Pulse ox report help....UK user

I was just trying to be helpful. Not sure what area of the country you're in but the clinic I went to privately also deals with 19,000 people from all over the south east of the UK. They also deal with more than OSA which is what I wanted as CPAP didn't fix all my sleep issues. Just to give you an idea on costs for full polysomnography I include a link to their test price list. Lucky for me my issue was bad enough to show up in a pulse oximetry!!
https://gyazo.com/c7104b738fb26ddd55bfcf80a8c20c3b

Hi JustBreathe234,

If your reply was directed to me, thank you. I'm quite well briefed on the QVH. It draws on quite a large area for historical reasons – a bit like the RNH for Rheumatic Diseases in Bath – even though most Foundation Trust Hospitals have sleep clinics to serve patients in their own areas.

The fee of £1,450 for a sleep-lab PSG on a private medicine basis is in the same ball-park as other providers. There is even one place on the south coast which charges £1,900.

Hello again bobbysnuts,

The above confirms what I said about getting a multi-channel sleep-study done in the UK private sector. It is expensive.

So ... I get that you're not on any meds, that you're fit and healthy, you don't smoke or drink, and you exercise regularly. Also, you have tested for low-T and thyroid, and no problem there. So the puzzle is: what's causing the unrefreshing sleep if it's not sleep apnea?

Your O2 drops a little bit while sleeping – but it's within normal range. And as you've seen, the very experienced people here aren't flagging it.

Before you go to your GP and enquire about the possibility of an NHS sleep-lab sleep-study, may I suggest:

1. Sleep hygiene. This list comes from forum member ChicagoGranny. You already do half of it, but out of respect to her as the source, I repeat it in its entirety,

- 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

2. Next, are you someone who has a particularly stressful job? Do you find it difficult to switch off from any job troubles? Or indeed, any troubles? Have you experienced anything likely to give PTSD, even in a milder form?

I don't recommend the NHS for psychological help – the best they can give you these days is some CBT – and even then, there's a waiting list for a ten-week course of treatment.

As an alternative to that, GPs can formally 'prescribe' that you read some of the CBT books – and as part of that scheme, your local public library has been stocked with extra copies. But you do have to motivate yourself to 'finish the course'. And some people find having a regular appointment with a human being that they have to go to helps motivate them.

If any psychological issues do apply, I really do recommend Havening. It is medically based, and has been researched. And it is efficient. It just hasn't been formally adopted yet. (It took the NHS 40 years to approve of CBT.)

At the moment, Havening is only available in the UK on a private basis. But the number of sessions involved is limited.

3. One way for you to really rule in or rule out mild sleep apnea is that, instead of more testing and another sleep-study, you could hire a machine and mask for a week (cost, typically £100 for one week), and use it for that many nights – and find out if treatment makes any difference.

If that appeals to you, I'll pm you the details.

@Rick Blaine My comments were to bobbysnuts.

I get the impression that anyone commenting who is not an old time member is not welcome. I was just trying to offer some support but no matter.

Hi all,

It's been a while since I posted on here.

I had a home sleep test that came back with an AHI of 16.7.

I have been on APAP since march, but I still feel so tired and unrefreshed, brain fog and seem to have cognitive issues/poor memory.

I've attached my home oximtery report and last nights report showing in OSCAR.

Why do I still feel this way when it looks like the APAP is treating the Apnea's, could UARS be a possible reason?

Please review this thread and post last night's OSCAR report in the normally requested format.
viewtopic/t158560/How-to-post-images-for-review.html
You can omit the snore graph...it's showing no snores anyway.

Do you take any medications of any kind, even OTC? if so, what?
Do you wake often during the night?
Any other physical or mental health issues that might impact sleep quality or how you feel during the day?
Exactly what symptoms are you experiencing that you wish you didn't?

Is it possible UARS is going on here? Yes, it is possible but it is also possible other things might be going on.

Hi Pugsy, thanks for the reply.

I don't take any form of medication. (I do suffer with anxiety and I'm currently waiting to do a CBT Course, I've been meditating in the mornings using Headspace and using NLP before bedtime to see if that helps).

My diet is super healthy, I don't drink or smoke and exercise when I can.

I think I sleep ok the first part of the night, but the 2nd half I wake a lot of times and feel like I'm between awake/really light sleep for hours.

I wake up every single morning feeling exhausted like I've not slept, I never feel refreshed and energised.

I used to get bad migraines in the morning before APAP, but not so much now, although most mornings I have a dull foggy/heavy feeling headache.

I feel like my cognition is suffering, I'm slower at processing thoughts, struggle with retaining information and very poor memory.

I wake most mornings with a tight chest feeling and feel anxious upon waking sometimes with a pounding heart beat.



I'm currently waiting for an ENT appointment (I've been waiting 9 months due to a clerical error / covid-19!) - I suspect a Deviated Septum, Enlarged Turbinates, and my sleep consultant said he would advise to have my Tonsils removed - so I hoping this may solve some of the issues going forward.

Thanks for your time.

Fragmented sleep will mess with how we feel for sure. We don't get the normal cycles of each sleep stage in the needed percentages for the restorative powers of sleep to work their magic.
Now why we have the fragmented sleep is sometimes a hard puzzle to figure out. You do well the first half of the night and not so great the second half of the night.

Sounds like a bit of what we call "sleep maintenance insomnia" going on. You can google it and see there are lots of potential causes.
Sometimes medication side effects which is obviously why I asked the medication question. Very common for meds to mess with sleep but if you aren't taking any meds then we rule that out. Unfortunately life stressors can greatly impact sleep. It's 6 AM here now where I live and I have been awake well over an hour and I didn't want to be. I woke up with mind racing and couldn't get back to sleep. I already know my butt will be dragging today. I also remember more wake ups than usual last night. I got maybe 6 hours of very fragmented sleep last night. There was/is a cold front coming through and it does cause my arthritis to act up more.....so maybe more pain than usual for a 68 yr old woman but it happens to me when the weather doesn't change either. So as much as I would like to blame the weather and my old age....it's more than that.

You mention anxiety....and CBT therapy so you know that your mind messes with you. It wouldn't be impossible for it to be messing with your sleep quality as well.
Your OSCAR report that you did share...not very exciting and from the statistics shown...I don't think that the missing graphs will be of much help. You say your morning killer headaches are pretty much gone. Those were likely related to low oxygen with untreated apnea prior to cpap. I had those as well and they went away pretty quickly once I was on cpap. So cpap is working but not giving you the relief you expected or wanted with the low numbers.

Feeling the nice low numbers though....that has been elusive for me. It's because sometimes I just don't sleep so great and the not so great sleep isn't from sleep apnea or airway related issues and the machine can only fix bad sleep related to airway issues.
It can't fix bad sleep related to other issues as much as we might want it to or my wanting to blame all my problems on sleep apnea and expect the machine to fix it. It just doesn't work out that way.

Now it does take some time for the body to heal and recover from long term sleep apnea damage. So maybe you just need more time on the cpap machine. Sometimes improvements are gradual and so gradual we don't realize they are happening. While my morning killer headaches went away pretty quickly....my energy levels were very slow to return to where I wanted them to be and I think it was 3 months into cpap therapy before I really had a day where I was happy with them. That was 11 years ago and as I have aged ....and sleep quality has deteriorated because of arthritis and such...they are again very elusive but it's not from sleep apnea...it's from just getting older and hurting more. Stuff the machine can't fix.

I suspect your fragmented sleep is playing a big factor in why you don't feel so great yet. Might also be that you just need to give the body more time to heal. I stumbled across a good article that explains why getting the right amount in each sleep stage is so important to how we feel. I know it is talking about alcohol affecting sleep quality but if you read it and substitute "anything" for alcohol...you will see what I mean.
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/article ... -and-sleep
Now figuring out the "anything" isn't always so easy and fixing it even if you figure it out...even harder. Trust me...been there and done that. It's a battle I will always have to fight.
When we wake often during the night for any reason we simply don't get a chance to get stages of sleep in the amount we need for the body to rejuvenate itself.