Middle Back Pain with Air Tubing on Top (P30i)

[lynninnj]

I don’t know which will help more but Ayrs saline nasal gel may help with the tacky you need to create a seal ( if lanolin doesn’t work.) Walmart usually has both. $10 lansinoh in breastfeeding aisle and Ayrs near pharmacy I think near decongestants? for around $4. Ayrs works better up the nose and lanolin on the nose but i would do one or other on any given night.

Make sure the sd isn’t super cheap. I bought the six dollar Onn Walmart card and it broke after two weeks so I went back and got the eight dollar SanDisk card. if you don’t have a laptop with an SD card reader, you should get one of them as well that plugs in and allows you to read the SD cards.

I keep trying to visualize what’s going on. With the hose management system obviously the P 30 I is up over your head. Where is the hose when you wear the P 10? My n30 has hose like P10. The hose management system is still up over my head but the hose itself is down in front of my chin and then around the pillow and up.

do you know anything about CPR? When you do CPR you tilt the persons head up so that all the stuff in the back of the throat clears out and airway is open. is it possible that when you sleep with the P 10 your head is up and extended? And then when you wear the P 30 I you don’t need your head an extension because it’s got the Teletubby thing on top? That would give you a better night sleep with the P 10. conversely, sleeping with your chin down may increase your AHI.

At the end of the day the sleep data that you could get from an SD card would be a huge help because it could give you a much clearer idea of what is going on. The fact that you’ve done such experimenting with the week on one mask and weak on another is already a huge step in the right direction.

So where is P10 mask hose on those nights?

[chunkyfrog]

Keep both masks, and wear the one that best fits your needs for that night.
Eventually, you will gravitate toward one or the other.
Or not. It does not matter.

[robysue1]

Hopefully soon you will be able to lower your AHI as well.

Out of curiosity, what AHI should I be shooting for? I'm pretty happy with having 33 AHI during my initial sleep study, to being reduced to less than 3 a night with my CPAP machine. Note that my AHI remains under 5 regardless of which mask I wear.

There are a lot of people who swear that you have to get your AHI super low (i.e. consistently below 1) in order to have your xPAP therapy "optimized".

But there's more to optimizing xPAP than achieving super low AHI night after night. Sometimes the work needed to reduce the AHI from 3ish to less than 1 causes more disruption to your sleep than the marginal benefit is worth. (That's certainly true for me.)

At a certain point the question has to become: What's the overall quality of your sleep? In other words, are you able to get to sleep quickly? Do you have few or no wakes during the night? When you do wake up in the night, do you get back to sleep quickly? And, most important of all, do you feel rested when you get up in the morning?

For some people (again, I seem to be one of them), the machine will typically score enough events when I am transitioning to sleep to keep the AHI from consistently being below 1. But these events would likely not be scored on a real in-lab sleep test and I discount them as sleep-wake-junk or SWJ for short. If I'm feeling rested in the morning, it doesn't really matter if my overnight AHI = 0.5 or if my overnight AHI = 3.5. Once the AHI gets up to 4, I usually do feel it because at that point there is usually a cluster or two of events that did happen when I was mostly likely asleep.

I also make a point of judging how rested I feel when I wake up before I look at the data. And I try really hard not to let a "bad" AHI ruin how I feel if I'm actually feeling pretty good when I wake up. Conversely, there have been plenty of days where I've woken up feeling pretty lousy, but the AHI is less than 1. Why? Because typically on those nights I simply did not sleep very well in terms of things that are not directly related to OSA. Sometimes the problem is as simple as I'm coming down with a head cold. Other times, I spent a lot of time tossing and turning, but the SWJ breathing was not ragged enough to get flagged as OAs, Hs, and CAs. Sometimes my aerophagia is acting up and I kept waking up to turn the machine off and back on in order to give my poor stomach a bit of a break in terms of the pressure. Sometimes it's as simple as I got to bed really late even for me (3:00 AM or later) and still had to force myself to get up before 8:30 AM because of something going on at work or because of an early morning doctor appointment.

With the P10, even though the myAir app doesn't show it (myAir always thinks I have a 5/5 mask seal), I know I definitely have mask leakage especially when I roll over and the thing rolls up along my face and comes out of one nostril. I can hear it, and then of course I have air blowing all over my face until I mentally wake up a bit and fix it.

Two things:

1) The my Air app's 5/5 mask seal score is based on the entire night and heavily weighs whether your median and 95% leak rates are below the Resmed Redline of 24 L/min. It's quite possible that your leaks are much, much smaller than 24 L/min and it also sounds like you tend to wake up and fix the leak really quickly. So from the machine's point of view, those leaks are trivial: They're not affecting the efficacy of the xPAP therapy at all because they are either too small or too short to matter. But from your point of view, those leaks are highly disruptive of your sleep architecture because they're causing mini-wakes every time you try to move around in bed and because you find that you have to tighten the headgear far too tight just to get a seal that might let you roll over in bed.

2) With the P30i mask, you don't wake up to the sound of leaks all night long. That means you are likely getting better quality sleep in terms of sleep continuity. And that could actually mean that you are moving around less in bed. And the moving around less in bed is what's triggering the back ache.

The problem, of course, is that you want nice continuous sleep that still provides enough movement in bed so that your back isn't sore when you wake up. It could be that if you continue to use the P30i, your brain will eventually "get caught up" on continuous, good quality sleep and then start moving around in bed more frequently so that the back also doesn't get sore every night.

That's why I have to tighten the thing so much, to keep it in place when I switch positions during sleep. I don't consider myself a vain person but waking up with red bands along my cheekbones which persist for hours, like I've been wearing a diving mask, just doesn't look or feel right. But the cream sounds like a good idea.

You are right:

1) You should not have to tighten the headgear on the P10 so tight that you have red bands along your cheekbones that last for hours.

2) It may be worth trying the lanolin cream to get a better seal.

But also note this: If you manage to eliminate those pesky leaks with the P10, your brain just might decide to move around less during the night when you're using the P10 and the backache might become an issue with that mask as well.

I'll also throw this idea out there as well for trying to fix the irritating leaks with the P10: Since the P10 has the hose attached at nose level, the hose typically drapes across your chest, and this can make it more difficult to turn over because you have to "move the hose" at the same time as turning over. If you don't move the hose, the weight of the hose can pull the mask off the nose. There are two potential fixes for this problem:

(1) Hang the hose. Find a way of routing the hose over your head and securing in a way that gives you the freedom to turn over without having the hose pull the mask away from your face. You will need to work this out when you are awake and practice turning over to make sure you don't dislodge the hose from whatever you are hanging it on. You also need just enough slack in the hose between the hanging point and the mask to allow free movement from side to side without the hose sagging onto your face.

(2) Hug the hose while you are sleeping on your side. And then keep hugging it as you turn over in bed. That way the hose moves with the mask and your body and it's less likely to pull the mask away. In order to do this, you will need to run the hose under the covers. Again, you may want to practice this technique while awake in order to see whether that helps prevent the nasty leaks that keep waking you up when you try to turn over while wearing the P10.

The idea in both 1) and 2) is to fit the P10 as loose as possible and then experiment with the machine on and while you are awake to see if you can figure out a way of turning over that minimizes the chance that the hose's weight is pulling the mask away from your nose because you're not moving the hose along with the mask when you turn over.

I'll end with this question:

Do you actually feel rested after a night of fighting the leaks with the P10? Or is it just that while you know your sleep wasn't great, you are glad that there's no backache?

[robysue1]

do you know anything about CPR? When you do CPR you tilt the persons head up so that all the stuff in the back of the throat clears out and airway is open. is it possible that when you sleep with the P 10 your head is up and extended? And then when you wear the P 30 I you don’t need your head an extension because it’s got the Teletubby thing on top? That would give you a better night sleep with the P 10. conversely, sleeping with your chin down may increase your AHI.

Clearly decker12 is not getting better sleep with the P10: He's waking up multiple times fighting leaks and the headgear is so tight that it bugs him. Yes, he has no backache with the P10, but he's also not getting continuous sleep, and sleep continuity is just as important as a low AHI is when it comes to getting high quality sleep.

I'm a side sleeper. And if I tried to sleep with my head "up and extended" in the CPR position, that would guarantee that I would wake up with a super bad neck ache.

I personally sleep best with my head tucked down towards my chest in a fetal position. And I switch back and forth between a Swift FX pillows mask and the P10 pillows mask with the headgear pretty close to "ridiculously loose" and still manage to have almost no leaks that wake me up once I get to sleep. But I run the hose under the covers along my body and "hug" the hose all night long. When I turn over, the hose moves with me and so it doesn't pull the pillows off my nostrils.

The two questions that decker12 needs to be investigating are:

1) Is there a way to get his body to move around more in bed when using the P30i so the backache issue might go away?

2) Can he learn how to turn over in bed while using the P10 without triggering the leaks that are currently waking him up?

So where is P10 mask hose on those nights?

That's an important question. If we knew what decker12 is doing with the hose when using the P10, we could probably give him tips on how to move around in bed without having the weight of the hose pull the mask of his nose.

[robysue1]

Hopefully soon you will be able to lower your AHI as well.

Out of curiosity, what AHI should I be shooting for? I'm pretty happy with having 33 AHI during my initial sleep study, to being reduced to less than 3 a night with my CPAP machine. Note that my AHI remains under 5 regardless of which mask I wear.

With the P10, even though the myAir app doesn't show it (myAir always thinks I have a 5/5 mask seal), I know I definitely have mask leakage especially when I roll over and the thing rolls up along my face and comes out of one nostril. I can hear it, and then of course I have air blowing all over my face until I mentally wake up a bit and fix it. That's why I have to tighten the thing so much, to keep it in place when I switch positions during sleep. I don't consider myself a vain person but waking up with red bands along my cheekbones which persist for hours, like I've been wearing a diving mask, just doesn't look or feel right. But the cream sounds like a good idea.

Myair app tells you basically next to nothing compared to an SD card read by either oscar or sleephq.

I wouldn’t be happy with more than 1 ahi. Call me a fusspot but more than 10 rude awakenings in a night makes me cranky. Math it out. If you get 3 x 8 hours that’s 24 times your body lacked oxygen. Yes, 3 is way better than 33 (99x a night). I wager most posters who have been here a while are below 1. (my machine says .4 but sleephq will probably tell me it’s .46)

You are totally discounting the rude wakes that result from arousing enough to fix the leaks every single time decker12 turns over in bed. And since he's remembering those wakes, they are at least as disruptive as any events that are occurring in spite of the xPAP therapy. Moreover, what little information we have about decker12's AHI is that it's about the same with both masks.

In other words, using the P30i and having AHI = 3ish with no wakes to fix leaks is better than using the P10 and having an AHI = 3ish with wakes to fix leaks every time you want to turn over in bed.

[decker12]

Excellent questions and tips Robysue1, I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that up.

First, I'll hook up my SD card and run Oscar on the data to get some more concise data. I did it once as a test and it worked fine. Shame that myAir is so bare bones because it's clear the data is there and recorded, just that the App only shows you the bare minimum.

But there's more to optimizing xPAP than achieving super low AHI night after night. Sometimes the work needed to reduce the AHI from 3ish to less than 1 causes more disruption to your sleep than the marginal benefit is worth. (That's certainly true for me.)

I don't even know how I'd optimize it further. I don't seem to have any options on the device itself which I can tweak nor do I have the knowledge to do so and would worry about making it worse. But I'm also fine with my ~3 AHI because it's such a dramatic improvement over what it was without the machine.

The problem, of course, is that you want nice continuous sleep that still provides enough movement in bed so that your back isn't sore when you wake up. It could be that if you continue to use the P30i, your brain will eventually "get caught up" on continuous, good quality sleep and then start moving around in bed more frequently so that the back also doesn't get sore every night.

This is most likely the situation I'm experiencing. When I roll over to another side, with the p30 mask, I definitely wake up to do it. Probably because I'm not entirely confident that I won't get tangled up in this hose contraption hanging off the top of my head (yet).

(2) Hug the hose while you are sleeping on your side. And then keep hugging it as you turn over in bed. That way the hose moves with the mask and your body and it's less likely to pull the mask away. In order to do this, you will need to run the hose under the covers. Again, you may want to practice this technique while awake in order to see whether that helps prevent the nasty leaks that keep waking you up when you try to turn over while wearing the P10.

If I switch back over to the P10 I'll definitely try this tip. Great idea! Out of curiosity, where did you learn all this stuff? My sleep doctor is fine but mostly just gave me the most basic of instructions on how to use and clean the machine, without giving me any real tips or trick like I'm reading on this forum!

Yes, I do agree that in general, I wake up feeling more rested with CPAP. And I feel more rested with the P30 mask even though I get a sore back. Now, that being said, I would not say CPAP has dramatically changed my life so far. Yes, I know it's better for my body long term. One thing that is discouraging is that I have already found I cannot sleep at all without my CPAP machine anymore. I can't even take a nap on the couch without feeling like every breath is less than the one before it. But strangely if I lay down and read or watch TV, my breathing is fine.

I'm still going to bed at the same time, still waking up at the same time, and still yawning at 9PM on a weekday. Even though my AHI was 33, I never really felt I was getting bad sleep. Yeah, my wife would complain about my snoring especially when I had a bunch of beer. When I had my initial interview with a sleep doctor, I answered "No" to pretty much every question because I wasn't experiencing any of the symptoms she asked me about. So I'm now in this situation where I have a thousand dollar machine, a couple hundred dollars worth of hoses and masks, I've rearranged my bedroom to facilitate all this stuff, my wife has to change her sleep habits so she doesn't roll over and accidentally snag my hose with her hand, and now I'm "chained" to this machine or I can't sleep at all. I'm not looking for an excuse not to use it - short of the sore back I'm fine with it and get 100/100 on myAir so it's working. I just feel like I've gone from getting okay sleep without a machine, to now getting NO sleep without a machine.

I'll take your advice on the P10 and give it another try. You're absolutely right about that "pulling" is what is probably breaking the seal and making the mask pop out of my nostril. I'm travelling next week and at hotels, so it'll be a good test to see how well I sleep with a different mask in a different bed.

[lynninnj]

Excellent questions and tips Robysue1, I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that up.

First, I'll hook up my SD card and run Oscar on the data to get some more concise data. I did it once as a test and it worked fine. Shame that myAir is so bare bones because it's clear the data is there and recorded, just that the App only shows you the bare minimum.

But there's more to optimizing xPAP than achieving super low AHI night after night. Sometimes the work needed to reduce the AHI from 3ish to less than 1 causes more disruption to your sleep than the marginal benefit is worth. (That's certainly true for me.)

I don't even know how I'd optimize it further. I don't seem to have any options on the device itself which I can tweak nor do I have the knowledge to do so and would worry about making it worse. But I'm also fine with my ~3 AHI because it's such a dramatic improvement over what it was without the machine.

The problem, of course, is that you want nice continuous sleep that still provides enough movement in bed so that your back isn't sore when you wake up. It could be that if you continue to use the P30i, your brain will eventually "get caught up" on continuous, good quality sleep and then start moving around in bed more frequently so that the back also doesn't get sore every night.

This is most likely the situation I'm experiencing. When I roll over to another side, with the p30 mask, I definitely wake up to do it. Probably because I'm not entirely confident that I won't get tangled up in this hose contraption hanging off the top of my head (yet).

(2) Hug the hose while you are sleeping on your side. And then keep hugging it as you turn over in bed. That way the hose moves with the mask and your body and it's less likely to pull the mask away. In order to do this, you will need to run the hose under the covers. Again, you may want to practice this technique while awake in order to see whether that helps prevent the nasty leaks that keep waking you up when you try to turn over while wearing the P10.

If I switch back over to the P10 I'll definitely try this tip. Great idea! Out of curiosity, where did you learn all this stuff? My sleep doctor is fine but mostly just gave me the most basic of instructions on how to use and clean the machine, without giving me any real tips or trick like I'm reading on this forum!

Yes, I do agree that in general, I wake up feeling more rested with CPAP. And I feel more rested with the P30 mask even though I get a sore back. Now, that being said, I would not say CPAP has dramatically changed my life so far. Yes, I know it's better for my body long term. One thing that is discouraging is that I have already found I cannot sleep at all without my CPAP machine anymore. I can't even take a nap on the couch without feeling like every breath is less than the one before it. But strangely if I lay down and read or watch TV, my breathing is fine.

I'm still going to bed at the same time, still waking up at the same time, and still yawning at 9PM on a weekday. Even though my AHI was 33, I never really felt I was getting bad sleep. Yeah, my wife would complain about my snoring especially when I had a bunch of beer. When I had my initial interview with a sleep doctor, I answered "No" to pretty much every question because I wasn't experiencing any of the symptoms she asked me about. So I'm now in this situation where I have a thousand dollar machine, a couple hundred dollars worth of hoses and masks, I've rearranged my bedroom to facilitate all this stuff, my wife has to change her sleep habits so she doesn't roll over and accidentally snag my hose with her hand, and now I'm "chained" to this machine or I can't sleep at all. I'm not looking for an excuse not to use it - short of the sore back I'm fine with it and get 100/100 on myAir so it's working. I just feel like I've gone from getting okay sleep without a machine, to now getting NO sleep without a machine.

I'll take your advice on the P10 and give it another try. You're absolutely right about that "pulling" is what is probably breaking the seal and making the mask pop out of my nostril. I'm travelling next week and at hotels, so it'll be a good test to see how well I sleep with a different mask in a different bed.

You might look into getting some of these for the road trip and keep it in your bag. https://www.amazon.com/MMM17304-Command ... 2742&psc=1

They are on my to do list to get instead of using the command strips I have with regular hook a twistie and a scrungie but that would work too.

Robysue made excellent points. It doesnt matter what the AHI is if you didnt sleep and dont feel rested. Sleep hq is a big glitchy on this page but iirc this is one of the most horrible nights sleep I have had lately. https://sleephq.com/public/142465fc-5de ... 31d6a1d8cb with a slightly stuffy nose my mouth kept popping open and air was coming out. I find that painfully uncomfortable. On paper it looks great but it wasn't great.

You really can't compare your treatment to others and I was just sharing what I personally would be happy/unhappy with. I only answered because you asked. However, you mentioned that your low was set at 6 and that makes me think the initial settings were done without a titration study. I had a home study with no titration and they started me at basic 4-20 factory defaults, wide open. It wasnt until the good folks here showed me to look at my median pressure and set it somewhere just below there that things drastically improved and are consistently low, for the most part. It is also true what she says that you should decide how you feel before you get a look at the numbers so you don't get into the habit of a letdown with "bad numbers".

Robysue brings up good points about getting used to managing the hose. I wake up every time I need to roll over and make sure to flip the hose along with me. You probably also have something like this: https://www.amazon.com/JAKIA-Minimize-A ... 136&sr=8-2 I would assume? It def helps keep you from getting tangled up. It may in fact be that you are getting tangled on the P10 hose and pulling it off your face.

So basically you have a few things to try to try to "scientifically" rule in or out what is working best for you.

Good luck!

Edit: if you ever wanted to manage your own settings its easy to do, but, another option is to have your provider check that you have the proper settings the next time you go for a compliance visit. If he/she makes no changes and/or you feel up to it it is not difficult to do.

[robysue1]

If I switch back over to the P10 I'll definitely try this tip. Great idea! Out of curiosity, where did you learn all this stuff? My sleep doctor is fine but mostly just gave me the most basic of instructions on how to use and clean the machine, without giving me any real tips or trick like I'm reading on this forum!

It started with cpaptalk.com.

But I've done a lot of reading on my own. Mainly because I was so frustrated with the fact that sleep doc #1 treated me like a mushroom: He seemed to think the less I knew, the better off I'd be. When I brought up getting a script for a full data machine instead of a "brick", he had the audacity to tell me there was no need for any data because I would be feeling better "in two weeks." But I had a genuinely bad transition to xPAP and I was quite the outlier in terms of the many, many issues I had with xPAP at the start. Two weeks into therapy, I was a walking zombie and feeling about 1000 times worse than I had before the start of xPAP. I was asymptomatic in terms of daytime sleepiness and I only had the sleep study done because my husband had witnessed me stopping breathing at night---a lot.

xPAP triggered severe aerophagia and that triggered the worst insomnia that I've ever had in my life. I've always been prone to a bit of sleep onset insomnia, but with xPAP, the sleep onset insomnia intensified and sleep maintenance insomnia also became a significant, severe problem.

Without cpaptalk.com and a PA in sleep doc #1's office who was good at providing cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), I would never have made it to becoming a reasonably happy PAPer.

One thing that is discouraging is that I have already found I cannot sleep at all without my CPAP machine anymore. I can't even take a nap on the couch without feeling like every breath is less than the one before it.

That's because your brain has decided it likes not being woken up 33 times an hour needing to unobstruct the airway and restart the breathing.

In other words, it's not that you've lost the ability to get to sleep without your CPAP; its that your brain does not want to return to the kind of sleep that is disrupted by breathing issues even for a short nap. Sleeping without having to be vigilant in order to arouse at whenever the airway gets blocked is far more relaxing for your brain and its decided it doesn't want to go back to the old "normal."

But strangely if I lay down and read or watch TV, my breathing is fine.

Wake breathing (which is what you are doing when you lay down and read or watch tv) is controlled by the voluntary nervous system and that voluntary nervous system is also in charge of keeping your airway nice and open when you are awake. But when you go to sleep, the control of your breathing is switched over to your automatic nervous system and the conscious control of the the muscles that keep the airway open is reduced. So the breathing becomes much more regular (and shallow) than your normal wake breathing and the muscles responsible for keeping the airway open relax, and unfortunately they relax so much that the airway collapses. Unless, of course, your CPAP is providing just enough pressure to keep that airway open.

I'm still going to bed at the same time, still waking up at the same time, and still yawning at 9PM on a weekday. Even though my AHI was 33, I never really felt I was getting bad sleep. Yeah, my wife would complain about my snoring especially when I had a bunch of beer. When I had my initial interview with a sleep doctor, I answered "No" to pretty much every question because I wasn't experiencing any of the symptoms she asked me about.

Been there, done that. The only reason that my PCP sent me to the sleep lab was that my husband said that I quit breathing at night some times and he (my husband) was alarmed enough about it that he would sometimes lie awake listening to me breathe just so he could shove me a bit to restart my breathing if I quit breathing.

I had no daytime sleepiness. I seldom was sleepy (or even yawning) before around midnight and with the help of an alarm clock I was getting up feeling "ok" but not "great" at 7:30. I had some pain in my hands and feet attributed to minor arthritis and some fatigue attributed to the fact that I was going through menopause. In terms of sleep, I would have said that most nights I slept "ok" and that when I didn't sleep "ok" it was because of nasal congestion or because I was under stress at work.

So I'm now in this situation where I have a thousand dollar machine, a couple hundred dollars worth of hoses and masks, I've rearranged my bedroom to facilitate all this stuff, my wife has to change her sleep habits so she doesn't roll over and accidentally snag my hose with her hand, and now I'm "chained" to this machine or I can't sleep at all.

My hubby didn't really have to change his sleep habits, but it took me a very long time to figure out a comfortable sleeping position: Pre-cpap I slept on my side with my nose snuggled into hubby's arm pit. That didn't work with a hose attached to my nose.

I'm not looking for an excuse not to use it - short of the sore back I'm fine with it and get 100/100 on myAir so it's working. I just feel like I've gone from getting okay sleep without a machine, to now getting NO sleep without a machine.

So you've been assimilated by the Cult of the Hoseheads.

In all seriousness, the reason you can't sleep without the machine is that your brain realizes that what passed for "sleep" before you started CPAP was highly disrupted sleep that was barely better than no sleep at all. And the brain doesn't want to go back to that.

I'll take your advice on the P10 and give it another try. You're absolutely right about that "pulling" is what is probably breaking the seal and making the mask pop out of my nostril. I'm travelling next week and at hotels, so it'll be a good test to see how well I sleep with a different mask in a different bed.

Good luck!

[ChicagoGranny]

And, most important of all, do you feel rested when you get up in the morning?

I was recently convinced by some sleep professionals and my own experience that it is best to evaluate a night's sleep at the end of the next day. Ask yourself questions like, were you energetic during the day? Did you have any excess sleepiness?

Thanks for correcting the idea that an AHI of 1.0 should be the goal. Newbies shouldn't be given unrealistic statistics goals. I always mentally discount my AHI by the amount of apparent SWJ. For all that is known now, decker12's 3.0 AHI may include significant amounts of SWJ.

[Pugsy]

I always mentally discount my AHI by the amount of apparent SWJ.

Yeah, me too. My AHI is ALWAYS about 75% SWJ stuff. Doesn't matter if it is 1.0 or 3.0 or 5.0 or 10.0......always mostly SWJ.
Had a 9.4 AHI last summer and it was 90% SWJ.....bad sleep night due to back pain from some dumbass overdoing things with the flower gardens I have.

[robysue1]

And, most important of all, do you feel rested when you get up in the morning?

I was recently convinced by some sleep professionals and my own experience that it is best to evaluate a night's sleep at the end of the next day. Ask yourself questions like, were you energetic during the day? Did you have any excess sleepiness?

Yep. That really would be the best way to evaluate a given night's sleep.

[decker12]

I always mentally discount my AHI by the amount of apparent SWJ.

Yeah, me too. My AHI is ALWAYS about 75% SWJ stuff. Doesn't matter if it is 1.0 or 3.0 or 5.0 or 10.0......always mostly SWJ.
Had a 9.4 AHI last summer and it was 90% SWJ.....bad sleep night due to back pain from some dumbass overdoing things with the flower gardens I have.

What does "SWJ" mean?

[Pugsy]

I always mentally discount my AHI by the amount of apparent SWJ.

Yeah, me too. My AHI is ALWAYS about 75% SWJ stuff. Doesn't matter if it is 1.0 or 3.0 or 5.0 or 10.0......always mostly SWJ.
Had a 9.4 AHI last summer and it was 90% SWJ.....bad sleep night due to back pain from some dumbass overdoing things with the flower gardens I have.

What does "SWJ" mean?

SWJ Sleep/Wake/Junk
When our awake and irregular breathing causes some sort of apnea flagged event but we aren't asleep.
If we aren't asleep then they don't count except to maybe point out the fact that we didn't sleep as soundly as we might prefer.

[decker12]

I know I'm getting a tad off my original topic but this information has been absolutely fantastic for me, I should have joined this forum sooner (or pressed my Dr for more information before just trying to figure it out for the past 4 months).

How does one reduce their AHI when on a CPAP machine? I am looking over the past 3 month's worth of data and I'm always between 1.5 and 3. I'm fine with those numbers because they're so much better than the 33 I was without the machine. That being said, I don't know how I'd lower it any more if I wanted to. It seems pretty binary - put the mask on, make sure it has a decent seal and it doesn't fall off, and go to sleep. Is there something I should be doing or tweaking or keeping track of to get a lower number?

[lynninnj]

I know I'm getting a tad off my original topic but this information has been absolutely fantastic for me, I should have joined this forum sooner (or pressed my Dr for more information before just trying to figure it out for the past 4 months).

How does one reduce their AHI when on a CPAP machine? I am looking over the past 3 month's worth of data and I'm always between 1.5 and 3. I'm fine with those numbers because they're so much better than the 33 I was without the machine. That being said, I don't know how I'd lower it any more if I wanted to. It seems pretty binary - put the mask on, make sure it has a decent seal and it doesn't fall off, and go to sleep. Is there something I should be doing or tweaking or keeping track of to get a lower number?

Data.

Real hard data.

Not myair.

do you have an sd card in there yet?
put one in.
post some data
keep track of which mask on which night

Until then it’s guesswork.