Still waking, brain fog, please check my charts

[nightcrawler]

Hi all,
I could use some advice on how to move forward. Pugsy has been helping me--thank you--as a newbie with terrible brain fog. The suggestion by many people is to get my AHI down as low as possible. The only suggestion on how to do this is to raise my lower end.
Here's my problem: when I raise my lower to 9 (13 on the upper), my brain fog lessons but my sleep worsens. I'm up every two hours throughout the night. If I lower my numbers down to their original settings of 7 and 12, I still wake up 1-2 a night and have terrible brain fog in the morning and throughout the day. With the latter, I sleep many more hours, as you will see by the below charts; however, the brain fog is awful
Needless to say, neither of these are very much fun. Any insight would be helpful.

[Mary Z]

I'm not good at charts, but your AHI is a little high, 5 is considered the best value. You are generally just a little high. AHI may improve when you conquer mask leakage. I personally would not worry about AHI right now. MIne is 4-8 and I feel great. Your last night was the worst so far. I see you use the machine an average of seven hours a night. That's great. Your leaks are pretty high, work on reducing leaks with proper mask fit- don't overtighten. Make sure you're getting good sleep- without REM and deep sleep your body does not heal the damage from the day. Your events spike at certain times of the night- this may be due to REM sleep, position in bed (on side or back), or other factors. If you have only been using the machine for three or four weeks be patient. Sometimes it takes more time to adjust to the machine and get the best results.

To summarize- be patient, it just may take more time for the benefits to show.
Get good sleep. As simple as it sounds a review of sleep hygiene may help.
Work on reducing leaks with proper mask size and fit. YouTube has videos on mask fitting or review your instructions that came with the mask. If you don't have them check the company website.
Continue the good work, it will pay off. Even if you don't feel benefits yet you are preventing more damage to your body from apneic events.

Welcome to the forum, nightcrawler.

[Pugsy]

How about trying straight cpap pressure....eliminate the pressure variations of APAP mode? See if that helps you get more consistent sleep? It also helps control the leaks better by fitting the mask to a single pressure...Remember your large leak territory is 95 L/min when looking at total leak that would be the top line on the graph...you are exceeding that number more than I would want to see happen.
Leaks themselves will also disrupt sleep.

Since the brain fog seems to correlate with the AHI...we want to keep it reduced but if the changing pressures are disrupting sleep then we are reducing one problem and creating another problem.

Worth a try...CPAP at maybe 10 to 11 somewhere in between. See what happens.

[Otter]

Your events seem to be extremely regular. I haven't looked at much Intellipap data; is the periodicity of your events an artifact of the way DeVilbiss reports them? If not, it may be an important clue.

[kteague]

Your events seem to be extremely regular. I haven't looked at much Intellipap data; is the periodicity of your events an artifact of the way DeVilbiss reports them? If not, it may be an important clue.

I have no knowledge to add on this, just want to say I find that observation very interesting and hope to read an explanation.