowered my prescribed air pressure of 11 to 10.5. noticed that my OA's have been pretty low. I also plan on using it with batteries and the lower the air pressure, the easier on batteries. My goal was to get it down to 10 if possible while still getting a good nights rest. Here is a graph with the lowered pressure to 10.5:



Does it look possible that I could possibly lower it some more to 10 after a few more nights to test this out?

[Pugsy]

Yes, it looks like the AHI is low enough that you have some wiggly room to reduce the pressure and not have a huge negative impact on therapy..