can too high of pressure prevent treatment?

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:12 pm

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:03 pm

do you think i have apnea?

I see nothing on those reports that point to OSA.

The pressure increases are probably nothing more than the normal pressure probes so they don't mean all that much.

I saw nothing on your original reports either and back then you were having the common complaint of just not sleeping well with the machine and mask. Then you started doing wild pressure changes willy nilly without any clearly defined plan or reasoning.
You got impatient and started to try to treat something that you never even confirmed needed treatment.

what about the pressure for this night?

It might be placebo and it might be that whatever issues you might have with sleep disordered breathing actually responded well to cpap. Not everything can be labeled with the OSA label....doesn't mean that there isn't a problem...just means it isn't necessarily OSA labeled.

I never doubted that you had some sort of problem with your sleep quality. I just never saw anything that let me put the OSA label on whatever problem it was.
Mainly because the first reports you shared you weren't ever really asleep and we can't tell a thing about any sleep disordered breathing until we are actually asleep.

How badly do you feel the need to put a label on something that doesn't include "maybe" in the label?

I don't mean to sound harsh but the cold hard fact of life here is that we can maybe get an idea as to whether a person has enough sleep disordered breathing to earn the OSA label by what we see on the machine but sometimes we just can't.
Even at 4 cm pressure there is therapy value and the fact that a machine might not want to do anything beyond 4 cm doesn't mean that there wasn't OSA present. It might simply just mean the person has OSA and 4 cm takes care of it. Sometimes we get lucky and there is a marked pressure change that can help confirm the diagnosis but sometimes there isn't and I never saw it with your earlier reports because what I was seeing had more SWJ flagged events than anything else. Not enough actual sleep to evaluate stuff.

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm

what about the pressure for this night?

I would be asking about how well you slept that night. I see at least 2 known therapy breaks where we know you were awake... how many other awake times might have happened????
I would want to evaluate the events to see if they appeared real or not.
The pressure change in response to the 4:30 cluster would be very closely looked at to determine if it was real events or SWJ events.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:48 pm

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm

what about the pressure for this night?

I would be asking about how well you slept that night. I see at least 2 known therapy breaks where we know you were awake... how many other awake times might have happened????
I would want to evaluate the events to see if they appeared real or not.
The pressure change in response to the 4:30 cluster would be very closely looked at to determine if it was real events or SWJ events.

yea i cant tell you how well i slept because it was a little while ago
i was looking for a report where the machine responded to events with increased pressure
and i was thinking because the pressure was lower then than i have it now
maybe the machine isnt increasing pressure because im near the right pressure
i can post a close up of it

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:43 pm

It might be placebo and it might be that whatever issues you might have with sleep disordered breathing actually responded well to cpap. Not everything can be labeled with the OSA label....doesn't mean that there isn't a problem...just means it isn't necessarily OSA labeled.

I never doubted that you had some sort of problem with your sleep quality. I just never saw anything that let me put the OSA label on whatever problem it was.
Mainly because the first reports you shared you weren't ever really asleep and we can't tell a thing about any sleep disordered breathing until we are actually asleep.

How badly do you feel the need to put a label on something that doesn't include "maybe" in the label?

I don't mean to sound harsh but the cold hard fact of life here is that we can maybe get an idea as to whether a person has enough sleep disordered breathing to earn the OSA label by what we see on the machine but sometimes we just can't.
Even at 4 cm pressure there is therapy value and the fact that a machine might not want to do anything beyond 4 cm doesn't mean that there wasn't OSA present. It might simply just mean the person has OSA and 4 cm takes care of it. Sometimes we get lucky and there is a marked pressure change that can help confirm the diagnosis but sometimes there isn't and I never saw it with your earlier reports because what I was seeing had more SWJ flagged events than anything else. Not enough actual sleep to evaluate stuff.

yea, i mean my mind feels active, i dont urinate as much at night, i dont feel like death upon awakening
i dont think its as good as it could be but i feel better than ive felt in a while
so even if it isnt osa, i think there is something that the machine is helping me with
i mean, i remember even on the first few nights i got the machine i didnt feel much of a difference
and when i tried to raise pressure i started feeling like crap
so i hope im not lying to myself and i hope its not just placebo

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:48 pm

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:39 pm

what about the pressure for this night?

I would be asking about how well you slept that night. I see at least 2 known therapy breaks where we know you were awake... how many other awake times might have happened????
I would want to evaluate the events to see if they appeared real or not.
The pressure change in response to the 4:30 cluster would be very closely looked at to determine if it was real events or SWJ events.

this screenshot is where the machine first started to raise pressure

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:57 pm

yea, i mean my mind feels active, i dont urinate as much at night, i dont feel like death upon awakening
i dont think its as good as it could be but i feel better than ive felt in a while

Based on what you said here....I would quite worrying about absolute labels and simply use the machine because I felt better.

The only way to know for sure if you qualify for the OSA label is a sleep study without cpap. If it were me I wouldn't care so much about the label but would instead be grateful that the unwanted symptoms were reduced and happily keep using the machine at whatever pressures I felt good using. Heck, sometimes even people with OSA end up using more pressure than might technically be indicated if just looking at the AHI because they have learned that they simply feel better at the higher pressures.
OSA isn't the only problem people can have that causes unwanted symptoms. People understand the label and maybe it makes a person feel better to be able to use the label.

I never worry about "numbers" alone anyway. It's always in conjunction with sleep quality and how I feel during the day.
We don't use this stuff just for a good math score...we want to sleep better and feel better.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:29 pm

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:57 pm

yea, i mean my mind feels active, i dont urinate as much at night, i dont feel like death upon awakening
i dont think its as good as it could be but i feel better than ive felt in a while

Based on what you said here....I would quite worrying about absolute labels and simply use the machine because I felt better.

The only way to know for sure if you qualify for the OSA label is a sleep study without cpap. If it were me I wouldn't care so much about the label but would instead be grateful that the unwanted symptoms were reduced and happily keep using the machine at whatever pressures I felt good using. Heck, sometimes even people with OSA end up using more pressure than might technically be indicated if just looking at the AHI because they have learned that they simply feel better at the higher pressures.
OSA isn't the only problem people can have that causes unwanted symptoms. People understand the label and maybe it makes a person feel better to be able to use the label.

I never worry about "numbers" alone anyway. It's always in conjunction with sleep quality and how I feel during the day.
We don't use this stuff just for a good math score...we want to sleep better and feel better.

yea i agree totally
it would be helpful to know for sure
but as long as i dont feel how i did
thats what i needed

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:39 pm

it would be helpful to know for sure

Might be helpful and might not. What would you do if you did have a real diagnostic sleep study and it came back with an AHI of 4.2 which is below the official criteria for earning the OSA label?

How badly do you want or need to know for sure? Home studies are available. The machine sometimes can answer that question quite clearly but sometimes it can't. For you it doesn't give us a clear black and white answer...just a maybe answer.

Based on what I have seen on a few of your reports...I would say "maybe" OSA.
Based on what you have said about your sleep quality and how you feel and the reduction in nocturia...I would say most probably OSA and for sure some sort of sleep disordered breathing issue.
Does it really matter all that much what the official label might be? The only way to know for sure is get the sleep study but would knowing change anything that you might do?

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:22 pm

could i get your thoughts on my above post?

What do you want thoughts on? there's a bunch of posts above.

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:56 pm

yea i cant tell you how well i slept because it was a little while ago
i was looking for a report where the machine responded to events with increased pressure ...
i can post a close up of it

Forget the past.

Work on now. make notes in SH (or elsewhere) how you slept after a night. If you can't remember how you were doing after a particular night, it's not going to help.

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:57 pm

so even if it isnt osa, i think there is something that the machine is helping me with

There's more to sleep disordered breathing (which is what cpap can help with) than OSA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gie2dhqP2c

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:39 pm

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:29 pm

The only way to know for sure if you qualify for the OSA label is a sleep study without cpap. If it were me I wouldn't care so much about the label but would instead be grateful that the unwanted symptoms were reduced and happily keep using the machine at whatever pressures I felt good using.

yea i agree totally
it would be helpful to know for sure

Your first sentence doesn't agree with your second...
Either you agree with her that it doesn't matter... or you think it would help in some way to 'know for sure'.

I've been on cpap since 2009.

I've never had a sleep study.

I felt like dogshit before I got cpap, terrible fatigue in the mornings, unable to go to work sometimes, falling asleep sitting up 'watching' tv *every night* (of course, I didn't realize I was doing that, I just thought I'd closed my eyes for a second, then rewatching the episode, I'd see large chunks i had no memory of), I was up several times a night peeing...

Now I feel better, even though I'm older and have other unrelated problems, I'm awake, I never fall asleep in the evenings watching tv... I almost never have that extreme fatigue feeling, I rarely end up having to pee in the middle of the night.

Do I thin kit would be 'helpful to know for sure'? NO!

I feel better, I don't give a crap what my 'formal diagnosis' would have been.

palerider wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 4:10 pm

zackds wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:39 pm

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:29 pm

The only way to know for sure if you qualify for the OSA label is a sleep study without cpap. If it were me I wouldn't care so much about the label but would instead be grateful that the unwanted symptoms were reduced and happily keep using the machine at whatever pressures I felt good using.

yea i agree totally
it would be helpful to know for sure

Your first sentence doesn't agree with your second...
Either you agree with her that it doesn't matter... or you think it would help in some way to 'know for sure'.

I've been on cpap since 2009.

I've never had a sleep study.

I felt like dogshit before I got cpap, terrible fatigue in the mornings, unable to go to work sometimes, falling asleep sitting up 'watching' tv *every night* (of course, I didn't realize I was doing that, I just thought I'd closed my eyes for a second, then rewatching the episode, I'd see large chunks i had no memory of), I was up several times a night peeing...

Now I feel better, even though I'm older and have other unrelated problems, I'm awake, I never fall asleep in the evenings watching tv... I almost never have that extreme fatigue feeling, I rarely end up having to pee in the middle of the night.

Do I thin kit would be 'helpful to know for sure'? NO!

I feel better, I don't give a crap what my 'formal diagnosis' would have been.

what i meant by knowing for sure is
eventually seeing if my heart was ok and it wasnt cancer(runs in my family)
as those two things could disrupt sleep
not even necessarily getting a sleep study
i do wake up sometimes during the night even now
but not near as much as i was
could be something as simple as my diet
because some nights are better than others
im experimenting right now to find out why

up until recently though
my hands had very small veins in them in the morning/through most of the day
the hair was gone on them/my forearms
same with my feet
my eyes lost collagen under them
i would wake up with pain in my chest
i was barely thinking
not going out to do anything
the last three weeks all those things are starting to come back
or go away

all my life ive tossed the general fatigue ive had up to depression
when i was a kid i would sleep over friends houses
and wonder why they didnt have to get up to go to the bathroom
two or so times during the night
i was put on sleeping pills when i was a child
theyre horrible for you by the way
was put on adderall for add as a child
also horrible for you
i used to suffer from extreme social anxiety
granted this last problem i resolved mostly before now

this last year, all of these things got worse
i cant say for sure that some sort of sleep disordered breathing had caused all of this
but i feel comfortable being around people
cracking jokes more, conversing more etc
i dont feel a full body fatigue during the day
just being alone feels better now

its tough to tell over the internet what the help you guys are giving
does for some
whether it be helping to determine if theres cause for concern
or telling some to eff off politely so they can look elsewhere
and im sure even reading what im saying here, the disconnect is still there because of the format
but now that i know the difference a machine and mask can make for someone
i understand more why the guy who donated me his machine did so with no questions asked
or why pugsy donated me a mask/other parts i needed

zackds wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 16, 2018 9:45 am

im sure even reading what im saying here, the disconnect is still there because of the format
but now that i know the difference a machine and mask can make for someone

And, I'm sure many people here understand.

Sorry it was such a long trip, but glad you made it.