Wake apnea?

Is there anything useful about using a CPAP (or BiPAP) machine while one is awake?

What would you expect Sleepyhead would report?
How would this daytime/awake report be different than the nighttime/sleep report?

If one wanted to conduct a waking CPAP study, how long would one have to do it for the results to make sense?
(Can you conduct the test in 15 minutes of quietly listening to music? Would it be more effective in, say, an hour of reading? Does it need to be longer?)

There is nothing useful about it.
Daytime breathing is different from sleep breathing. Everytime you move you hold your breathe, everything you are startled or get excited your breathing changes.
Sleep breathing is controlled by your autonomic nervous system.

Your airway will not collapse as much if you are in an upright position.

When you sleep you turn...often.
How is this recorded by Sleepyhead? Is this suddenly non autonomic and therefore useless also?
When you sleep you are woken up...by various things, internal and external.
How is this recorded by Sleepyhead? Is this suddenly non autonomic and therefore useless also?

Sleepyhead doesn't know if something is autonomic or not.
It's only got your breath to go on.
It must be able to respond in some sort of sensible, predictable, way to anything it's handed.

Consider two subjects:

• Subject #1 has sleep apnea. S(he) is using a CPAP machine overnight while (hopefully) sleeping. She then uses the machine while s(he)'s awake.
  Subject #2 does not have sleep apnea. S(he) is using a CPAP machine overnight while (hopefully) sleeping. She then uses the machine while s(he)'s awake.
  
  Can one determine from looking at Sleepyhead's output (if so, how? If not, why not?):
  • Which person has sleep apnea and which doesn't?
    Which of the sessions is generated while the subject is sleeping and which when the subject is awake?
    Which sleep session corresponds to which (i.e., that person's) awake session?

When you sleep you turn...often.

Not since on cpap.

Which person has sleep apnea and which doesn't?

No you can only tell that person 2's pressure doesn't rise above 4 However that is still therapeutic.

Which of the sessions is generated while the subject is sleeping and which when the subject is awake?

Awake you will have many clear air way events. However you can have those if you apnea is complex.

I'm not sure where this is going, but although some xpap machines can guess from your breathing pattern that you're awake (and perhaps adjust pressure accordingly), in general they go by how you are breathing. There are many entries and threads here about "Sleep/Wake Junk," things machines flag as problematic when you are actually awake and thus doing things like holding your breath when you move. I've been "blasted" by my ASV many times in that situation, as it thinks I'm having a central apnea and is trying to get me to breathe.

SleepyHead doesn't "record" anything. It reports what your machine records, which varies by which machine it is. Some will record "RERAs" or what the machine perceives as a respiratory event related arousal, but most don't. They don't know and don't care whether you are awake or asleep.

There have been some people on this forum (like Morbius, and perhaps RobySue) who can hazard an educated guess by by looking at breathing waveforms as to whether a person is asleep, awake, being aroused. I put up a couple of threads on this myself, due to repeated arousals. I've unfortunately never been able to resolve this issue, or the resulting daytime sleepiness, but declined medication because I've already got neurological problems and don't want to make them worse.

So again, I'm not sure what exactly you are looking to find out, but I hope this clarifies...something.

The only daytime use for cpap is if you have pneumonia, wearing it with the humidity up all the way makes life more comfortable but hard to answer the phone.

What if's waste much time, better spent living and sleeping with your XPAP set correctly.

Toy trains and building blocks m a ke better toys than XPAP'S. JIM

From what I have read, people reading Sleepyhead results (higher AHI, etc.) will report that one’s condition is getting worse but never that their condition is getting better. That is not to say that air delivery/pressure machine fine tuning informed by responsible readings of Sleepyhead ‘reports’ can’t result in better sleep patterns and less daytime sleepiness.

In other words:
I do read something like this: “I had such and such condition, was prescribed CPAP, started using the machine and based on Software reports and making this and that setting modifications am finding that I now sleep much better and no longer experience daytime sleepiness…”

But what I haven’t read is something like this: “I had such and such condition, was prescribed CPAP, started using the machine and based on Software reports and making this and that setting modification, am finding that I not only sleep much better and no longer experience daytime sleepiness but I’m wondering if the software is telling me that I’m actually better and may not need to use the machine as much…”

I experienced a very productive, richly dream-filled week of evenings recently when I forgot to take my machine power supply with me on a trip. I’ve been plagued by BPH-related evening urges to urinate (Nocturia?). It’s particularly bad when I just go to sleep. The only way I can deal with it is to stop using my CPAP halfway into the night. It could be purely coincidental that after getting up 10-12x to unproductively pee that choosing to abandon CPAP at that time just happens to coincide with me being completely empty. However, when I’ve experimentally decided to not even start the evening with CPAP, I’m finding that I experience maybe 2-3 urges to pee and sleep the rest of the night in peace (with dreams, little to no daytime sleepiness, etc.).

It’s been particularly difficult for me to accept that, with asymptomatic atrial fibrillation, I can’t know if my heart is racing or crawling—now highs are being controlled by drugs and lows by a pacemaker. It would be nice if I could know and change my lifestyle based on my heartrate but there is no technology I can wear or home-use that can tell me what my heart is doing. Instead I’m told to rely on whether I’m “feeling good”.

The same seems to be the case with my sleep apnea. What seems the best indication that a CPAP machine is working is whether the user “feels good” (presumably if they feel bad, the machine needs adjustment). I have had great nights with the machine. However, more often than not, I’m in the odd position of feeling good when I don’t use the machine. I was just hoping that one might be able to get a clue from machine recorded software reporting that its services are less required.

I experienced a very productive, richly dream-filled week of evenings recently when I forgot to take my machine power supply with me on a trip.

Bad sign because you need to wake up to remember them.

I’ve been plagued by BPH-related evening urges to urinate (Nocturia?). It’s particularly bad when I just go to sleep. The only way I can deal with it is to stop using my CPAP halfway into the night

cpap therapy deals with that for most people - stop the apneas and you stop the nocturnia.

Could do what you want and let the coroner figure what happen, of course they would have no way to get the info to you. Jim