Variable Breathing == REM Sleep?

[CiresWrossed]

Hello,

I am new this forum and new to CPAP; 5-6 weeks. I've been diagnosed with Central Sleep apnea and for me it responds to CPAP (AHI Averages around 3 with CPAP and 43 on my PSG report). I have been reviewing my data from EncoreViewer... the XML file data and I noticed a number of patches of what is labeled "Variable Breathing." Reading a few things online suggests to me that Variable Breathing is a physiological component of REM sleep and often concludes with an A or H event. But reading on the forum here I get the impression that it might be something else.

This morning -- I had been dreaming when my alarm clock rang. And sure enough when I reviewed the data I found that I was Variable Breathing when the alarm went off.

I am interested in any more information people have with regards to Variable Breathing and their relationship to other sleep events.

Thanks, CW

[Guest]

Some thoughts on this ...
Variable breathing is also described as erratic breathing. That in turn causes some difficulty for an Auto cpap machine in trying to accurately score events so if it detects erratic breathing it turns off its scoring algorithms for as long as the breathing remains erratic.

If you think about what erratic breathing can be, it is more or less periods when each breath can vary in length & volume such as when dreaming etc:

DSM