osa, ahi, m-o-u-s-e UPDATED 1-5-21

[Pugsy]

If it ain't broke I wouldn't go trying to fix it. I wouldn't go changing anything at this point.
Looks like that tiny reduction in EPR brought EPAP up enough to break up the clusters and I bet if you have any clusters they will be smaller and of shorter duration.

[zonker]

If it ain't broke I wouldn't go trying to fix it. I wouldn't go changing anything at this point.
Looks like that tiny reduction in EPR brought EPAP up enough to break up the clusters and I bet if you have any clusters they will be smaller and of shorter duration.

i bow before your experience.

thanks!

[zonker]

thought i'd dredge this up and show some new info. seems like i've got a stronger internet connection today so why not?

i've now got to the point where i have epr turned off and just going with the "full force" of my trusty machine. that in itself wasn't too much of a struggle. a bit of aerophagia but certainly not of the kind and quantity i've suffered through before.

so i'm going to post some graphs and ask for further advice. before i do that, i want to mention that after i had reduced my epr to nada, i decided i wanted to try a more radical step. since i joined the forum so long ago, i read of people who talk about sleeping on their stomachs. i was curious but never tried it. set in my ways, i like starting out on my back, long enough to feel sleep sneaking up on me, then roll to my left side to sleep. and it seemed like it was working, so why not?

nevertheless, i tried te stomach sleeping. to be precise, the falcon method. this took a very long time because i wouldn't start out that way, but ended up there. gradually i've gotten to the point where i start out that way and continue through the night in that position.

having said that, take a look at these charts-











yay! no more obstructives! and very few to NO ca's! but now i have these damned hypopneas showing up. i see i didn't include the night before my first chart. it was in the range of ahi of 1. so i bumped up my minimum pressure to try to squelch the hypopneas. worked, but then the ahi creeped back upwards. then another increase with last night's ahi falling.

again, i'm not chasing zero here. i, again, am just looking for the best i can do with this machine.

so i ask you all, is this the only way to go with this machine? keep raising the minimum? will i end up just doing straight cpap of 20?

i LIKE sleeping on my stomach now that i'm used to it. so far, i seem to be getting longer stretches of sleep at a time. i awake a bit stiff, but i always do stretches in the morning and that relieves THAT problem.

so, what are your opinions?

[zonker]

[zonker]

[zonker]

[Pugsy]

I wouldn't go screwing with things if it were me.

I don't know what your goals are though.

[zonker]

I wouldn't go screwing with things if it were me.

I don't know what your goals are though.

goal is to get as low as i can, ahi wise. anything between 1-1.5 and i start getting headaches.

right now, i seem to be hovering around .75 for the last three nights. i've had lower over the last winter and into spring.

so i'm going to shoot for .22 or some such. if increasing min pressure does that, i'll be happy. but i keep seeing this turning into a "cpap" fixed pressure of 20 and don't know how i feel about that.

i know that you feel that "it is what it is" and i shouldn't worry about what MAY be. but it's in my nature and prolly won't change any time soon.

[Pugsy]

Over the years I have done my share of experimentation. Some with good results and some with not so good and some with essentially no real change in results.

So all I can tell you is proceed with caution and be clear on your goals and the outcome. I wouldn't be all that keen on essentially using a higher and essentially a fixed pressure either but if it made me feel better then I might do it but I have already been down this experiment road some time back and all I went up to was a minimum of 13 cm...where I abandoned the experiment because nothing changed...AHI didn't change, hours of sleep didn't change, how I felt during the day didn't change, how I slept didn't change...so I saw no since in prolonging the experiment. My AHI runs between 1 and 2 most nights BUT when I go look at each event at least 75% are SWJ and reflect my own tossing and turning more than anything else. I figure my real asleep AHI is probably less than .3 per hour so I shrug my shoulders and move on. I wish cpap could fix my arthritis but it can't.

[zonker]

Over the years I have done my share of experimentation. Some with good results and some with not so good and some with essentially no real change in results.

So all I can tell you is proceed with caution and be clear on your goals and the outcome.

i think i'm clear on goals. just not sure of the outcome! to reiterate, i want to get my ahi as low as i possibly can. my perception of this is colored by the fact that i DID do this very thing. over the course of last winter and into spring, i was getting very low numbers, sub .50. for two weeks in february of this year, was mainly hovering around .23.

this doesn't mean i wasn't getting outlying numbers now and then.. i know enough to realize both the fact that i don't sleep the same every night and that the machine doesn't know if i'm awake or not when it presents these (what i consider) outlandish numbers. i know that if i'm cooking along under 1.0 and one night i get say 2.5, i'm not going to blow my stack over it.

what concerns me are trends. and i was trending up wards steadily when i first started this thread. now, the last five nights have shown a trend of sticking at .75 or so. now for tonight, i've already increased my lower setting by .2 and will see how this goes for the next few nights.

again, for ME, i find .75 good. but i remember feeling more rested and less "headachey" at .50. does that mean i'll be back complaining once i hit that? dunno, but i surely hope not.

I wouldn't be all that keen on essentially using a higher and essentially a fixed pressure either but if it made me feel better then I might do it but I have already been down this experiment road some time back and all I went up to was a minimum of 13 cm...where I abandoned the experiment because nothing changed...AHI didn't change, hours of sleep didn't change, how I felt during the day didn't change, how I slept didn't change...

i understand that. but i actually have seen numbers reduce and sleep quality improve by doing these experiments.

My AHI runs between 1 and 2 most nights BUT when I go look at each event at least 75% are SWJ and reflect my own tossing and turning more than anything else. I figure my real asleep AHI is probably less than .3 per hour so I shrug my shoulders and move on.

this is something i have trouble with. i remember the first time i read, a number of years ago, your explanation to someone else on how you could drag the cursor over. areas of an oscar(then sleepyhead chart) and see the x numbers of hours where one sleeps between those big events and can see a much lower ahi. this knocked my socks off! i found it a real motivational tool to help my not get depressed about high ahi. this was very useful in eliminating from the graph the swj that i would get at the beginning and end of my sleep sessions.

my trouble with it now is that i've gone past that. it makes me think, how can i trust the numbers that i'm getting if there is so much junk in there? why is it that i can take out swj when i'm at an ahi of 2.5? when i get an .11 or .23, there IS no junk to remove. i'm not sure if i'm expressing myself properly.

when i got up this morning, temp gauge said it was 64 in my bedroom. i took it at it's word. i didn't have to do any manipulating of number or math to come up with the "real" temperature.

does that make sense?

I wish cpap could fix my arthritis but it can't.

i hope you don't think that i'm thinking cpap can resolve my issue of sleeping for longer hours at a stretch. i am NOT and i'm sorry if it sounded that way. no, i find sleeping on my stomach is, for the most part, allowing me to sleep around five hours. and i realize, as you and palerider have both said, that we all wake up throughout the night. we just roll over go back to sleep. i find that is what i'm doing now.

i still have fragmented sleep beyond that five hours. but i can live with that.

btw, i want to encourage others to speak up about whatever they think they can add to this conversation. you can't think of every possibility, thought it's amazing to me how much ground you can cover!

[zonker]

so, here i am, carrying on. last week min at 19.6.

results-

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more to come.

[zonker]

on 12/4, dog ate my homework.

on 12/5-

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so i'm not seeing a great trend here, unless someone can see what i'm not.

decided to hell with it and turned my apap into a cpap. min 20, max 20-

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this was more aerophagia than i thought it would produce. but laying prone, it was tolerable and i slept through it. wasn't until after i got up for restroom that i lay on my side again and things got painful.

will see what happens as i stay the course, but i can't imagine this getting less than what it showed for last night.

i woke up with a headache but it went away quickly after some aspirin. didn't feel much like my old self until after morning stretches and breakfast.

will post more at the end of this week.

[zonker]

this last week-

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rest and comment below.

[zonker]

no idea why the above screenshots came out that way. sorry for the duplicates.

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i'm pleased with the results. it looks like i'm trending back where i want to be. i'm waking up refreshed with no sign of a headache on those days where i'm well below ahi of one.

have had a few disruptions in sleep this week, which i can mark down to stress. and the stress has led to bad eating habits. which also doesn't help my quality of sleep.

but that will sort itself out.

i'll stop posting weekly wrap ups and continue on, unless something pops up that puzzles me.

[Dog Slobber]

FWIW,

It's time to move to an AirCurve VAuto. They do 25 cm and possibly more comfortable. Your change in needs would likely easily justify the move to BiLevel.

Keep an eye out on Craig's list, every so often huge deals come up, or shoot LSAT a PM.