Central and Obstructives from SleepyHead data...

[Ivan101]

So I'm finding it a lot easier to find information through Sleepy Head than it was is ResScen, and I've read Pugsy's tutorials. I've got some questions. I recently (like less than 14 days ago) went from 12 cmH2O to 10cmH2O by the advice of my doctor to try to see how that works. So far, there is absolutely NO change in how it affects events...although admittedly I just thought that I haven't checked for the length of the events...but everything else has stayed the same...she agreed when I sent her the reports (I confessed I could send her the data since I have software and it would be much quicker than going through the DME and she agreed). I've since been looking in SH more and reading Pugsy's reviews and find a couple things concerning/interesting. First, my Centrals are all over the map...sometimes I only have a few, but then some nights I have over 100. Is that normal? Also, besides Centrals, I seem to always have Obstructive Apneas the most. Sometimes a ton when I first fall asleep (how does it calculate asleep time...when you fall asleep, or when you put on the mask, because it takes me a couple hours to fall asleep and I do yawn some when I first put on the mask...), sometimes only one...usually at least a couple most hours of the night, and more right before I get up (again, would the fact that I usually wake up to turn off my alarm and then sleep for 10 minutes, then turn off the alarm, then sleep for 10 minutes be affecting this?) Also, besides for 1 day (I had 26 Obs. the second day on 10cm), every day since I went to the lower pressure, my Obstuctives have been below 6! Now, there's only about 9 days of data...BUT before switching to 10cm, I never had such a long period with so few Obstructives...my highest in the last month was 31, and most days it was a two digit number. Actually, the more I look at the data, my overall Centrals seem to be a bit lower too (two days I had none)...but when I compare the averages over those 2 time frames, they are almost identical (the averages was the only data I sent my doctor). So, two other questions: 1) It does appear like the change in settings is helping? 2) Anyway I could make things look better/why are things so inconsistent - is this normal?

Thanks,

Katie

[Pugsy]

(how does it calculate asleep time...when you fall asleep, or when you put on the mask, because it takes me a couple hours to fall asleep

Cpap machines have no way to know if someone is asleep or not so the times are from the time the machine is turned on until it is turned off.

Since our awake/semi awake breathing (those 2 hours you take to get to sleep) often is irregular the machine can and will flag awake breathing irregularities as some sort of apnea event....especially centrals.
If you see lots of flagged events during the time period where you know you were awake then those events must be discarded from your evaluation.. This holds true for the time at the end of the night too when you repeatedly use the snooze function. You probably have considerably semi awake time between the snooze buttons.