Still kind of tired after two years of CPAP

[zonker]

I don’t have access to Sleepyhead this weekend, but I’m down to a 2.2 and 2.1 AHI the past few nights using 10 cm as the minimum. I’ll stay at 10 for now and post the charts shortly.

this is most excellent! good job finding this forum.

and good job all the people who mad suggestions....

[stevehenryy]

Attached are my last two nights after changing the minimum to 10 cm. How do these look? Do you think I should increase the minimum to 11 cm?

Thanks again, everyone!

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[Pugsy]

Yeah, I would give 11 cm minimum a try.

If the AHI doesn't change much then I think at some point we need to start figuring out if those flagged events are real or instead are SWJ sleep/wake/junk. Just to make sure we are trying to kill something that can be killed. We can't kill SWJ. except maybe by sleeping sounder.

[stevehenryy]

Okay, I’ll set it to 11 cm tonight.

Can you describe SWJ a little more? Is it just the byproduct of REM transitions or something?

[Pugsy]

Sleep/Wake/Junk...post arousal breathing or semi awake/awake breathing and not real.
Go here and watch all the videos and you can get an idea what I am talking about and what it looks like.

Awake/semi awake breathing is much more irregular than asleep breathing so the machine will sometimes flag those irregularities as some sort of apnea event. Remember the machine only measures the air flow when you are breathing and it doesn't have a clue if you are asleep or not.

[Pugsy]

Crap..told you to go somewhere and forgot link because the phone rang and I got side tracked.

http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software

[TedVPAP]

Definitely go to 11. Your OSA is improving but you are not there yet.

[stevehenryy]

Here is last night, using 11 cm as the minimum.

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[D.H.]

I see that you're getting good advice. If you can lower your AHI more that's even better. Chasing "0" is Quixotic for most of us, but it's best to keep as law as possible. Remember that 5 means an incident every twelve minutes and 4 means an incident every fifteen minutes. Of course, this does not take into account the duration of each incident or the oxygen desaturation levels.

Your pressure needs are not considered measures of severity at this time. That might change at some time in the future.

[TASmart]

I see that you're getting good advice. If you can lower your AHI more that's even better. Chasing "0" is Quixotic for most of us, but it's best to keep as law as possible. Remember that 5 means an incident every twelve minutes and 4 means an incident every fifteen minutes. Of course, this does not take into account the duration of each incident or the oxygen desaturation levels.

Your pressure needs are not considered measures of severity at this time. That might change at some time in the future.

Nor does it take into account clustering and SWJ that occurs for some at the end of the night when they get quite a few events in a short time. Making assumptions about the distribution of events from the average is way too simplistic.

[Pugsy]

Decent report. I would leave it at the new minimum for 3 or 4 nights and see if it holds, improves or worsens.

Also...how was your sleep quality and how do you feel? That's actually more important than the numbers at this point.

[stevehenryy]

I actually feel a little more tired that usual. The last two days I've been pretty sluggish despite going to bed fairly early, but I have also been eating worse than usual and haven't exercised much. I definitely wake up feeling far better than a night without CPAP, though.

I've also noticed a few more leaks than usual.

[Pugsy]

You aren't having any large leaks but if small leaks are waking you up and disturbing your sleep then of course that can affect how we feel because it affects our sleep quality.
Anything that disturbs our sleep and wakes us up is unwanted and needs to be fixed....even a teeny tiny leak.

The higher the pressure...the higher the vent rate and total leak numbers and also the greater challenges for preventing leaks.
Comes with the territory...higher pressures can make keeping the seal just harder to maintain.

If it is teeny tiny leaks waking you up you might look at trying a mask liner as often the liner makes those tiny annoying leaks be not so annoying. Less likely to disturb sleep.

[stevehenryy]

With that in mind, I turned the pressure down to 10 last night because I couldn't control the leaks. I feel great today (though I did get 11 hours of sleep). I'm starting to think a different mask size or those liners might be necessary to get to 11 cm.

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[Pugsy]

Last night's report is an acceptable report since you feel decent.