Conumdrum - Good Days, Bad Days why?

CPAP nirvana for me is the day I wake up and I feel great for the whole day. I expected it to happen instantly when I started treatment but as we all know it's not necessarily that simple. A couple of months ago I had a day where I woke up and felt 'really good'. It didn't last all day but most of it was good and the tiredness caught up with me later in the afternoon. It was nicely tired feeling, not that horrible OSA fatigue.

Well today I had a great day. I woke up thinking that a bit more sleep might be good but got out of bed anyway. The rest of the day has been great. No feelings of fatigue or any of the other junk us OSA sufferers can experience.

Now the conundrum

While I had 8.4 hours of sleep this was a bit broken up with some knee pain that kept me awake and eventually got me up to take painkillers. Sleep time was probably at least an hour less. My AHI at 2.79 was a bit higher than normal as well.

So what was the magic bullet? By rights I should have been feeling a bit worse but the opposite happened. If memory serves me right my AHI was a bit off on that other day as well. I've posted the SH reading for last night. Is there data that might give me a clue or have I just turned a corner in my treatment? I do notice that I had no events at all for the first 6.5 hours of sleep. If the pain hadn't broken my sleep would I have been heading towards a perfect night?

http://i.imgur.com/SaVs7Uy.png

Who knows?? I have good and bad days. I guess its a part of life. I do suspect the painkillers may play an effect on proper cpap therapy. Try to compare the nights with the painkillers against nights without. See if that has an effect. Give it time. I have a night two or three times a month with a zero AHI. I find that I feel a little better with a higher AHI than I do with nights I get zero. It's not much of a difference, but it is significant enough to notice. Be sensitive to how you feel and what you did or do. Things like medication, certain foods, alcohol, caffeine, late night snacks, etc... We are all different, but it is a part of taking charge of your therapy and overall health to know what effects you and what doesn't.

Sheriff

Every day is different. Temp, humidity, air pressure, mood, pollen, stupid cars with booming bass change every day (except the stupid cars with booming bass). And it all effects your sleep.

Keep working at it. Even the worst night on the "pap is better than a night without it.

Pain, pain medication, overall sleep quality, nightly AHI, amount of REM sleep, and feelings of being rested and awake all have a mysterious interplay that can be unique to an individual. But here are some principles about how they interact that you may help sort things out.

Pain can lessen sleep quality in a way that won't always show up in AHI. Pain meds can help that. But then pain meds have their own effect on sleep quality, such as dulling the response of the airway or the body's reaction time to sleep and sleep stages.

REM sleep can be an interesting factor on AHI. A person may feel great after getting more REM than usual, but REM for that person may be when he has most of his events. If so, a night with a higher number of events may represent a night spent longer in REM. See how that all interplays? It can much the same with deeper stages of sleep, which drugs and pain can also affect.

Also, the night BEFORE (as in two nights ago) can have as much, or more, of an effect on subjective judgments of one's own sleep quality and feelings of being rested and alert, than the night just slept. Not true of everyone, but true of some. That means that the average quality of sleep over the last few nights can be more of a factor than what was just experienced. We like to look at numbers in the morning and turn those numbers into some kind of crystal-ball self-fulfilling prophecy of what kind of day we are about to have, but that can just become some kind of technological horoscope with no objective relationship to reality. It is much better to look at overall trends over weeks of time, not one simple night of data. It is the average that matters most. Naturally, one atrocious night of sleep can make you feel like trash the next morning. But that is the exceptional circumstance as far as how the night of sleep you just had affects your day. That does not make it a rule that can be applied beyond that experience.

I applaud people who look at their data. But use it in a way that informs you about getting the best sleep and finding the best settings by looking at trends over the weeks and months, not just night to night one night at a time.

Holden4th wrote:Good Days, Bad Days why?

Most people are very inconsistent with the basics --->

- Practice good sleep hygiene (Google it and read several sources)
- Eat a good diet
- Have a regular, moderate exercise program
- Try to avoid daytime naps
- Practice total abstinence of caffeine including sources like chocolate (sigh)
- Review all medicines, vitamins and supplements you are taking to make sure none are interfering with sleep
- Use the bedroom for sleeping (and sex) only, and make sure the bedroom and bed are comfortable.
- Learn to appropriately handle emotional stress in your life
- Use CPAP software, such as the free SleepyHead, to make sure your therapy is optimized
- If you still don't feel or sleep well, make sure you have regular medical checkups to confirm there are no other medical problems

CG