Newbie of Six Weeks Requesting Data Review and Advice

Hello, I’m a CPAP newbie. Started on May 1, 2025. My initial at-home sleep study in April resulted in an AHI of 20.4 with a diagnosis of moderate OSA.

I’m using a ResMed AirSense 11 with AirFit P10 nasal pillows. I kind of felt a little refreshed after the first 2 or 3 days but now I’m feeling worse—waking up 4 to 5 times a night, and upon waking up in the morning, I’m back to the pre-PAP tiredness, fatigue, headaches, depression, and brain fog. 

I'm very comfortable wearing the nasal pillows but I do open my mouth from time to time during the night. I've tried using a cervical collar on one night, off the next, for a few nights to compare data. Seems to not make a difference in the results by wearing the collar or not.

After researching a bit all over the web, if I understand correctly, the Central Sleep Apneas (Clear Airway events in OSCAR) can still really be the main/major issue preventing progress (and can't be treated by CPAP/APAP? Is that true?) but the severity of them can only truly be detected during an in-lab sleep study—so when looking at a new CPAP user’s data, most medical professionals may ignore CA’s since overall AHI numbers look good. (Only speculating here from various things I've read.)

I notice that my CA events are usually far above in number than my OSA events. Is that normal? Also, is mouth-taping NOT advised if CA's are more of a problem? I had two real "outlier" nights (May 23rd) where my AHI jumped to 20.87 with 131 CA events. And also on June 9th, I had an AHI of 9.55 with 48 CA's and 25 OA's. No idea what happened to me on those nights.

Upon speaking to my sleep doctor on June 2nd during my initial follow-up appointment, I told him that I'm not waking up feeling "better" than before being tested and now being treated. He raised my pressure range from 6–12, to 7–12 and basically told me since my AHI average is below 5 I'm doing fine and that he'll see me again in three months. I'd like to try a few adjustments and things to experiment with from all you "in-the-know" before my next appointment in September to try to improve my results, and more importantly, how I'm feeling.

Again, I’m new so forgive me if I sound ignorant when trying to explain all of this. If anyone could be so kind as to review my data (and what I've written here) and provide any adjustments I should make in your opinion, I’d truly appreciate it.

Here is a link on Imgur to view a screenshot of last night's data. If there are any "zoom-in's" or other charts that will help you, please let me know and I'll upload those as well:
https://imgur.com/a/oscar-june-13-2025-frank-UaH0cBR

And here is a link to my SleepHQ data:
https://sleephq.com/public/teams/share_ ... 6860954bd1

Sorry this is a bit of a long post, but I feel my life could really get better with this therapy if it's the right path to keep taking, so I want to provide more information rather than too little in the hopes I could get some great advice here.

Thank you.

Your imgur link is broken.

How about using SleepHQ (there is a free version available) and post your report.
This would let us zoom in on the flagged events to look for real asleep flags vs arousal/awake flags.
I suspect that a sizable chunk of your AHI is arousal related and the poor sleep is causing the flagging and not the other way around.
Now why you aren't sleeping soundly......million dollar question.

Do you take any meds of any kind? If so, what?

Thanks for letting me know my imgur link is broken. I also added my SleepHQ data link in my post, but here are both links that I hope work now:

Here is a link on Imgur to view a screenshot of last night's data. If there are any "zoom-in's" or other charts that will help you, please let me know and I'll upload those as well:
https://imgur.com/a/oscar-june-13-2025-frank-UaH0cBR

And here is a link to my SleepHQ data:
https://sleephq.com/public/teams/share_ ... 6860954bd1

Note.....OP wishes to keep medication usage private and that's fine but for the others you all need to know that a couple of the meds is well known to mess with sleep quality as well as sleep stages. They aren't doing him any favors but they are needed for his problem.

He's having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that the bulk of his AHI is SWJ related and almost all the flagged events are arousal/awake related flagging. He didn't realize that the machine might flag something and it probably didn't need to be flagged.

He will get there....time and experience and patience.