Too many clear airway apneas

[jyotipethe]

Hi all,
I am using Philips respironics CPAP with a min pressure of 6. I have moderate sleep apnea.

I do myraid of things to help keep my airway clear, like a wedge pillow and neck pillow. These things are helping tremendously. But I am clueless about clear airway apneas.

Like yesterday, I had just 1 obstructive apnea. Just ONE in 8+ hours. But I had 17 clear airway apneas and 19 hypopneas. What could be done to reduce those?

[zonker]

Hi all,
I am using Philips respironics CPAP with a min pressure of 6. I have moderate sleep apnea.

I do myraid of things to help keep my airway clear, like a wedge pillow and neck pillow. These things are helping tremendously. But I am clueless about clear airway apneas.

Like yesterday, I had just 1 obstructive apnea. Just ONE in 8+ hours. But I had 17 clear airway apneas and 19 hypopneas. What could be done to reduce those?

welcome to the forum! the experts here are going to need more details in order to help you. please see this post-

viewtopic/t172378/Sticky--Newbies-PLEAS ... STING.html

read it and follow the directions there. once more info is provided, advice can be given. i'm fairly certain that you will have to use the free sleepyhead software to post your data so they can zero in on what's going on.

we are each different in our cpap journey. we have different machines, different masks and different reactions. so they are gonna need to know more about you.

good luck!

[Dog Slobber]

I wouldn't worry about them.

17 in an 8 hour period is about 2 per hour, not a lot.

And we don't know how many are real (real in the sense of occurring while you were actually sleeping) many could be swj.

When I was first stated on CPAP I was routinely getting an AHI of 3, 4, 5 of Centrals. As I started sleeping better many went away. An now that I'm used to the machine, they are barely negligible.

[palerider]

Like yesterday, I had just 1 obstructive apnea. Just ONE in 8+ hours. But I had 17 clear airway apneas and 19 hypopneas. What could be done to reduce those?

total counts are meaningless. give the AHI instead, and OAI and CAI, and HI

17/8+ for centrals is under 2, ignore it.

Raise the pressure a little for the hypopneas.

[jyotipethe]

Like yesterday, I had just 1 obstructive apnea. Just ONE in 8+ hours. But I had 17 clear airway apneas and 19 hypopneas. What could be done to reduce those?

total counts are meaningless. give the AHI instead, and OAI and CAI, and HI

17/8+ for centrals is under 2, ignore it.

Raise the pressure a little for the hypopneas.

AHI was 4.3 yesterday I have days when it hovers around 1 and some days it is about 5. The fluctuations are all seen in clear airway apneas and hypopneas. Obstructive is consistently low, less than 3 on any given night.

[LSAT]

Like yesterday, I had just 1 obstructive apnea. Just ONE in 8+ hours. But I had 17 clear airway apneas and 19 hypopneas. What could be done to reduce those?

total counts are meaningless. give the AHI instead, and OAI and CAI, and HI

17/8+ for centrals is under 2, ignore it.

Raise the pressure a little for the hypopneas.

AHI was 4.3 yesterday I have days when it hovers around 1 and some days it is about 5. The fluctuations are all seen in clear airway apneas and hypopneas. Obstructive is consistently low, less than 3 on any given night.

Unlikely that you sleep the same every night...restless some nights would bring more CAs

[palerider]

Raise the pressure a little for the hypopneas.

AHI was 4.3 yesterday I have days when it hovers around 1 and some days it is about 5. The fluctuations are all seen in clear airway apneas and hypopneas. Obstructive is consistently low, less than 3 on any given night.

the 'clear airway' (really central) apneas are quite possibly just disturbed sleep, and hypopneas are the result of your pressure being too low.

[jyotipethe]

Same story last night. AHI 4.5 with total 4 obstructive apneas, 15 clear and 20 hypo.

My observation is that clear airway apneas go way up when the Obstructives are rock bottom. I have made some nice changes lately, (a combination of wedge pillow and a neck pillow so positioned that my airway is more open.) I suspect that when the airway is open, too much air pressure causes the brain to stop breathing a few times, causing central apneas.

I am feeling groggy and unrested right now with just 0.5 obstructive apneas per hour last night. I plan to not use the cpap machine tonight and do all else I do to keep that airway open. It sucks that there is no statistics to look at next morning if I do that experiment. I will go by how I feel and report back tomorrow.

Thanks everyone for replying and sharing your thoughts.

[Pugsy]

You need to learn how to distinguish asleep apneas from awake/arousal apneas.
Go here and watch all the videos especially the last one.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
You are going to have to use available software if you want to figure out about those centrals that seem to bug you so much.
Using DreamMapper won't help you at all. You need to see exactly when those CAs are getting flagged for one thing.

You can't fix centrals/Clear Airway events with pressure changes on your machine....real or not...more pressure won't fix centrals.

[jyotipethe]

You need to learn how to distinguish asleep apneas from awake/arousal apneas.
Go here and watch all the videos especially the last one.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
You are going to have to use available software if you want to figure out about those centrals that seem to bug you so much.
Using DreamMapper won't help you at all. You need to see exactly when those CAs are getting flagged for one thing.

You can't fix centrals/Clear Airway events with pressure changes on your machine....real or not...more pressure won't fix centrals.

Thank you so much. Downloaded. Lost in the ocean of data for now. The events don't seem clustered. They are evenly distributed through the night. None while awake/ before falling asleep. In fact, all apneas are after midnight. This information can be life-changing. Thanks again.

[palerider]

You need to learn how to distinguish asleep apneas from awake/arousal apneas.
Go here and watch all the videos especially the last one.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
You are going to have to use available software if you want to figure out about those centrals that seem to bug you so much.
Using DreamMapper won't help you at all. You need to see exactly when those CAs are getting flagged for one thing.

You can't fix centrals/Clear Airway events with pressure changes on your machine....real or not...more pressure won't fix centrals.

Thank you so much. Downloaded. Lost in the ocean of data for now. The events don't seem clustered. They are evenly distributed through the night. None while awake/ before falling asleep. In fact, all apneas are after midnight. This information can be life-changing. Thanks again.

Post a screenshot.
see my sig for details.

[jyotipethe]

https://imgur.com/a/kj58sl0

I marked one central apnea. As far I can tell, there is no arousal or movement before, just organic CA IMO

Thanks a ton for all you are doing.

I got the url tag working, image tag is fine, can't find the exact filename/ .png

[palerider]

https://imgur.com/a/kj58sl0

I marked one central apnea. As far I can tell, there is no arousal or movement before, just organic CA IMO

Thanks a ton for all you are doing.

I got the url tag working, image tag is fine, can't find the exact filename/ .png

If you follow the instructions in my signature, they work, and you get the image.

And that looks post arousal to me.

Post a full night screenshot as requested.

[jyotipethe]

https://imgur.com/a/1XKyMgC

Here's full night data.

[palerider]

I'd increase the minimum pressure to 9 and see what happens.