AHI of 3 is good...??

I convinced my doctor to get me the Dreamstation with the ability to read AHI. Every morning when I wake up it tells me my AHI is 3, give or take .2 or .3 My respiratory therapist said this was good, but I am still really tired. My AHI at diagnosis was 7, with 26 events during REM., which means my apneas have only dropped by a little more then half. They started me at a pressure of 8 but I had to drop to 7 due to aerophagia.

What is up? Is 3 AHI normal, or "good" as my therapist said?

AHI of 3 is considered "good enough" by the medical community...actually anything less than 5.0 is considered "good enough".
It's a line that was drawn...they had to make it somewhere.

Now some people say that they don't feel so great even at 3...they say they feel best at 1 or 2 or some might say less than 1.0.
There's so much more to having good quality sleep than just the AHI but again we have to start somewhere so the AHI is the starting point.

There's the number of hours of sleep factor...there's the sleep quality factor in terms of wake ups...there's medication side effects factor...there's the other health issues factor.....there's just more to feeling well rested than just the AHI.
Finally...there's the "give it time" factor...sometimes the body just needs time to heal and get back to optimal feeling.
Our bodies didn't get in this shape overnight but we sure expect to fix it overnight and it simply doesn't work that way.
Even with optimal everything and no other complicating factors it can take quite a bit of time before we really notice much improvement in whatever we were wanting improvement on.

What DreamStation model did they end up giving you?
BTW....my OSA is similar to your but just a little "worse"...in non REM sleep AHI was around 12 and in REM it was 53...it's fairly common.
How about using the software available to see the additional data available that isn't included in the AHI numbers that could maybe point to an area where some work is needed...AHI isn't everything.

Oxygen desaturation is not the only risk of SA, nor is it the only cause of unrestful sleep in the presence of SA. Sufficient arousals due to OA, CA, or Hypopneas can prevent one from getting restful sleep despite normal or near normal O2 desaturation levels.

Jane, if your Dreamstation has full data capability you need to get Sleepyhead,it's free, and start uploading the data so people can look at what's happening. I may take some time to feel rested, or it may be that you have upper airway resistance sufficient to disrupt your sleep architecture, and thus resulting in daytime sleepiness.

But getting AHI to 3 is a real good start!

The doctors consider five or less to be "controlled." However, lower is better. Unlike, blood pressure or blood glucose, there is no such thing as "too low." Zero is fine!

Personally, I strive for one or lower, but I realize that might not be possible for everybody.

Meanwhile, three is a great start; it's more that a 50% reduction from baseline! BTW, my baseline in 1999 was over 50!

xxyzx wrote:

TASmart wrote:Oxygen desaturation is not the only risk of SA, nor is it the only cause of unrestful sleep in the presence of SA. Sufficient arousals due to OA, CA, or Hypopneas can prevent one from getting restful sleep despite normal or near normal O2 desaturation levels.

Jane, if your Dreamstation has full data capability you need to get Sleepyhead,it's free, and start uploading the data so people can look at what's happening. I may take some time to feel rested, or it may be that you have upper airway resistance sufficient to disrupt your sleep architecture, and thus resulting in daytime sleepiness.

But getting AHI to 3 is a real good start!

===============

lack of oxygen = dead
disturbed sleep = not feeling so good

i can live quite well with disturbed sleep
and did for 40 years or so

i cant live without enough oxygen
and i wont live with the damage it does by being too low but not fatal

clearly it is better to treat all the problems
but insufficient O2 is far worse than apnea

Your obsession with O2 desaturation is bordering on pathological. This is a sleep apnea forum. Sleep apnea may or may not cause O2 desaturations. O2 desaturations may or may not be a result of sleep apnea. Other causes of low blood O2 are:

Among the long list of conditions that can cause hypoxemia are anemia, heart defects present at birth (congenital heart disease), COPD and emphysema, high altitude, pneumonia, shock, and sleep apnea. Symptoms of low blood oxygen are shortness of breath after slight exertion or at rest and feeling tired after little effort.

Another cause of low blood oxygen is a condition called obesity hyperventilation syndrome (OHS) in which poor breathing leads to too much carbon dioxide and too little oxygen. While the exact cause of this condition isn’t known, it is believed to stem from two factors:

A defect in the brain’s control over breathing
Excessive fatty-tissue weight against the chest wall.

Above from Dr Weil's website

You are giving Sleep apnea bad advise because of this obsession, and SA sufferers may or may not have desaturation issues and to focus on that to the exclusion of other issues that may be caused by SA is a dangerous disservice to all of those people.

TASmart wrote:You are giving Sleep apnea bad advise because of this obsession

All of his advice is self-centric.

The pattern is familiar.
Others have brought us similar abundance of self-preening in the past.
Most are now gone.
We can only hit the "foe" button until this pest, too, wanders away.

xxyzx wrote:I definitlely want to fix my low O2 problems more than i care about any AHI number
but that should be true for everybody

Ah...what would you do if a sleep study said your AHI was in the 60s but your O2 never dropped below 95% and your baseline was 97 to 98 %?
Are you aware that not everyone has significant desats with sleep apnea? It's not all about O2 for the entire world's population despite your own personal experience in that area.

Pugsy wrote:

xxyzx wrote:I definitlely want to fix my low O2 problems more than i care about any AHI number
but that should be true for everybody

Ah...what would you do if a sleep study said your AHI was in the 60s but your O2 never dropped below 95% and your baseline was 97 to 98 %?
Are you aware that not everyone has significant desats with sleep apnea? It's not all about O2 for the entire world's population despite your own personal experience in that area.

here's the answer to xxyzx's obsession with o2 rather than simple sleep deprivation caused by sleep apnea:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/21 ... CNSNS-news

his brain's eaten itself.

xxyzx wrote:

ChicagoGranny wrote:

TASmart wrote:You are giving Sleep apnea bad advise because of this obsession

All of his advice is self-centric.

==========

all my advice is based on scientific evidence
and a knowledge of statistics
AHI is a crude surrogate that sort of indicates how apnea is being treated
but says nothing about how your health and safety were treated

lack of sufficient O2 will kill you
or cause severe damage

disturbed sleep is an annoyance

I definitlely want to fix my low O2 problems more than i care about any AHI number
but that should be true for everybody

You should want both a low oxygen saturation and a high AHI to be treated. But when you are treating a low AHI the treatment may or may not be a treatment for sleep apnea.

AHI is not a surrogate for the treatment of sleep apnea, you can (get ready for this shock) have a AHI without apnea. Untreated apnea has an AHI, and people without apnea have an AHI. People who are treated for apnea use AHI as one factor in the effectiveness of the treatment. They also may use oxygen saturation, how they feel, and their tendency to fall asleep inappropriately as guidelines as to the effectiveness of treatment. AHI is a measurement of physiological processes, and only a meaningless to you, who clearly do not understand the full scope and issues related to sleep disturbed breathing. but believe as you wish, I am concerned for the people you direct into caring only for an approximation of a state that may or may not be related to SDB.

And just for what it's worth, in my case since I do have a low degree of oxygen desaturation when I am not treated, I do look at my o2 data on occasion. But since a finger tip O2 provides only an approximation of actual O2 levels in the blood, and in fact varies some by which finger you measure, I use AHI as a more accurate indicator of how I am doing with my treatment. I assume that at your next sleep study whether at home or a lab, you will insist on arterial blood draws to accurately measure your O2 saturation level and will dispense of all that other useless and crude crap.

Oh yes, why don't you try this repeat of an experiment - get an EEG and everytime you approach REM or deep sleep have an assistant wake you up. Previous studies have shown this to lead to insanity, so in your case, it may lead to sanity.

chunkyfrog wrote:The pattern is familiar.
Others have brought us similar abundance of self-preening in the past.
Most are now gone.
We can only hit the "foe" button until this pest, too, wanders away.

We have a foe button? Where is it? Does it mean that I can press it and never have to read this guys posts ever again? Let me at it!!!

Holden4th wrote:

chunkyfrog wrote:The pattern is familiar.
Others have brought us similar abundance of self-preening in the past.
Most are now gone.
We can only hit the "foe" button until this pest, too, wanders away.

We have a foe button? Where is it? Does it mean that I can press it and never have to read this guys posts ever again? Let me at it!!!

User Control Panel

TASmart wrote:

xxyzx

Previous studies have shown this to lead to insanity, so in your case, it may lead to sanity.

Lead? Mxyzptlk has already run there at a gallop.

DeadlySleep wrote:

TASmart wrote:

xxyzx

Previous studies have shown this to lead to insanity, so in your case, it may lead to sanity.

Lead? Mxyzptlk has already run there at a gallop.

My thought was he started there long before SA caught up to him, and knowing that many medication have an opposite effect than usually seen in a few people, i.e. caffeine is sedating for a few people, thought that sleep depravation may facilitate a return to sanity. Long shot I know.

DeadlySleep wrote:Mxyzptlk

I see what you did there.