Does Tidal volume shows quality of sleep?

[DannyCPAP]

The pressure graph shows when I put the must on or off. In correlation to that events, the tidal volume is very high. During the night sleep, sometimes the tidal volume is very smooth and sometimes it "goes crazy" for fairly long periods of time. Apnea events appear during that unstable tidal periods.
Trying to assess my quality of sleep, is it right to assume that the sleep is highly disturbed during the unstable tidal periods or that I am actually awake in bed?

[-SWS]

The short answer is that we tend to have higher tidal volume swings during wake. However, high swings and low shifts in tidal volume can be more dramatic for people with periodic breathing tendencies.

[MaxDarkside]

The short answer is that we tend to have higher tidal volume swings during wake.

And also REM.

[-SWS]

Good point, MaxDarkSide. Of all sleep stages, REM brainwave activity is most similar to wake. Not suprising that central-breathing characteristics of REM are most similar to wake breathing.

I would also add that periodic breathing tends to be more associated with NREM versus REM.

[Sir NoddinOff]

I find tidal volume in Sleepyhead very useful for one particular thing, that is, determining what my 'real sleep' time really is... as opposed to my tossing/turning, mental ruminations, ceiling gazing etc. Here's something I wrote for similar thread which I will cut and paste here (I don't know if this technique works with ResMed software, but I'd love someone to chime in about it):

"It would be a nice if Sleepyhead could tell when you are really asleep, but you can kind of kludge around it by highlighting on your Flow Graph with your cursor the area where you think you were sleeping. You can get a feel for your 'real sleep' segments by inspecting both the tidal volume and flow graphs together; things just look calmer and lower intensity when you're sleeping, except of course for the REM stages, which generally occur 90-120 minutes into real sleep. You'll see some clusters there, please leave these in because that is part of your real sleep data. There will also be some smaller clusters surrounded by calm periods throughout the last half of the night, these are also REM segments, so leave them in your selection. Once your done, scroll up to the top of SH (just above the flow rate graph) and you'll see the AHI calculated for only the segment you selected with your cursor. Box and calculate any other 'real sleep' areas you want to include, write them down, roughly average in your head or on paper and, voila, you'll have a decent idea of your real nights AHI, with the tossing and turning dropped out." QED

QUESTION: WHAT IS NREM VS REM???

[robysue]

QUESTION: WHAT IS NREM VS REM???

NREM is the collection of all SLEEP states other than REM.

As -SWS points out, some problems (such as periodic breathing) tend to occur mor in NREM tha REM

[avi123]

[quote="DannyCPAP"]The pressure graph shows when I put the must on or off. In correlation to that events, the tidal volume is very high. During the night sleep, sometimes the tidal volume is very smooth and sometimes it "goes crazy" for fairly long periods of time. Apnea events appear during that unstable tidal periods.
Trying to assess my quality of sleep, is it right to assume that the sleep is highly disturbed during the unstable tidal periods or that I am actually awake in bed?

Comment,

IMO, your Tidal Volumes (TV) have not gone crazy. During your sleep you might have just taken a few deep breathes. The TV of a healthy average size person is around half a liter (500 MilliLiter) at normal respiration rate. It's possible that -SWS is tying it to your previous post showing a possible Periodic Breathing. The poster Pugsy, showed SleepyHead graphs with much higher swings and frequency of her TVs from a base of 275 ML and up, and more spikes than you have. Her lungs capacity is probably half your size or her breathings are shallower.

The two spikes in your TV graph synchronize with the two spikes in your leak graph. It indicates that spikes in the TV graph are caused by leaks.

[Pugsy]

What Avi says is true. My TV is a lot less overall but sometimes it is a bit spikey.
I just looked at a recent ResScan report.
TV Median 280....95% 380 and maximum was 500.
I am female, small bone structure, and not quite 5' tall. I have no lung issues and I am not a "shallow" breather. I am just little. Small everything and that includes lungs.