Refining my settings to eliminate night sweats--help

[sonogo]

With help from the rest of you I have my leaks under control (you couldn't open my mouth with a crowbar while I'm asleep now) and am getting better quality sleep. I still wake up with night sweats, however. Guaranteed if I sleep on my back, and sometimes if I sleep on my side. I've posted my record from last night where I woke up a couple times with the sweats, but the sweat periods don't show up (the break in the lines at hour 5 1/2 was from a trip to the bathroom). The sweats occurred around hour 2 and hour 6; I couldn't get back to sleep after the last one.

http://i333.photobucket.com/albums/m390 ... -21-08.jpg

So any advice on what I should fiddle with? Maybe the support number? Current settings below. My titration from my July study suggested 8-12 settings.
Machine on auto bilevel
Epap= 8
Ipap = 18 (though I never exceed 16 and am usually around 12-14)
Max support = 6
Biflex = 3 (have tried 2 and didn't see any difference)
All the alerts are off. "Split Night Time" is off, whatever that does.

I feel like I'm close to getting it right, but these sweats followed by wake up periods are regular occurrences (were much worse pre-APAP), and I'm not sure what to tweak at this point. Having an AHI so low ought to mean I'm ought of the woods, right? (PS. Prior to sleep study I was tested for a zillion different things for the night sweats with the assumption they were an infection or hormonal imbalance or various other things, but nothing came up.)

[gasp]

I see you haven't gotten a reply to your post so I'm bumping it. Also, have you told your doctor about the night sweats? Have your blood pressure checked. Have the doctor review your medications too.

[sonogo]

Thanks for your reply, Gasp. I know there are a ton of posts everyday, but I wondered why no one answered mine.

Anyway, my sleep doctors (including the new one) just give me an Rx for the machine and tell me to go away. Primary care doctor is great and was the one who tested me for everything to find out why I had night sweats. Blood pressure is very good: 120/80. Used to be 110/70, but the apnea seems to have increased it.

What I have found, through the endless experimenting I do, is that by sleeping on my stomach, I don't have sweats, or almost never do. I definitely do on my back, even propping up pillows behind me hospital-style, which I thought was supposed to help. With enough mask padding, it doesn't make a dent in my face. I also bumped up my EPAP and support pressure by .5 just to see what would happen. There has been improvement.

Thanks again, and happy Z's.

[gasp]

So glad you get relief with stomach sleeping. This reminds me of some posts last year when a few of us were talking about we wouldn't have apnea if we were able to sleep directly face down. There were some humorous solutions but I couldn't find the threads.

However, I did find these pillows which supports the thinking that if there is a need there is someone who will attempt to meet it : )

http://www.shopsleepsolutions.com/produ ... 1219696976

http://www.comfortan.com/comfyrest/cr-index-page1.html

[Wulfman]

In view of the fact that you have an "M" in your profile gender category, I think we can probably rule out menopause.

Have you been checked for Diabetes?
If you go to Google and do a search on "Night Sweats", you'll get quite a few links to read......to add to your mystery.
The report you posted is very good and I wouldn't think that Sleep Apnea would still be a consideration......if that report is typical.

Den

[SleepPunk]

Here is a link to a thread about a couple of other products for nightsweats:
viewtopic/t34180/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32638&p=277629

Hope this helps.

[Gregg]

I've had night sweats a couple of times since beginning bipap. I'm new. Only a few months on the machine. But I'll say that two things have helped me. Raising epap and changing the machine from auto to straight bipap. The epap up to 12 or 13 seemed to keep my throat open. The straight bipap seems to be a big change in that it seems to not disrupt my sleep. Whereas the auto bipap was ramping up and doing all of those little "bumps" like you see in your data. But then I've only been on this a month. I figure it's going to take at least a year or maybe half a year before I can be absolutely certain that I'm feeling good due to the machine.

Good luck.

[sonogo]

OK, now I can add hypochrondriac to my list of ailments, as if OSA wasn't enough. Those lists are scary! More seriously, I've been through batteries of tests to rule most out most of that stuff, but thanks for suggesting anyway. If I can continue to sleep on my stomach and they go away, I'll rule out the hypochondria and worry about something else.

Interesting about your experience, Gregg. I won't rule out something the machine is doing. I have it on auto, and there are mixed reviews on doing that. Balancing all the different factors is tricky when you're half brain dead from sleep deprivation.