No slow wave/restorative sleep

OceanBlue wrote:My sleep doctor not anyone ever connected sleep with fibromyalgia.

We are trying to alert people since many doctors don't make the connection. See http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/r ... -problems/

OceanBlue wrote:

Are you using Sleepyhead to monitor and control your therapy? Do you know how to analyze the reports and make appropriate adjustments to your CPAP settings and your mask?

Hi, thanks for asking. No, not using Sleepyhead. Yes, I do analyze the CPAP output data and my doctor does as well. My numbers are near perfect (and AHI is now about 2) so I'm not sure how adjustments will change my fatigue, concentration, etc. I really don't think it's the CPAP at this point. The last sleep study was titration. The tech said I did not go above a need for 7. The Nurse Practitioner analyzed my results and ordered a new pressure change of min 5 max 7 from min 5 max 13. After my doc and I discussed the report, he decided to leave the max at 13. Data over time show that I often need a pressure of 10-11. I dont' have it in front of me. He said if the current max pressure of 13 is working so well, why reduce the max? So we are leaving it the same as it was before despite the new data from the last study.

You certainly seem to have problems that are beyond CPAP treatment.

Right, which is why I am seeking help from a sleep specialist. He's not a CPAP doctor.

Your "medical professional team" is clueless. You need to take control of your own therapy.
You mention minimum and maximum pressures.......which means you're apparently using an APAP (Auto adjusting CPAP).......which are virtually all fully data-capable (with the exception of the ResMed Escape Auto).

I strongly suspect that your problems relate to the changing pressures during the night as the machine tries to respond to your events........so, I agree with "Guest1" here.

Guest1 wrote:You need to go to a straight pressure cpap or straight pressure bilevel.

In a study available on pubmed, 18% of the sample studied had 'Microarousals' on variable pressure. A microarousals knocks someone out of a deeper sleep stage to a shallower sleep stage. If you are one of them, you can find out easily by Doug this for 10 days. It's probably a better thing to try than using pharmaceuticals.

Since your pressure is low (< 12cm), you can easily transition to a straight pressure.

Your AHI of about 2.0 really isn't "nearly perfect". That's still alot of events that are happening. Plus, if you don't know what your leak, snore, flow limitations and other factors are, you're a long ways from getting your therapy dialed in.
If you're using a nasal mask and losing lots of your therapy air out your mouth, your therapy is compromised and substandard. And, if you're leaking lots of air at night, your numbers could be questionable.

The sooner YOU take control of YOUR therapy, the sooner YOU will start feeling better.


Den

.

Thanks, I finally got the SleepHead software and found the SD card on my PC.
Wow, this software is amazing. I'm very thankful it's available to us for free.

Now I need to figure out all the numbers.

You need to go to a straight pressure cpap or straight pressure bilevel.

Thanks for the tip. After i read your reply, I tried this for a few days, but took the mask off in my sleep each night. Will ask for help with interpreting data and see if there are obvious or reasonable next steps.

Your "medical professional team" is clueless.

I dislike being critical, but sadly, I sincerely think this is true.

OceanBlue wrote:Now I need to figure out all the numbers.

This may help - http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread ... Discussion

Feel free to ask questions in this thread.