Supplemental Oxygen some observations

First a little background.

I have an as yet undiagnosed condition that causes me to spontaneously wake a night in a range of occurrences from 1 to 2 times per hour. So my sleep is very fragmented to say the least.

With the help of my two sleep doctors (different practices), I went from a PR 750 AutoBiPap to a PR 960 AutoSV ASV machine which was a great help in dealing with my frequent sequences of central apneas. The longest on I tracked on my 750 went on for 2 1/2 minutes and I didn't wake up during the event. The longest sequence on my 960 went on for over 2 hours and I didn't wake up while the machine just stayed in ventilator mode switching the pressure from EPAP of 10 cmH2O to IPAP of 25 cmH2O.

One of my sleep doctors agreed with my suggestion that it might be helpful to get an O2 concentrator to see if I could raise my average night time SpO2 from the 88 to 90% range and improve my sleep. So I purchased a PR Everflo Q machine and set it to 2 LPM and I was off. That got me to the 90 to 92% range.

Last month I decided to increase the flow to 3.5 LPM to see if that helped in raising the level to about 94%. It did but there was an unanticipated effect - the point of this post.

I sue the Microsoft Band to track sleep quality and it reported an average of 11 or so wakes per night of 7 hours of being in bed, masked up, and sleeping. When the O2 level started to average around 94% +- , the wakes per night dropped down to about 4 and my perception of sleep quality improved. I really do feel better during the day. AHI dropped from 8-12 down to 3-5, hypopneas dropped dramatically without any change in my pressures. Centrals didn't seem to change.

I have no idea what physiology accounts for the change but am glad of it.
This whole process of CPAP therapy is a journey we all are on and sometimes we are the windshield and sometimes the bug.
Right now I think I am in windshield mode.

Cheers everyone.

That's great news, James!

As you know, I'm in the same boat as you, with nighttime wakes every 45 minutes or so. Right now, I'm in full-blown insomnia-mode due to being upset about my husband. I mentioned on another thread that he had a major stroke on Feb. 7th, and he spent a full month in the hospital and has recently been moved to a inpatient rehab facility. All of this has really messed with my sleep, as you can imagine.

My doc prescribed 2L O2 last year which only brought my SpO2 up to 90. I raised it to 2.5L and my SpO2 went up to ~94. It did not affect my spontaneous awakenings. Because of my husband's stroke, I asked my doctor to give me something to help with my sleep. After all, I can't keep burning the candle at both ends for long! He gave my 25mg Trazodone nightly, which after two weeks hasn't given me any relief. I think I'll try your trick to see if that helps. I report back...

As always, thanks for sharing your adventures and I'm glad this one's a good one so far!

I'm on low dose Trazodone as well and recently started on Gabapentin which has helped some.
Any chance RLS or PLMD is contributing to you wakes?

I don't think so. My sleep study was negative on leg movements, and my covers don't get messed up during the night.

Last night I increased my O2 to 3.5L and I feel more refreshed this morning. After downloading my report, I discovered that I had 230.5 minutes below 88% with a basal SpO2% of 88.0, avg. low SpO2% of 84.7, avg. low SpO2% of 81.9 and minimum SpO2 of 74. That's with the increase to 3.5L. I'm sure glad you created this post or I would not have caught this!

I hadn't checked my SpO2 for a month and I guess my stress has manifested itself in O2 drop. I'll keep this setting for a while and continue monitoring. As far as quality of sleep, I may have had a slight improvement, but since I have to think about it, it apparently wasn't much of an improvement. Maybe a few more nights will help.

Did you have immediate results or did it improve gradually over the month?