Better seal = worse numbers and increased tiredness?

[cheesy_rice]

this is so weird. i finally got sick of having to fiddle with my breeze headset throughout the night so using a rubberband i've done a little rig job that seems to have made it better. the problem was that little plastic clip that you could move forward on the extender piece. this allows you to have the front straps more angled thus holding the whole contraption in place better. it's pretty rickety and tends to pop off on one side and i would have to reach up and pop it back on at least half a dozen times throughout the night.

so, i secured it down with a rubberband and now it stays in place perfectly and i could tell right away that i had a much better seal. this was two nights ago and i KNOW that i am sleeping deeper and waking up a lot less.

here's the weird part........ my Encore Pro numbers are worse and more importantly i am feeling more tired through the day.

when i get home tonight i will post the actual data. in the meantime, has anyone heard of this happening? a better seal but with worse numbers?

maybe it's an indication that I need to increase the pressure setting? I'm at 12 right now.

[Wulfman]

maybe it's an indication that I need to increase the pressure setting? I'm at 12 right now.

That would be my thought. (UNLESS you were mouth-leaking)
My theory.....your machine was increasing the amount of air to compensate for the leakage.
I've experienced somewhat the same thing on occasions.

Den

[cpapjack]

It sounds to me that you may be mouth breathing.

Jack

[CollegeGirl]

Did you ever make it into Large Leak (LL)? If you did, when the machine reaches that stage, it stops recording data altogether, because it is unable to compensate for the leak or read the airflow coming back. As a result, when you go from having large leaks to normal leak, your AHI can appear to go up. In fact, the machine is just able to read all of the events again.

A better seal is definitely a good thing. It's impossible to accurately determine anything from the data you see until all leaks are under control. Were it me, I'd give it several days and see how your data looks then before making other adjustments, as AHI fluctuates from night to night for most people.