Calling All ZEO Users, Past and Present

[josh816]

Order a Zeo on Friday....but they still charged the postage even though the site says Free Shipping Till Dec. 20th.

I sent them an e-mail about the charge. I put it on a M/C and there was no way to avoid the shipping charge when ordering it.

I wonder if Cyber Monday will find it cheaper than the $99.00.

Weird that it charged you shipping. You in the US and selected Ground Shipping? Showing $0 for me at http://myzeo.tellapal.com/a/clk/2SxFll.

Good thing about the money back guarantee, if it goes down, I'd assume they'll refund you the difference. If not, you can always return it and rebuy it. Once you get it, let us know how you like it. BTW, I got a 99 ZQ last night!!

[avi123]

Hi,
I would like to hear about your experiences using ZEO. I am thinking about adding one to assist in overcoming non-respiratory related sleep disturbances, like PLMD. Personally, I think it's important to be able to objectively measure sleep quality. To me, the subjective measure by how one feels in the morning and the following day has too many variables to rely on alone as an indicator of progress being made.

I would like to get a reasonably accurate measure of the number of arousals and the time spent in the various stages during a sleep period. As a user, do you think the ZEO is capable of accurately doing this? Have you been able to substantiate the results provided by ZEO by any other source? If you think it's accurate, why? If not, why not?

I am skeptical but would certainly buy one if there is a consensus that the ZEO is a useful tool.

Thanks in advance for your responses, I look forward to hearing from you.
Jay

Jay I have a question:

If my Zeo shows that I have higher arousal index than during my PSG and my sleep efficiency dropped, what do I do then? My sleep Doc would not agree to look at a Zeo data output but only at a new PSG repeat if needed.

[Lizistired]

The Zeo does not accurately detect my arousals. Maybe because I am not awake for 30 seconds, I don't know.

[Jay Aitchsee]

Liz and Avi,

The zeo, by design, does not measure arousals. The major shortcoming IMO. It reports "awake" periods of 2 minutes or more. The 30 sec interval data could be useful in determining longer "arousals" which are tending toward "awake".

Since arousals are not recorded, there is no index to compare with PSG. My doctor uses my zeo reports to determine the relative effects of therapy on the sleep stages. For example, is deep sleep trending more or less? Are the number of awakenings increasing or decreasing? Are apneas occurring during REM? Etc.

Liz, I was wondering, do you read in bed after putting on the headband? If so, the zeo could be interpreting that as REM. Just a thought.

Jay

[Lizistired]

No Jay, I don't. I read in bed when I first started wearing the mask but I'm usually asleep in 10-15 minutes now so I don't bother.
I think I may get a new sensor. It was off the last time I wore it and recorded my early REM as DEEP. Maybe I'll try cleaning the sensor pads good with alcohol. Do you get them pretty wet when you do that? I wasn't sure so I had just wiped them with alcohol pads.

[Jay Aitchsee]

Liz, I covered the sensors with about 1/2 inch of alcohol in a small container, swished them around a couple of times and then let them air dry. I don't think there was any difference in performance after, but then I thought they were working OK before. My old sensors have 90+ days on them and the change sensor light came on. It's driven by days only, not condition and every thing continued to work fine. I did change it out a couple of days ago (since I had a new one) along with a new mask seal. Since, I've been having trouble with leaks waking me, dropping the zeo signal and getting everything to fit just right again. I'm sure in a couple of days everything will settle in, seems it takes about a week to get things aligned after a change.

On a different note, the only thing I can say for sure since I've been taking Vit D is that my AI dropped to effectively zero. I'm now down to about 1 for the night and it's usually associated with a position change. Coincidence? Don't know. My deep worked up to a peak of around 50 minutes again a week or so ago but then started back down and level off around 20 - still better than my long time average. The last few days, with the leaks and such, its been running closer to my average of 10. I had about 3 days of deep in the 50 range and I really felt much better which seemed to support the increase in deep reported by the Zeo. We'll see what happens when I get everything fitted properly again.

Jay

[Lizistired]

Thanks Jay. Maybe I'll just clean them and watch for the replace light.
That's great that your AHI is down. I've been running about 0.2 most nights. When it's higher and I look through the flow data, most are preceded by deep breaths. So I figure its turning over and don't worry about them. Sometimes I notice more O2 drops and when I check there are short apneas(unflagged). But I rarely have one over 12 seconds in duration, and the O2 drops and comes right back up.

[linagee]

Liz and Avi,

The zeo, by design, does not measure arousals. The major shortcoming IMO. It reports "awake" periods of 2 minutes or more. The 30 sec interval data could be useful in determining longer "arousals" which are tending toward "awake".

Since arousals are not recorded, there is no index to compare with PSG. My doctor uses my zeo reports to determine the relative effects of therapy on the sleep stages. For example, is deep sleep trending more or less? Are the number of awakenings increasing or decreasing? Are apneas occurring during REM? Etc.

Liz, I was wondering, do you read in bed after putting on the headband? If so, the zeo could be interpreting that as REM. Just a thought.

Jay

ZEO can indeed report more data than the "2 minute/30 second" periods you mentioned. Just look at the API. You can get a continuous stream of amplitudes using the raw firmware and an FT232 TTL serial cable. To the person that said ZEO is not an EEG. There is no reason it can't be. I'm not entirely sure if multiple ZEOs in the same area would work (I asked them and they said it would), but all you would need are X number of ZEOs and maybe some wires going from them to your scalp/etc areas of the head. The amplifiers used in the headband may not have the same SNR or bit sampling rates as a commercial unit, but it at least gets you 95% of the way there. Of course, the entire reason why the raw data is not typically displayed is that only a sleep technician typically can identify sleep stages from an unlabelled EEG. (Or someone who has the training.) The ZEO uses some sort of "fuzzy logic" to mimic how a sleep technician would pick stages. That is ZEO's secret sauce and that part is not open source. ZEO does have a whitepaper where they compare their fuzzy logic algorithm to a sleep technician's scoring and it is pretty close. (Close enough for a consumer device.)

[Jay Aitchsee]

Linagee,
Yes, of course you are correct. I have mentioned the availability of "raw data" in another thread, but I have not used it yet. There is a good deal of information on the zeo site's "sleep info center" and "blog/forum" regarding the technical workings of Zeo, using raw data, beta (or alpha) software, bio-feedback, and more. It is a little cumbersome to get at, but there is a lot of good info there.

In my previous post in this thread, I was speaking of that data "normally" available to the user.

I think the Zeo, by definition, is an EEG. Afterall, it electronically measures brainwaves. It is great tool to aid in understanding one's sleep. See these for more:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=68747&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p638020
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=68424&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p635357

Jay

[josh816]

Order a Zeo on Friday....

...

Jazzer4, have you received your Zeo yet? What do you think of it? This week I was able to get a 99, a 118, and 128!

Anyone else checked it out or gotten theirs yet? http://myzeo.tellapal.com/a/clk/2SxFll

[needzzzzs]

Got my Zeo Mobile a few days ago.

Have only managed to wear it for a brief nap.

Problems:

Headband too tight (and hurts) -- any solutions for that?

Pairing the headband with my iPod Touch sometimes takes several tries. By that time I'm fully awake and annoyed.


I haven't looked at the Zeo forums yet to see if there are solutions to either/both of these problems.

Would be interested in hearing from you all here who are using it.

Thanks!

Debbie

[josh816]

Got my Zeo Mobile a few days ago.

Have only managed to wear it for a brief nap.

Problems:

Headband too tight (and hurts) -- any solutions for that?

Debbie

I have the bedside model, so not sure about pairing. But the headband is adjustable. I've found that if it's TOO loose, it will slip off or not stay in contact with my forehead. But I prefer it to be fairly loose so that it's not uncomfortable. It took me a few nights to get it right.