Need help with CPAP Stats

Robysue, How many people do you think do well with those type items? Even if educated about what to do?

ChicagoGranny wrote:Robysue, How many people do you think do well with those type items? Even if educated about what to do?

There are two answers, which apply to me as well as most of humanity

1) Most people who manage to do these things and get used to doing them on a regular basis do feel better and have fewer problems managing whatever chronic health problems they happen to have.

2) Most people find one or more of these things very, very difficult to do in the long run. It's extremely difficult to change your long term behavior even when you know it will help. (Which things a particular person finds hard to do will vary tremendously.)

For me? Let's look at your list and see how many I need to do better on:

Practice good sleep hygiene. When the insomnia is threatening to take over my life, I really focus on this. If I did this all the time? I'd have less problems with the old insomnia monster that is always hiding somewhere in my bedroom waiting to pounce.

Eat a good diet. I need to do a better job on this. I know I feel better when I eat a diet that has (a lot) more vegetables and fruit and a good balance of various protiens rather than heavy on the complex carbs. But I struggle with this: Not much tastes good to me right now, and that's leading to my eating too many carbs. And it is affecting how I'm feeling.

Have a regular, moderate exercise program. That reminds me that I need to get back to my nightly walks ... Seriously, I do feel a lot better when I get some moderate exercise every day. And I miss the walks, so I really ought to start taking them, particularly since skiing is done for the year.

Try to avoid daytime naps. Not a problem for me.

Practice total abstinence of caffeine including sources like chocolate (sigh). Since caffeine is one of my migraine triggers, most days this is pretty easy for me to do. But giving up my beloved iced tea when eating out was very, very difficult. (Yes, I can and do make decaf iced tea at home.)

Review all medicines, vitamins and supplements you are taking to make sure none are interfering with sleep. Yep. Done that. Need to get back to taking the Magnesium though since it tends to help sleep.

Use the bedroom for sleeping (and sex) only, and make sure the bedroom and bed are comfortable.
Been doing this ever since I first moved into my own apartment at the age of 23.

Optimize emotional stress in your life. BIG, HUGE problem for me. Even though I do things to try to minimize it: Yoga, yep. Regular massages, yep. Meditation, not enough, but I do try. And it does bring the emotional stress down from RED to ORANGE.

Use CPAP software, such as the free SleepyHead, to make sure your therapy is optimized. Yep. Although there's currently something going on in the data that I haven't figured out yet.

If you still don't feel or sleep well, make sure you have regular medical checkups to confirm there are no other medical problems. Let's see: Migraines can interfere with sleep, but I've been working hard to get them under control. And they're mostly under control. TMJ can interfere with sleep. Mine's treated, but I can tell the TMJ stress is growing. And the TMJ dentist no longer takes my insurance. So there's the whole idea of how much do I want to spend. Chronic pain? Not so much with the massages.

So, let's see I'm probably "well educated" about what to do, and I struggle with at least 4 or 5 of these 10 things. But that doesn't mean they aren't good ideas to work on.

ChicagoGranny wrote:

tazmania wrote:If I don't see improvements in the next few weeks I'll try a few more options to see if my sleep quality improves.

Here is a checklist of some basic items that I think every CPAPer should follow. Maybe you want to look at it to see if there is anything easy that you have overlooked.

That is a great list. I suspect I have a few I could work on.

- Practice good sleep hygiene (Google it and read several sources) - I'll check that out.
- Eat a good diet - I try to follow the South Beach Diet plan. It's low carb.
- Have a regular, moderate exercise program - Sigh, I go in spurts. I've been slacking for about 4 weeks now.
- Try to avoid daytime naps. - I almost never take naps.
- Practice total abstinence of caffeine including sources like chocolate (sigh) - Chocolate is my nemesis. although I've been doing well to avoid it. I drink decaf.
- Review all medicines, vitamins and supplements you are taking to make sure none are interfering with sleep - Zantac (acid reflux), Ocuvite supplement (eye vitamin as macular degeneration is in my future).
- Use the bedroom for sleeping (and sex) only, and make sure the bedroom and bed are comfortable. Yep. We took the TV out of the bedroom. The bed is used when I'm ready to sleep.
- Optimize emotional stress in your life - hmmm. Easier said than done. My marriage and sometimes work create lots of stresses.
- Use CPAP software, such as the free SleepyHead, to make sure your therapy is optimized - Just started this. I'll be looking at my stats again tonight now that I switched to A-flex mode.
- If you still don't feel or sleep well, make sure you have regular medical checkups to confirm there are no other medical problems. - My blood pressure is in the risk area, not high but getting there. (diet and exercise is in order).

Well my first night ensuring I use the machine for all sleep was a bust.

I did wake up a few times during the night prior to 4am. I'm not sure what woke me. Hopefully the SH stats tell me something. I did continue using the machine until 4am. Boy I remember a few dreams so I must have been waking quite a bit.

At 4am our daughter had an issue so both my wife and I were out of bed. I get up at 5:15am normally. I did climb back in bed eventually but I didn't sleep.

So I'll try again tomorrow morning.

The good news is that I did have the machine on for 6 hours which is more than I have been doing so on average AND I really didn't notice much of the desert mouth I usually have when I wake up. I upped my humidifier to 4 from 3. So between that and the collar I think I'm reducing the dry mouth issue.

My last two nights stats with the machine set to A-flex, Min Pressure 10.5 Max Pressure 11.5, Humidifier 4

Wednesday night
http://i.imgur.com/O0rGLe4.png

Thursday night
http://imgur.com/a/u0Sag

Hi - I'd be careful about low carbs... I think you can certainly skip e.g. potatoes, rice, pastry. etc, but trying to stick to extreme low carbs when you already have a problem with energy can be self defeating. There's a place for low carb, but find a balance, don't be too hard on yourself if you need to switch out a couple of things on occasion.

Julie wrote:Hi - I'd be careful about low carbs... I think you can certainly skip e.g. potatoes, rice, pastry. etc, but trying to stick to extreme low carbs when you already have a problem with energy can be self defeating. There's a place for low carb, but find a balance, don't be too hard on yourself if you need to switch out a couple of things on occasion.

It's only low carb the 1st 2 weeks (cleansing) Phase 1. In phase 2 there are plenty of whole wheat breads and pastas, brown rice, etc. They actually call it good carbs, but it really is low carb. No taters, pastry, etc

Have you tried the (relatively new) Quaker crispy mini chips? They're brown rice, only 5% carbs - I love the cheddar ones and go through lots!

oops.

tazmania wrote:My last two nights stats with the machine set to A-flex, Min Pressure 10.5 Max Pressure 11.5, Humidifier 4

Wednesday night
http://i.imgur.com/O0rGLe4.png

Thursday night
http://imgur.com/a/u0Sag

well, the data looks great. I'd suggest getting the beta sleepyhead, (see below) it's got some bug fixes for the 560 machine you have.

Will do PR. Thx

tazmania wrote:My last two nights stats with the machine set to A-flex, Min Pressure 10.5 Max Pressure 11.5, Humidifier 4

Wednesday night
http://i.imgur.com/O0rGLe4.png

Thursday night
http://imgur.com/a/u0Sag

I only see stats from Wednesday night.

But the data from Wednesday looks superb.

robysue wrote:

tazmania wrote:My last two nights stats with the machine set to A-flex, Min Pressure 10.5 Max Pressure 11.5, Humidifier 4

Wednesday night
http://i.imgur.com/O0rGLe4.png

Thursday night
http://imgur.com/a/u0Sag

I only see stats from Wednesday night.

But the data from Wednesday looks superb.

Hmmm. I must have posted the same image twice or screwed one of them up. They were very similar in nature. There was a small incident of snore on one night but none on the other night.

I've been averaging closer to 6 hours of total sleep time now that I'm using the collar. Had some weird sleep hours over the weekend so I didn't make an effort to fix the situation where I shut off the machine before I'm done sleeping. I tried for a while this morning. I was even able to sleep on my side without the mask coming dislodge (hopefully it wasn't leaking). My back was sore so I shifted to my side. I was able to nod off for about 45 minutes more after getting close to 6 hours without waking at all.

So, right now, I'm pretty encouraged. It seems each day I improve the quality and length of time I am able to sleep with the CPAP. I still have a little fog or tinge of a headache most days but I do notice that I have more energy than before. Hopefully this keeps up and the fog lifts.

tazmania wrote: I've been averaging closer to 6 hours of total sleep time now that I'm using the collar. Had some weird sleep hours over the weekend so I didn't make an effort to fix the situation where I shut off the machine before I'm done sleeping. I tried for a while this morning. I was even able to sleep on my side without the mask coming dislodge (hopefully it wasn't leaking). My back was sore so I shifted to my side. I was able to nod off for about 45 minutes more after getting close to 6 hours without waking at all.

Remember that you don't have to have a perfect leak graph. If the leaks are not flagged as official Large Leaks by your machine and they don't wake you up, it's ok to tolerate them---particularly if "fixing" them leads to more problems with getting or staying asleep.

So, right now, I'm pretty encouraged. It seems each day I improve the quality and length of time I am able to sleep with the CPAP. I still have a little fog or tinge of a headache most days but I do notice that I have more energy than before. Hopefully this keeps up and the fog lifts.

It's a process. And sometimes the changes are so subtle that it's hard to realize they're there on a day-to-day basis. But eventually you start to realize that the new "this is how things are" is way, way better than it was pre-CPAP.

Last night's sleep pattern.

In bed and hooked up by 10:10pm
Slept straight through to 3:30am
Turned over onto my side without removing my mask, slept until 4:40am
Alarm goes off around 4:55am so I took off the mask fell back to sleep ....

AND PROMPTLY HIT SNOOZE A FEW TIMES BEFORE WAKING UP FOR THE DAY! Jumped out of bed at 5:18am.