Newbie CPAP user

Hello. I've finally gotten over my fear of using a CPAP and I've been on treatment for a couple of months now. Although I have noticed a slight improvement in my daytime sleepiness (only when I haven't ripped my mask off my face in the middle of the night) I have a number of sleep related that need addressing and not completely convinced that the CPAP will resolve. My last sleep study was done a few months ago and the results show that I never reach sleep stages 3 or 4 however I do REM sleep because I dream. Most of my Apnea events are Central with even less Obstructive. My question for the community is that has anybody noticed a correlation to lack of stage 3 or 4 sleep with central apnea events? Is there a correlation? I'm trying to understand what's causing the the central events because there's no direct connection to my obstructive events. My hope is to resolve my central events and not have to use my machine.

As a child, more than 30 years ago, I was a heavy sleep walker. It was very nearly impossible for my parents to wake me during these events or even when lying dead-still in bed. Concerned, they decided to take me to a doctor who gave them a script to "fix" the issue of heavy sleeping. I do not know what medication was given to me and my parents don't remember. My concern is that the medication has had an affect on my body and how it handles my sleep cycles. I'm wondering if anybody else here has had this done to them and what they've found out. I plan on re-submitting a formal request for release of Navy medical records to try and determine what drug was given to me. The last request was denied due to not providing my sponsors (my father's) social security number. My hope is to find out if there is any connection with this and my central apnea events and if there's a way to reverse this (highly improbably I bet). Anybody else have the same history? Results?

Thanks!

Hi, welcome to the forum. It is highly unlikely that whatever you took as a child is still affecting your sleep now, and I think as a court case you'd have an enormous amount of trouble proving it, even if it was unsuitable at the time. What I would suggest is that you do a couple of things... the first being to go to your member page (see "User control panel" just above the postings here) and fill in your Profile with the full name and model #'s of your machine and mask so we can all see immediately what you're using. The second thing would be that if you have a machine that allows you to read your data through the computer (we'll be able to tell from your profile info) then I would ask that you post a summary page here for us to see. If not, then we can still talk about things after you post back.

How do I submitt a summary of my report. I do have a ResScan summary of it. I just don't know how to post it...

Never mind my previous post. Here's a summary for the last 60 days or so of usage:
Machine set to Autoset.
Median daily usage: 4:26 (still haven't gotten used to the mask)
AHI: 1.1
Hypopnea: 0.3
Pressure range: 9-13
Pressure 95 percentile: 10.2
Leak 95th percentil: 4.8

This report is based on 58 days I have had the machine and actually used it.

I'm surprised that if you have the proportion of centrals you say, you weren't put on a machine that deals with them more effectively than 'just' cpap, but rather a bi-pap (more expensive, of course), or Vsap, etc. Your machine won't record centrals or respond to them, so I'd go back to your MD and ask about that.

The pressure plots show where I stop breathing and the machine responds by ramping up pressure to inflate my lungs. How is this not helping? How would a biPap machine work better? I'm not familiar with any of this....

The pressure plots show where I stop breathing and the machine responds by ramping up pressure to inflate my lungs.

According to the S9 literature about the ResMed Autoset algorithm, the S9 is supposed to respond to obtructive events and flattening of the flow limitation curve by increasing pressure in order to open the upper airway back up. But it is also supposed to respond to central apneas, where there is no obstruction of the airflow, by not increasing pressure. My humble understanding of the rationale is that higher pressures can cause an increase in the number of central apneas in some patients.