19 Year Old Diagnosed Months Ago And Struggling A LOT

[coopbosses]

Ok guys I'm headed to sleep with the CPAP for the second night in a row, it is currently 12am. I really couldn't have done this or be doing this without your guys' support so I really appreciate you guys Thanks so much for all the help you've given it's made this much more easier to understand.
Goodnight y'all, I'll update the post in the morning and check out my OSCAR stats for tonight, thanks Miss Em for suggesting to download OSCAR!

[Miss Emerita]

I hope you're having a good sleep, coopbosses, and congrats on making it through the night, plus getting Oscar up and running. You're really something!

I could see the imgur image of your Oscar daily report. You may already know this, but just in case.... Hypopneas are partial obstructions of your airway, rather than full-blown total obstructions; those are obstructive apneas (OAs). Central apneas, or Clear Airways (CAs), are where you stop breathing for at least ten seconds but don't have any obstruction. Those are the three kinds of events that go into your AHI. The Oscar data also show us flow limitations (times when there's a little bit of limitation in the airway) and RERAs (respiratory effort related arousals), where despite having none of the above, you have to make an extra effort to breathe and that produces a little arousal from your sleep. You can ignore the "variable breathing" statistics and the VS2 statistics.

So, you had only one OA, which is great, and just a few CAs, which is absolutely nothing to worry about. It's those hypopneas that would be nice to reduce, as you have already noted.

How do you feel about changing your settings yourself? It's perfectly OK, but some people prefer to go through their sleep technician instead. If you're OK changing the settings, here's how: "Once the device is powered, press and hold both the control dial and the Ramp button on the device for at least 5 seconds. You are now in Provider Mode. To adjust a setting, rotate the control dial to your desired menu option, then press the control dial to select that setting. Rotate the control dial to change the setting. Press the control dial again to save the change. Select the "Home" icon to exit Provider Mode and return to Patient Mode." That's from this web page:
https://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap- ... tup-manual

I will be interested to see a daily report for the sleep you're having now. After that, I or others could suggest a few tweaks to your settings that might help you reduce the number of hypopneas you're having -- either changes you could make yourself or suggest to your sleep tech.

Onward!

[zonker]

Ok guys I'm headed to sleep with the CPAP for the second night in a row, it is currently 12am. I really couldn't have done this or be doing this without your guys' support so I really appreciate you guys Thanks so much for all the help you've given it's made this much more easier to understand.
Goodnight y'all, I'll update the post in the morning and check out my OSCAR stats for tonight, thanks Miss Em for suggesting to download OSCAR!

coop? posting your charts here would be much easier on everyone if you did via the attachment feature below.

if you scroll down, you'll see two tabs, one marked "options" and the other marked "attachments". choose the latter and follow the instructions.

easy-peasy.

good luck!

[Julie]

Oh! You did it! And it looks so normal !

Nothing especially 'bad' at all, and over time it should get better (under 2-3).

What I would suggest is to raise the max pressure setting (now 12) to 20, which is more usual and less limiting to the min. that may want to go higher than 12 on occasion, plus if you sleep on your back, which can provoke more 'events' (like hypops), and figure out a way to e.g. not flip when asleep, things could improve a bit as well, but they're pretty good now anyhow, so doing great starting out.

[tomkatt]

Congrats on your first night making it through with CPAP therapy.

As you've seen, sleep apnea isn't just an "old person disease" or necessarily tied to obesity. I was pretty fit when I got my diagnosis at 34 years old. 5'8", 173 lbs, and working out with heavy weights at least three times a week. Not sure if it was related or not, but I was diagnosed with T2 Diabetes when I was 30 and I assumed the snoring and apnea issues would go away when I got that under control. It didn't happen.

One thing I'll recommend is to see if you can get a more comfortable or minimal mask. I'm partial to the Philips Dreamwear nasal cushion, and have recently started experimenting with the Fisher & Paykel Brevida. The right mask makes a world of difference. For the first few months I did CPAP therapy back in 2017 I was using a Philips Wisp mask, and while it's by no means a bad mask, it wasn't the right one for me. I struggled so much to sleep those first two months or so until I said screw it and researched, then bought a new mask. Your troubles sleeping with the mask might be the same sort of issue.

[coopbosses]

Hi all, update on night 2. Things didn't go as well as the first night unfortunately. I fell asleep at 2 am since i had been up all night trying to sort out some personal stuff, but I did have the mask on and cpap running while I was asleep. When I woke up however the mask was off and the machine was off? I looked at how long it had been in use for and apparently it had been going only an hour and I have no memory of taking it off or turning the machine off?

What I did the first night to prevent this exact thing from happening was put the cpap machine away from arms reach so I couldn't do anything while I slept, but I thought since i finally was able to sleep with it i could have it in arms reach if I wanted to use the ramp to lower the pressure while I tried to sleep. When I slept at 2 though i slept SO QUICKLY because I was so tired so having the cpap on was not an issue, but I woke up without the mask on and cpap off? Weird right, has this ever happened to you guys?

Tonight I'll do what I did like the first night and keep it out of arms reach again. Kind of sucks though since i did have it on but I guess i must have taken it off while I was asleep or woke up for a few seconds and turned it off I have no memory of it though.

[coopbosses]

I hope you're having a good sleep, coopbosses, and congrats on making it through the night, plus getting Oscar up and running. You're really something!

I could see the imgur image of your Oscar daily report. You may already know this, but just in case.... Hypopneas are partial obstructions of your airway, rather than full-blown total obstructions; those are obstructive apneas (OAs). Central apneas, or Clear Airways (CAs), are where you stop breathing for at least ten seconds but don't have any obstruction. Those are the three kinds of events that go into your AHI. The Oscar data also show us flow limitations (times when there's a little bit of limitation in the airway) and RERAs (respiratory effort related arousals), where despite having none of the above, you have to make an extra effort to breathe and that produces a little arousal from your sleep. You can ignore the "variable breathing" statistics and the VS2 statistics.

So, you had only one OA, which is great, and just a few CAs, which is absolutely nothing to worry about. It's those hypopneas that would be nice to reduce, as you have already noted.

How do you feel about changing your settings yourself? It's perfectly OK, but some people prefer to go through their sleep technician instead. If you're OK changing the settings, here's how: "Once the device is powered, press and hold both the control dial and the Ramp button on the device for at least 5 seconds. You are now in Provider Mode. To adjust a setting, rotate the control dial to your desired menu option, then press the control dial to select that setting. Rotate the control dial to change the setting. Press the control dial again to save the change. Select the "Home" icon to exit Provider Mode and return to Patient Mode." That's from this web page:
https://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap- ... tup-manual

I will be interested to see a daily report for the sleep you're having now. After that, I or others could suggest a few tweaks to your settings that might help you reduce the number of hypopneas you're having -- either changes you could make yourself or suggest to your sleep tech.

Onward!

Thanks for the OSCAR suggestion again Em! : )
Haha, I thought Clear Airways meant my airway was good, not where I wasn't breathing hahaha. I looked at the results on saw them and though, oh, awesome! haha.
Since you've seen my results what would you recommend I change the settings to? I'm perfectly fine with changing them as if they don't feel comfortable or wrong I can always change them back no worries.
Thank you dearly for all the helpful info as well

[coopbosses]

Ok guys I'm headed to sleep with the CPAP for the second night in a row, it is currently 12am. I really couldn't have done this or be doing this without your guys' support so I really appreciate you guys Thanks so much for all the help you've given it's made this much more easier to understand.
Goodnight y'all, I'll update the post in the morning and check out my OSCAR stats for tonight, thanks Miss Em for suggesting to download OSCAR!

coop? posting your charts here would be much easier on everyone if you did via the attachment feature below.

if you scroll down, you'll see two tabs, one marked "options" and the other marked "attachments". choose the latter and follow the instructions.

easy-peasy.

good luck!

Ok cool, the next time I'll come back to this comment and hopefully get it right haha.
I'm not experienced with forums at all so never used this format before but thank you for the guide.

[coopbosses]

Oh! You did it! And it looks so normal !

Nothing especially 'bad' at all, and over time it should get better (under 2-3).

What I would suggest is to raise the max pressure setting (now 12) to 20, which is more usual and less limiting to the min. that may want to go higher than 12 on occasion, plus if you sleep on your back, which can provoke more 'events' (like hypops), and figure out a way to e.g. not flip when asleep, things could improve a bit as well, but they're pretty good now anyhow, so doing great starting out.

Yeah, I saw a lot of people say getting an AHI of around 1 would be optimal and you'd start feeling much better.
I didn't get a good sleep today due to what happened above, but i'm hoping with the easy fix of moving the machine I can have a good sleep with it tonight and see how the results are, also waiting to see what Em suggests as well since she suggested changing the settings up a bit too.
How have you felt since using cpap too by the way?

[coopbosses]

Congrats on your first night making it through with CPAP therapy.

As you've seen, sleep apnea isn't just an "old person disease" or necessarily tied to obesity. I was pretty fit when I got my diagnosis at 34 years old. 5'8", 173 lbs, and working out with heavy weights at least three times a week. Not sure if it was related or not, but I was diagnosed with T2 Diabetes when I was 30 and I assumed the snoring and apnea issues would go away when I got that under control. It didn't happen.

One thing I'll recommend is to see if you can get a more comfortable or minimal mask. I'm partial to the Philips Dreamwear nasal cushion, and have recently started experimenting with the Fisher & Paykel Brevida. The right mask makes a world of difference. For the first few months I did CPAP therapy back in 2017 I was using a Philips Wisp mask, and while it's by no means a bad mask, it wasn't the right one for me. I struggled so much to sleep those first two months or so until I said screw it and researched, then bought a new mask. Your troubles sleeping with the mask might be the same sort of issue.

Oh ok, this is actually really helpful since i'm renting out the CPAP and am able to change my mask if I want to, so I'll see if I get comfortable with my current mask the next few days until my next appointment and if not then I'll look into changing to something similar to yours, so thanks for the heads up this may help a lot with falling asleep with it.
By the way since your diagnoses and getting your treatment done, have you been feeling much better? The biggest issue for me is the feeling of tiredness all the damn time haha, so thats what i'm hoping to have treated once I get everything locked down.

[Pugsy]

Don't go changing anything in terms of pressure settings until you have some solid blocks of real sleep to evaluate your pressure needs.

Awake time or stuff flagged while awake doesn't count.
The machine doesn't have any way to know if you are asleep or not. Awake breathing is very irregular when compared to asleep breathing and the machine can and will flag awake breathing irregularities by mistake. It's very common for people new to cpap therapy to have problems either falling asleep or staying asleep or removing the mask prematurely....all this can lead to the machine flagging of events that aren't real asleep events.

If you aren't really asleep....it doesn't count.
Work on sleep quality first. Without sleep none of this matters.

Taking the mask off and not realizing it...fairly common. Take some tape and tape the straps to your cheeks or somewhere on your skin so that hopefully if you pull the mask off and you are half asleep the minor discomfort on the skin will wake you up enough to stop the unwanted behavior.

[coopbosses]

Don't go changing anything in terms of pressure settings until you have some solid blocks of real sleep to evaluate your pressure needs.

Awake time or stuff flagged while awake doesn't count.
The machine doesn't have any way to know if you are asleep or not. Awake breathing is very irregular when compared to asleep breathing and the machine can and will flag awake breathing irregularities by mistake. It's very common for people new to cpap therapy to have problems either falling asleep or staying asleep or removing the mask prematurely....all this can lead to the machine flagging of events that aren't real asleep events.

If you aren't really asleep....it doesn't count.
Work on sleep quality first. Without sleep none of this matters.

Taking the mask off and not realizing it...fairly common. Take some tape and tape the straps to your cheeks or somewhere on your skin so that hopefully if you pull the mask off and you are half asleep the minor discomfort on the skin will wake you up enough to stop the unwanted behavior.

Yeah will have a few nights sleep with the current settings so I see overall how the results turn out.
That's a good idea with the tape, I think I only had it turned off though because it was in arms reach so I will just put the machine back in position I had it the first night that I was able to sleep with it. But if I do it again I'll definitely use your idea and see how it goes with the tape, thanks for the suggestion!

[Julie]

Hi again, and again, relax. Everything will be fine, but not all at once, which is normal. Taking off the mask is normal for very many people, but they eventually stop doing that. You could work on getting your sleep 'hygiene' fixed up... i.e. go to bed at the same time every night... ahem. And don't fool around changing your pressures yourself (or otherwise) yet. Wait til things are stable so when/if you do make changes to anything, do them one at a time, for at least a few days each, so you'll know for sure what makes a difference rather than changing everything all at once and not knowing what did which.

Anyhow, my cat woke me to feed him... will put a pillow on his head if he keeps this up... have a nice day!

[Miss Emerita]

You're getting good advice here. It will be good to see some more Oscar data from you before suggesting any tweaks to your settings. As people have said, taking the mask off without remembering it is pretty common, so you have company there. The tape trick is a good one; another is to wear mittens or socks on your hands. Whatever trick you use, you probably won't need to use it a long time.

Julie mentioned sleep "hygiene." I kind of ignored the rules at first, thinking they somehow didn't apply to me, but I was wrong. Following them really helps! So give it your best shot. Here they are:

• Keep a consistent sleep schedule. Get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or during vacations.
• Set a bedtime that is early enough for you to get at least 7 hours of sleep.
• Don’t go to bed unless you are sleepy.
• If you don’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed.
• Establish a relaxing bedtime routine.
• Use your bed only for sleep and sex.
• Make your bedroom quiet and relaxing. Keep the room at a comfortable, cool temperature.
• Limit exposure to bright light in the evenings.
• Turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime.
• Don’t eat a large meal before bedtime. If you are hungry at night, eat a light, healthy snack.
• Exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet.
• Avoid consuming caffeine in the late afternoon or evening.
• Avoid consuming alcohol before bedtime.
• Reduce your fluid intake before bedtime.

[coopbosses]

You're getting good advice here. It will be good to see some more Oscar data from you before suggesting any tweaks to your settings. As people have said, taking the mask off without remembering it is pretty common, so you have company there. The tape trick is a good one; another is to wear mittens or socks on your hands. Whatever trick you use, you probably won't need to use it a long time.

Julie mentioned sleep "hygiene." I kind of ignored the rules at first, thinking they somehow didn't apply to me, but I was wrong. Following them really helps! So give it your best shot. Here they are:

• Keep a consistent sleep schedule. Get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or during vacations.
• Set a bedtime that is early enough for you to get at least 7 hours of sleep.
• Don’t go to bed unless you are sleepy.
• If you don’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed.
• Establish a relaxing bedtime routine.
• Use your bed only for sleep and sex.
• Make your bedroom quiet and relaxing. Keep the room at a comfortable, cool temperature.
• Limit exposure to bright light in the evenings.
• Turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime.
• Don’t eat a large meal before bedtime. If you are hungry at night, eat a light, healthy snack.
• Exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet.
• Avoid consuming caffeine in the late afternoon or evening.
• Avoid consuming alcohol before bedtime.
• Reduce your fluid intake before bedtime.

Hey Em! Yeah I'll try to get a whole weeks of CPAP usage and see what the results come out to be and how I feel.
Hopefully I don't take it off while basically barely conscious hahahah.
Thanks for all those tips, I'm currently working on my sleep hygiene to get a consistent sleep pattern. I normally am very consistent with it, it is just the CPAP that I have to get used to and incorporate into my nightly habit.
Will post my results from the next time I sleep