Is this a low SPO2 ? + Update

Hi everyone.

My third night on CPAP, I got a AHI of 3, so I am happy, I am video recording myself sleep at the moment for the whole night and matching it with sleepyhead results and times. My mask came off 3 times, I notice on the video I itched my nose twice and the mask came off. The third time I stopped breathing and woke myself up. The great news is I am mostly silent, apart from a few low snores in the first hour of sleep. It is amazing really, as I recorded myself before I had CPAP and I stopped breathing every 30 seconds and my chest would convulse all the time trying to breathe, now I lie there not moving most of the night and sleeping with my mouth closed and quiet. Oddly though the graph shows a lot of snores, I wonder if that is picking up my loud air conditioner that comes on and off that I sleep by, as my place is always too warm without it on.

I do notice I sweat a bit though, on the video if I speed it up I can see the sweat forming on my forehead as it glistens, and I sometimes wipe it in my sleep, I didn't sweat before cpap, but I sleep alone so no biggie. It is funny but each time I took the mask off I hung it up neatly on my bed post in my sleep, I then fell back to sleep, only for the cpap alarm to go off, and I stare at the machine for a few seconds startled wondering why the noise, it works though as I put the mask back on.

Okay, on to my query, I am a big fat guy at approx 32 stone, I know I need to lose weight, and I know perhaps only a doctor can answer this, but before I had cpap my oximeter SpO2 levels would go down to the 40's quite often, very bad, and a nurse said it was the worst levels she had ever seen. Anyway, I was very happy and elated to notice at first that I was now always above 80% with cpap, but now I hear that is still not good, I should be above 94% or something and never lower. So even though my AHI has gone from about 50 to 3, and Sp02 has gone from 40's to 80's and above, I fear this may still not be high enough. Does anyone here use a oximeter, if so, do your results always stay above 90% ? Is the below worthy of getting checked out ? The chart makes it look worse, but on the left it says I was 96% for 95% of the night, is that adequate ?

P.S : Is anyone elses stats messed up ? It says "headed tubing" (sic) NO, yet I do have it, and enabled in settings. Also I had my humidity on x3. Is this just a glitch ? It also says the humidifier is disconnected.

In the US insurance requires below 88% for them to cover anything, so that's one way of looking at okay or not. Another things is that below 60% oximeters are not accurate, so 40% maybe or maybe not, but low none the less.

I am always at or above 92% and my Doc always says I am fine, your graph is mostly fine and way better than before. You do drop below the magic 88%, or it at least looks like you do, others will chime in, in our morning, but unless I heard otherwise I would talk with my doctor if I was dropping below 88%. He might just say I need to watch it in case it starts staying there.

If I was just starting to get O2 spikes like yours I would wonder what was going on, with you coming from very low O2 to where you are I would be pretty happy. Perhaps more work to do to get them up higher, but great progress.

I have no idea about your P.S. line. Others will

Couple of thoughts - if you sleep mostly on your back, do whatever you can to not do it - it provokes more apneas (and certainly more snores). Put something in behind you that will awake or disturb you enough to re-adjust on your side (foam wedge, tennis ball sewn in the back of your PJ's, whatever works). Second, try to keep your room relatively cool vs v. warm as Cpap is generally more effective that way. And I wonder if 7 is the ideal # for you given some of the things you mentioned... whether or not a tweak to e.g. 9 or even 10 might be in order... something to discuss with your doctor of course. And third, I believe you might benefit from wearing a soft cervical collar - it keeps your head up (more) so your airway is opened up better (Cpap pressure can only do so much, but not perform miracles ), you're less likely to mouth breathe and lose Cpap air doing it, and your jaw will be held closed better.

Hi,

I would raise the concerns about the O2 levels with your doctor. As helpful as this board is, that is really something he/she needs to address as advising you on that is really above our pay grade.

49er

BlizzardUK wrote:Hi everyone.

My third night on CPAP, I got a AHI of 3, so I am happy, I am video recording myself sleep at the moment for the whole night and matching it with sleepyhead results and times. My mask came off 3 times, I notice on the video I itched my nose twice and the mask came off. The third time I stopped breathing and woke myself up. The great news is I am mostly silent, apart from a few low snores in the first hour of sleep. It is amazing really, as I recorded myself before I had CPAP and I stopped breathing every 30 seconds and my chest would convulse all the time trying to breathe, now I lie there not moving most of the night and sleeping with my mouth closed and quiet. Oddly though the graph shows a lot of snores, I wonder if that is picking up my loud air conditioner that comes on and off that I sleep by, as my place is always too warm without it on.

I do notice I sweat a bit though, on the video if I speed it up I can see the sweat forming on my forehead as it glistens, and I sometimes wipe it in my sleep, I didn't sweat before cpap, but I sleep alone so no biggie. It is funny but each time I took the mask off I hung it up neatly on my bed post in my sleep, I then fell back to sleep, only for the cpap alarm to go off, and I stare at the machine for a few seconds startled wondering why the noise, it works though as I put the mask back on.

Okay, on to my query, I am a big fat guy at approx 32 stone, I know I need to lose weight, and I know perhaps only a doctor can answer this, but before I had cpap my oximeter SpO2 levels would go down to the 40's quite often, very bad, and a nurse said it was the worst levels she had ever seen. Anyway, I was very happy and elated to notice at first that I was now always above 80% with cpap, but now I hear that is still not good, I should be above 94% or something and never lower. So even though my AHI has gone from about 50 to 3, and Sp02 has gone from 40's to 80's and above, I fear this may still not be high enough. Does anyone here use a oximeter, if so, do your results always stay above 90% ? Is the below worthy of getting checked out ? The chart makes it look worse, but on the left it says I was 96% for 95% of the night, is that adequate ?

P.S : Is anyone elses stats messed up ? It says "headed tubing" (sic) NO, yet I do have it, and enabled in settings. Also I had my humidity on x3. Is this just a glitch ? It also says the humidifier is disconnected.

Disregard the fact that SleepyHead is saying the hose isn't attached. That's a known bug in the software.

What is your pulse ox reading while awake for 30 minutes...awake and sitting upright in a chair?
What is your pulse ox reading while awake and laying in bed for 30 minutes...totally awake though?
Finally how much time is spent below 88%? It's hard to see on the report above. It looks like the times below 88% are relatively brief.

Do you have any other known health issues other than being overweight?

I am wondering if you have something that affects overweight people that is called hypoventilation syndrome (I think that is the name but it might be something else) where the weight is preventing adequate ventilation or oxygen exchange.

Here in the US the 88% figure is used and I think maybe 5 minutes out of the night at or below that target is the point where doctors start looking to maybe add O2 to the nighttime air.
This is really something that you need to talk to your doctor about.

I think that the cpap therapy is helping with the main initial problem with low oxygen as it is now much improved over what it was without cpap therapy but it is possible that you might have additional oxygen issues simply due to the weight and that is something that really needs to be evaluated by a doctor.