tohtohroh wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 11:25 am
Overall, there's already been a massive improvement in my sleep quality, I do wake up a bit tired but I'm falling asleep almost instantly and I feel much more rested.
This bodes well. Since you have already seen a massive improvement, you've got the incentive to keep at it.
Since starting CPAP I've woken up in the middle of the night and end up falling back asleep without my mask on which is why there is a gap in data in the graphs, I think my body is still getting accustomed to CPAP but it hasn't been bothering me too much.
It's a typical newbie problem. Basic advice is this: If you don't remember taking the mask off in your sleep, don't beat yourself up over it. But if the problem persists for more than a few weeks, you may need to trouble shoot the issue.
But it's also worth remembering: If you wake up and realize the mask is off and the night's not over, put the mask back on before going back to sleep. You seem to be doing that already.
I am a bit concerned about my large leak, are my numbers normal here or should I be trying out new masks?
Leaks are a somewhat "fuzzy" issue. For the most part, your leaks are not large enough to worry about in terms of the efficacy of your therapy. And the leaks that are officially Large Leaks don't last long enough to be a significant issue in terms of the efficacy of your therapy. If you're sleeping through these leaks, then I wouldn't get too worried about them (yet). But I would keep an eye on them. If the official Large Leaks start to occupy 15% or 20% of the night on almost every night, then I'd say it's time to start worrying about trouble shooting them even if they're not waking you up.
But having said that, any leaks that wake you up are disruptive to getting an uninterrupted night of sleep, even if they're not very big and not very long. It's one thing to have leaks wake you up a few times a week. It's a whole different thing to have leaks waking you up all night long.
I tend to get one short high intensity period of apneas per night and other apneas spread across the night, is it expected to continue getting apneas during CPAP or can dialing in settings completely get rid of them?
A short, high intensity period of apneas might either indicate that your apnea has a positional component and you flipped on your back OR that your apnea is worse in REM and you hit a REM cycle. It can be a bit difficult to tease out which might be the case. And then there's this: If you're dozing very lightly going back and forth between a very light sleep and wake, the machine can mis-interpret your
wake breathing pattern as sleep disordered breathing and score a bunch of events, but these events are not "real" in the sense that they don't occur when you are actually fully asleep and they wouldn't be scored on an in-lab sleep test. (We call this
sleep-wake-junk breathing around here.) The events scored between 23:15 and 23:45 on the night of May 14 are most likely SWJ breathing because it doesn't look like you ever got soundly to sleep during that time frame on May 14.
Once you have a better idea of whether the intense cluster of events that you're seeing is more likely to be SWJ or more likely to be real events occurring while sleeping on your back or in REM, then you'll have a better idea of whether your minimum pressure setting should be increased by a bit in order to try t prevent those intense clusters from happening.
As for whether you will continue getting apneas during CPAP: For most people, even when the settings are dialed in and optimized, a few events will manage to sneak through the CPAP defenses. Sleep docs will say that if the treated AHI < 5.0, you're doing great. Folks around here, however, would argue that if your CPAP settings are optimal
and if you are sleeping
well with the machine (meaning no extended periods of SWJ), then your AHI ought to often be under 1.0 and only rarely above 2.5 or 3.0. But very, very few people see an AHI = 0.0 night after night after night.
I also was curious about my snoring: I'm an infamously loud snorer and have heard complaints from my family and friends my whole life, while according to the data my snoring seems to have drastically decreased there are still quite large spikes at times. Is this normal, or will it improve as I continue CPAP or dial in my settings?
Yes, a properly set CPAP should eliminate just about all of your snoring. A few spikes of snoring in your data are't anything to be alarmed at at this point in your adjusting to CPAP. Should they persist or should your family start complaining that your snoring is still really loud, then that might warrant bumping up the minimum pressure setting a bit.
I've included the last 2 nights of data, the second night I changed EPR from 3>2
Which feels more comfortable to you as you're trying to get to sleep or trying to get back to sleep? EPR = 2 or EPR = 3?
On both nights, your AHI is pretty decent for someone who is just starting out, particularly with no doctor to work with. So pick the EPR setting based on comfort.
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