Not the Best Night, a Bit Odd

[MaxDarkside]

I'd like some comments on this and maybe something useful will come of it, for me and for others. Last night was not so good (yes, much better than many of you I presume) but for me, quite odd. I started out well, then sometime around the 2nd REM period (I presume), my respiration went erratic and downward rather than up and then I get a heavy series of OAs with one lasting 45 seconds and my O2 sats dive to as low as 83%... while on the machine. This has not happened before to me that I know of.

Beddie-bye conditions: BP a bit higher than normal, too much caffeine during the day, 1 Benadryl, 1 cup of Tulsi tea and 1.5 oz of brandy (that's probably what did it). I'm guessing I rolled to my back, my airway was relaxed and closed, I started having significant events, desat'd and the machine climbed to 13 cm on average and could not stop them.

I didn't sleep well in general. You can see 3 "sessions" on the mask and there's a fourth w/o the mask at the end. I awoke at these times, turned off the machine, actually got up not knowing whether to stay up or go back to bed (felt like crap but could not sleep, or so it seemed).

Any comments are welcome:



Zoomed:



Thanks!

P.S. My Zeo bedside should arrive today. It should be interesting...

[Mary Z]

Nothing helpful to say except there are those nights. The brandy and benadryl

may have been synergistic in causing your abnormalities. The only suggestion I would make is please don't take your mask off especially if you sense you're having a bad night.
Keep us posted on the Zeo, please- like to know how you like it and how accurate.

[MaxDarkside]

Nothing helpful to say except there are those nights. The brandy and benadryl

may have been synergistic in causing your abnormalities. The only suggestion I would make is please don't take your mask off especially if you sense you're having a bad night.
Keep us posted on the Zeo, please- like to know how you like it and how accurate.

Thanks Mary. I'm not overly concerned unless it continues. Hitting an AHI of 22 while on the machine is a bit odd. Normally my AHI is like below 1.0 with excursions to 4.0 or so. I will let you know about the Zeo. I'm immensely curious.

[MaxDarkside]

My Zeo arrived today, read the manual (eh?! Who does THAT?) and set it up, charged the headband, setup my MyZeo account, and I'm ready for tonight. I've got a pounder headache due to last night's escapade.

[RocketGirl]

Yikes - I hope you feel better and get a good night's sleep. My ayurvedic and herb books do list tulsi as a smooth muscle relaxant, so the combination of the caffeine earlier in the day followed by benadryl, brandy, and tulsi may just have been too much for your system, as you surmised. The headache might go if you superhydrate for a little while before the evening gets too far along.

Glad your Zeo arrived - good luck with it tonight, and let us know how it goes.

[MaxDarkside]

Thanks RocketGirl. I was introduced to Tulsi by an East Indian friend / associate as a stress reducing tea. Amazon carries it as does some higher end grocery stores. I drink the "original". It has a subtle calming about it and I do sleep better. With my S9, oximeter and now Zeo, I'm going to do some experiments with various levels of Tulsi, alcohol (probably nothing but a sleep damager), benadryl, etc. to see if I can quantify the effects, at least for me, then find the best. Typically I have one Target brand "Sleep Aid" (benadryl) and 1 cup of Tulsi tea, wait about 20-30 minutes and I fall to sleep pretty fast and sleep pretty well with sub-1 AHIs.

[retrodave15]

looks to me like you have some periodic breathing going on here. From your signature line you also have a cardiac history. I too have some occasional periodic breathing. Doc told be to lay off the sauce, as it will depress the respiratory center as will the benadryl. Benadryl can also mess up your sleep architecture. You are much better off getting a sleep aid like Sonata.

You might want to follow up with the sleep doc and share this night with him or her and any others like this.

Just my 2 cents

[letmezzz]

I just received my CPAP 2 days ago, so I am new to all of this. Can you tell me how you got this printout?

[MaxDarkside]

I just received my CPAP 2 days ago, so I am new to all of this. Can you tell me how you got this printout?

Hi letmezzz... I have a ResMed S9 that I can get data out of and load it into SleepyHead (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sleepyhead/) and I also have a Contec CMS 50E oximeter that records while you sleep that I can also put on my PC, using software they provide. Then I did screen grabs of parts of each of those software using SnagIt (a commercial screen shot software) and pasted into Microsoft Powerpoint and aligned them, then screenshotted Powerpoint again with Snagit and saved the image to disk and uploaded to a free account on PhotoBucket.com that I have, then pasted the [ IMG ] links into the posting then previewed to make sure it was OK then clicked Submit.

WHEW! That's a LOT of steps n-stuff

[MaxDarkside]

looks to me like you have some periodic breathing going on here. From your signature line you also have a cardiac history. I too have some occasional periodic breathing. Doc told be to lay off the sauce, as it will depress the respiratory center as will the benadryl. Benadryl can also mess up your sleep architecture. You are much better off getting a sleep aid like Sonata.

Thanks. The cardiac things are associated with the Sleep Apnea or so my neurologist and I do both surmise. I'm going to do some experiments as I mentioned. Should be interesting.

You might want to follow up with the sleep doc and share this night with him or her and any others like this.

If I have more of these types of nights, and if I don't find an explanation myself (such as can be repeatably caused by benadryl + alcohol), then I will head on over to see my fine Dr.

Thanks!

[Lizistired]

Or you dreamed you were drowning in shark infested waters...

[MaxDarkside]

Or you dreamed you were drowning in shark infested waters...

Hehehe... I do remember dreaming. I don't remember what about. Maybe so!

[MaxDarkside]

OK, I got my Zeo data from last night. I self-medicated the same way as the night before and sure enough, I got similar results in terms of a chain of apneas but not as severe this time. Below you will see a chart with my S9 data, CMS 50E data and the Zeo sleep chart, with various circles, a line and numbers. The Zeo suggests I got my chain of apneas coming out of deep sleep, not in REM, which I find interesting.

You can see that the Zeo records levels of sleep: Rust = Awake, Grey = light sleep, Green = REM, Dark Green = Deep Sleep.

The circles are for reference matching stages with the other data. You can see that the oximeter's heart rate settles during light and deep sleep (at my numbers 1, 2 and 5). The Oxygen (spO2) really settles during deep sleep (#2 and 5). I woke up at the Red circle #4 (at the top) but the Zeo had me waking earlier than that (#3) but recorded my truly being awake (and getting up for tinkle-time) as REM. This may be because I was up for less than 5 min (I guess I tinkled fast!).

I judge by this that I can almost determine the sleep stage without the Zeo, by looking at the ResMed S9 and oximeter data.

The Zeo said I got a ZQ (sleep quality) of 76, which is pretty good, above average for my age. I feel OK today, not wonderful, not horrid.

[Lizistired]

Max, I can pick out my REM without the zeo but can't differentiate between light and deep. Have you tried exporting the data to a spreadsheet. I think it's 30 second data and will probably coorespond better. The pretty chart averages and the times are a little off sometimes. Other times they are spot on. I think it depends on how smoothly you transition.
My # was 36 last night. Bad sleep hygiene. I'm paying for it today.

[MaxDarkside]

Max, I can pick out my REM without the zeo but can't differentiate between light and deep. Have you tried exporting the data to a spreadsheet. I think it's 30 second data and will probably coorespond better. The pretty chart averages and the times are a little off sometimes. Other times they are spot on. I think it depends on how smoothly you transition.

I looked at the 30 second classification of sleep stage and it was as expected a bit noisier but the general features line up about the same. It could be the Zeo said I was awake and I was but didn't make note of it mentally (or otherwise) because I do remember waking up probably a half dozen times. I think the Zeo caught one of those but misclassified the documented tinkle-time

My # was 36 last night. Bad sleep hygiene. I'm paying for it today.

Oh my. I'm sorry. I got a better number than I expected so I probably should reset my expectations of what is quality sleep. I'm probably setting "Real Good" as "OK" in my mind.