Lots of Hypoapneas

Increase your minimum.


Den

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Wulfman... wrote:Increase your minimum.


Den

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Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Another question....With Sleephead, is there a way to get the duration of each event? I'd like to know how long these hypopneas are. I wake up in a fog when I have a lot of them and feel fairly useless for the majority of the day.

westport wrote:

Wulfman... wrote:Increase your minimum.


Den

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Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Another question....With Sleephead, is there a way to get the duration of each event? I'd like to know how long these hypopneas are. I wake up in a fog when I have a lot of them and feel fairly useless for the majority of the day.

I don't know. I've never (personally) used it, so maybe someone else can provide that information.


Den

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westport wrote:With Sleephead, is there a way to get the duration of each event? I'd like to know how long these hypopneas are..

you can get a rough approximation with your machine, but not accurate numbers, on the events tab.
resmed machines report accurate durations, respironics machines put some unidentified number in the data stream that is ... close.. .ish, to the duration.

westport wrote:With Sleephead, is there a way to get the duration of each event?

Like PR said..you can get a close approximation of duration but not an exact number in seconds.
It's going to be close though and close enough to give you an idea as to duration within 2 or 3 seconds.

Go to the Events tab in SleepyHead then click on whatever category you are wanting to check on.
Then you will see the list of each event and the time stamp when it occurred.
The number in parentheses next to the time stamp is a close approximation of the event duration in seconds. You will likely see some of them with single digits shown. All apnea events have to last at least 10 seconds to get a flag...so those single digit numbers probably mean barely 10 seconds.

I once did an experiment where I set down and manually tried to compare event duration by zooming in on the actual event and manually counting the seconds. It's kinda hard to be exact because at that level of zooming in to see the seconds well enough to count them it's difficult to see the beginning and ending of the event. So I manually counted about 100 or so events...the single digit ones ( I saw a lot of 8s) lasted about 10 seconds..maybe 11seconds when I manually counted the seconds...they were obviously of short duration.
The longer events like 30 in parentheses...those were real close...like 28 seconds to 31 seconds.
Had a few up around 45 in parentheses...those were real close also...like 44 to 48 seconds when attempting to count manually.

Now ResMed machine actually will give an exact event duration in seconds...so ResMed users will know that the number in parentheses is accurate.
Respironics users....it's close but not 100% spot on accurate.
They are some sort of marker which used to be used by Respironics software to report total time in apnea. It is close enough though that if someone wants to think "seconds" that I am good with that approximation. It's not off enough to be a big deal.

Pugsy wrote:

westport wrote:With Sleephead, is there a way to get the duration of each event?

Like PR said..you can get a close approximation of duration but not an exact number in seconds.
It's going to be close though and close enough to give you an idea as to duration within 2 or 3 seconds.

Go to the Events tab in SleepyHead then click on whatever category you are wanting to check on.
Then you will see the list of each event and the time stamp when it occurred.
The number in parentheses next to the time stamp is a close approximation of the event duration in seconds. You will likely see some of them with single digits shown. All apnea events have to last at least 10 seconds to get a flag...so those single digit numbers probably mean barely 10 seconds.

I once did an experiment where I set down and manually tried to compare event duration by zooming in on the actual event and manually counting the seconds. It's kinda hard to be exact because at that level of zooming in to see the seconds well enough to count them it's difficult to see the beginning and ending of the event. So I manually counted about 100 or so events...the single digit ones ( I saw a lot of 8s) lasted about 10 seconds..maybe 11seconds when I manually counted the seconds...they were obviously of short duration.
The longer events like 30 in parentheses...those were real close...like 28 seconds to 31 seconds.
Had a few up around 45 in parentheses...those were real close also...like 44 to 48 seconds when attempting to count manually.

Now ResMed machine actually will give an exact event duration in seconds...so ResMed users will know that the number in parentheses is accurate.
Respironics users....it's close but not 100% spot on accurate.
They are some sort of marker which used to be used by Respironics software to report total time in apnea. It is close enough though that if someone wants to think "seconds" that I am good with that approximation. It's not off enough to be a big deal.

Great info. Thanks!

Still trying to figure out this whole sleep apnea thing. Is it unusual to have the occasional spikes like I am having? 1s and 2s AHI for weeks at a time and then nights such as this where I'll have 24 Clear Apneas, 35 Hypopneas (9 which were 35-57 seconds in length) and 1 Obstructive Apnea and an AHI score of 6.8 while wearing my mask? Just seems strange to me....what does it mean? Could I be leaning towards central? Is there something else going one? Is my airway changing? Makes me feel like I'm going nuts. I've had a couple of sleep studies this year but unfortunately I haven't had a bad night while i've been studied.

westport -

It seems I have a lot of the same hypoapnea issues that you are having, now that I have bought a Dreamstation. My first machine was a Resmed S9 Autoset. I bought the Dreamstation as a travel and backup machine. On the Resmed, my AHI was almost always less then 1, but on the Dreamstation, it is usually anywhere from 2 to almost 10, varies wildly from night to night. I have a ton of hypoapneas with the Dreamstation which never happened with the Resmed. I have switched back to using the Resmed simply because I feel better when I use that machine. I am going to take palerider's advice and up my pressures, but I must do it slowly.

PEF wrote:westport -

It seems I have a lot of the same hypoapnea issues that you are having, now that I have bought a Dreamstation. My first machine was a Resmed S9 Autoset. I bought the Dreamstation as a travel and backup machine. On the Resmed, my AHI was almost always less then 1, but on the Dreamstation, it is usually anywhere from 2 to almost 10, varies wildly from night to night. I have a ton of hypoapneas with the Dreamstation which never happened with the Resmed. I have switched back to using the Resmed simply because I feel better when I use that machine. I am going to take palerider's advice and up my pressures, but I must do it slowly.

Thank you. Funny that you should say that. I've gone back to my old System One this week and the results are better. Last night I recorded a .02. Possibly my best night ever....a few days after my worst night ever. It could just be a coincidence.

More and more, I am convinced that it is still very early days with regards to treating sleep apnea effectively. All the doctors I have seen actually seem to know little about treating it (and I have seen the best at Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, UCLA, Cedar Sinai). Sorry to say but there's not been a single one of them have I been impressed with. I'll write a post on this someday. CPAP machines seem to thrown out there but many seem to care little about digging deep into the data or are even educated about Sleephead type data. And if you're Sleep Apnea is at all complicated, there's almost zero effective follow-up. It's actually awful. Seeing another doctor in Los Angeles next week. My events earlier in the week are too off the charts for my liking...too many clear apneas, too much periodic breathing and hypopnea events. I'm convinced I have central apnea but it hasn't occured in a sleep study....hopefully that last recorded Sleepyhead night will help.

I read from somewhere that your CA is actually caused by a sudden increase in pressure which will interfere your airway or something. In order to reduce the jump, I'll check the sleepyhead data and see what's the usual max pressure I have and reduce from there. I reduced the max from 20 originally to 14 as my max pressure never go over 13. Works better. You can get rid of HA I believe it happens when you are not breathing yourself.

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

m13l1n1 wrote:I read from somewhere that your CA is actually caused by a sudden increase in pressure which will interfere your airway or something. In order to reduce the jump, I'll check the sleepyhead data and see what's the usual max pressure I have and reduce from there. I reduced the max from 20 originally to 14 as my max pressure never go over 13. Works better. You can get rid of HA I believe it happens when you are not breathing yourself.

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

If your max pressure never goes above 13...lowering the max setting from 20 to 14 will do nothing.

LSAT wrote:

m13l1n1 wrote:I read from somewhere that your CA is actually caused by a sudden increase in pressure which will interfere your airway or something. In order to reduce the jump, I'll check the sleepyhead data and see what's the usual max pressure I have and reduce from there. I reduced the max from 20 originally to 14 as my max pressure never go over 13. Works better. You can get rid of HA I believe it happens when you are not breathing yourself.

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

If your max pressure never goes above 13...lowering the max setting from 20 to 14 will do nothing.

Thanks.
My peak max pressure over the past few months was 16 so I've had that max setting for awhile. 90% of the time I'm averaging 9.70 but I have a lot of days where I'll peak up to 12s and 13s and then lots of nights where it'll go back to the 8s.