Tired of being tired

[katestyles]

On paper the reports look good. How are you feeling and sleeping?

Feeling pretty tired past few days.
Not bad like precpap days but more than I would like.

I wonder if the up and down pressures are disturbing your sleep enough to keep you tired, but not enough to wake you up much. Your numbers are great, but the pressure does go up and down a lot. It is doing its job well, but might be bothering you a little. Maybe keeping you from getting enough deep sleep. I would experiment and raise the minimum by 1 or 2. Unless it is uncomfortable or causes something new, I would try for a few nights and see if you feel more rested.

I'm raising it tonight to 9.. since 95% of the time I am over 9 anyways.
Holy crap just realized I slept 10 hours one of those days

Do it.

[Pugsy]

You need to understand what a 95% number is....
It's NOT where you spent 95 % of the night...
the definition is.... where the pressure was at OR BELOW for 95% of the night. The "or below" part is critical to the definition.
People often don't understand it or forget that part...but it is critical to the definition.

[katestyles]

8 might be better.....

[pizzafan]

You need to understand what a 95% number is....
It's NOT where you spent 95 % of the night...
the definition is.... where the pressure was at OR BELOW for 95% of the night. The "or below" part is critical to the definition.
People often don't understand it or forget that part...but it is critical to the definition.

I see. Would you recommend 8 then ?

[Pugsy]

You need to understand what a 95% number is....
It's NOT where you spent 95 % of the night...
the definition is.... where the pressure was at OR BELOW for 95% of the night. The "or below" part is critical to the definition.
People often don't understand it or forget that part...but it is critical to the definition.

I see. Would you recommend 8 then ?

Well.....since you asked.
Personally I have my doubts that the small pressure changes you are seeing are in any way responsible for your not feeling as good as your numbers look. I know that there looks like a lot pressure changes going on but most of that is due to image scale...
7 to 12 isn't a huge difference IMHO...now if you were seeing 7 to 18...then we have a different discussion.
BUT...it wouldn't be impossible for those changes to be impacting sleep quality and thus how you feel during the day and it is certainly worth trying to limit the pressure movement in an effort to see if it helps or not. Some people report that they do sleep better with minimal pressure movement or even fixed cpap mode.

If it were me and I wanted to experiment with limiting the auto adjusting range I would do multiple experiments and I would take the time to keep a meticulous log as to how I felt with each experiment.
So I would increase the minimum 1 cm for a week...then another 1 cm increase for a week...then another and finally probably end with around 12 cm which essentially would make it almost a fixed pressure most likely.
I did this same experiment a long time ago...at the time my minimum was 10 and max was 20 (I sometimes would see 18 cm max briefly) so I decided to increase 0.5 cm a week until I got tired of the experiment.
Took 6 weeks to work up to 13 cm minimum....pressure line smoothed out quite a bit but the AHI never really changed....hours of sleep never really changed....how I felt never really changed so I aborted the experiment after a week at 13 cm minimum. Didn't hurt anything but didn't seem to improve anything either...but I did answer the "what if" question that was in my mind.

You have to go at it from a scientific experiment attitude and you have to keep meticulous records so that you can look back and see if you spot any changes in anything or patterns.

As with any experiment...if you have some horrible results you abort early....like if you start getting bad aerophagia issues or a truck load of centrals pop up or your sleep quality goes immediately in the toilet.

Could the pressure increases (they really aren't nearly as rapid as the graph makes it look like) be affecting things....maybe....
and the the only way to answer the question for sure is to try limiting the pressure movement and see what happens.

Sometimes it does offer an answer to the "what if" question and that in itself makes it a worthwhile experiment...and you always learn something from experiments...even if all you learn is "it didn't change anything"...

[pizzafan]

You need to understand what a 95% number is....
It's NOT where you spent 95 % of the night...
the definition is.... where the pressure was at OR BELOW for 95% of the night. The "or below" part is critical to the definition.
People often don't understand it or forget that part...but it is critical to the definition.

I see. Would you recommend 8 then ?

Well.....since you asked.
Personally I have my doubts that the small pressure changes you are seeing are in any way responsible for your not feeling as good as your numbers look. I know that there looks like a lot pressure changes going on but most of that is due to image scale...
7 to 12 isn't a huge difference IMHO...now if you were seeing 7 to 18...then we have a different discussion.
BUT...it wouldn't be impossible for those changes to be impacting sleep quality and thus how you feel during the day and it is certainly worth trying to limit the pressure movement in an effort to see if it helps or not. Some people report that they do sleep better with minimal pressure movement or even fixed cpap mode.

If it were me and I wanted to experiment with limiting the auto adjusting range I would do multiple experiments and I would take the time to keep a meticulous log as to how I felt with each experiment.
So I would increase the minimum 1 cm for a week...then another 1 cm increase for a week...then another and finally probably end with around 12 cm which essentially would make it almost a fixed pressure most likely.
I did this same experiment a long time ago...at the time my minimum was 10 and max was 20 (I sometimes would see 18 cm max briefly) so I decided to increase 0.5 cm a week until I got tired of the experiment.
Took 6 weeks to work up to 13 cm minimum....pressure line smoothed out quite a bit but the AHI never really changed....hours of sleep never really changed....how I felt never really changed so I aborted the experiment after a week at 13 cm minimum. Didn't hurt anything but didn't seem to improve anything either...but I did answer the "what if" question that was in my mind.

You have to go at it from a scientific experiment attitude and you have to keep meticulous records so that you can look back and see if you spot any changes in anything or patterns.

As with any experiment...if you have some horrible results you abort early....like if you start getting bad aerophagia issues or a truck load of centrals pop up or your sleep quality goes immediately in the toilet.

Could the pressure increases (they really aren't nearly as rapid as the graph makes it look like) be affecting things....maybe....
and the the only way to answer the question for sure is to try limiting the pressure movement and see what happens.

Sometimes it does offer an answer to the "what if" question and that in itself makes it a worthwhile experiment...and you always learn something from experiments...even if all you learn is "it didn't change anything"...

Sounds like a plan! Also, my water tank is getting some icky bacteria spots/ or water spots. I keep cleaning it with baby wipes and I only use distilled water.

[Pugsy]

I don't know what to tell you about the water chamber except maybe stop with with baby wipes and see what happens.

I use distilled water only....wash it with plain hot soapy water and rinse it...maybe once ever couple of months and it's a spotless as the day I opened the box and it was brand new.
I top the water off every night too...don't even drain it in the mornings.

Maybe there is something in those baby wipes leaving some sort of residue that is attractive to organisms.

[pizzafan]

I don't know what to tell you about the water chamber except maybe stop with with baby wipes and see what happens.

I use distilled water only....wash it with plain hot soapy water and rinse it...maybe once ever couple of months and it's a spotless as the day I opened the box and it was brand new.
I top the water off every night too...don't even drain it in the mornings.

Maybe there is something in those baby wipes leaving some sort of residue that is attractive to organisms.

Will do. Need to celebrate. 2 months anniversary with my CPAP.

[pizzafan]

upped minimum to 9, def not a good night lol
I felt brave because the prior night i upped it to 8 and felt good. didn't put SD card back in and didn't capture that night's data.

[Pugsy]

Please don't go making changes in anything too quickly. Give your body a chance to adjust to a change before making a new change.

[pizzafan]

Please don't go making changes in anything too quickly. Give your body a chance to adjust to a change before making a new change.

Felt good with 8, going back to that today.

I also have a full face mask I want to try... is that too much change?

By the way thank you Pugsy! I appreciate your input so much , as well as others that took the time to contribute!

[katestyles]

Make sure that Sd card is in there too! Hope tonight is a good one.

What full face are you trying?

[Pugsy]

Go ahead and try the new mask if you wish but just use the 8 cm for now.
Do be prepared though just in case you don't sleep so great. I always had that happen with a new mask even without changing the pressure. It simply always seemed to take a few nights to get the tension just right and that's especially true of a full face mask...just more stuff to have to adjust.

The only mask that I have ever had be perfect on the first night was the Bleep...no headgear to screw with.

[pizzafan]

Make sure that Sd card is in there too! Hope tonight is a good one.

What full face are you trying?

Just did! Thank you for reminding me

I am trying the quattro air for her. Need to put my little one to sleep first because she is definitely afraid of that mask on me lol

Go ahead and try the new mask if you wish but just use the 8 cm for now.
Do be prepared though just in case you don't sleep so great. I always had that happen with a new mask even without changing the pressure. It simply always seemed to take a few nights to get the tension just right and that's especially true of a full face mask...just more stuff to have to adjust.

The only mask that I have ever had be perfect on the first night was the Bleep...no headgear to screw with.

I took melatonin and dream release. I sleep well with it. I am gradually trying to add in exercise and hopefully kick this melatonin habit.

[pizzafan]

High AHI, less sleep time, but I feel good.

i wandered lonely as a cloud summary