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Here are the results from last night. Not great over all but much improved over the last couple of sessions. The central apneas are quite disturbing to have. Thank you everyone for you help so far. Wouldn't have kept going without it. Tonight I will raise the pressure and see what happens.

Kevin

Okay...now go here and learn how to determine if the centrals you are seeing now are real asleep centrals or SWJ sleep/wake/junk false positive centrals.

Oh...any of the flagged events can be false positives. I know that from personal experience. It's not limited to centrals/clear airways apnea events. Any of the event categories can have false positives.

http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software

Anything flagged around a known awake time is suspect for being SWJ.

The next change I think you should make is increase that minimum to around 8.5 cm assuming those hyponeas look like you were asleep.

There is no need for such panic over central apneas. They aren't any more of a problem to sleep quality than the obstructive stuff is...they are just a little harder to deal with when present in large numbers with a regular cpap/apap machine since they won't respond to more pressure like the obstructive stuff will.

Your number of centrals last night...well within an acceptable range to be seeing and normal.
Did you know that it is normal to awaken after a REM stage sleep cycle? Normally we don't remember the awakening but we still do it and anytime there is an awakening there is a chance for what is called a sleep onset central or sleep stage transition central to happen.
It's normal and to be expected and no big deal unless a person has so many of them they keep bouncing out of sleep and the sleep stages don't progress beyond light sleep.

Centrals can be dealt with when present in numbers large enough to be a problem. Sometimes the fix is an easy one like turning off exhale relief...sometimes that doesn't work and sometimes the giving it time thing won't work....so there are machines designed to essentially breathe for you when you don't.
Hold your breath for 10 seconds...that's essentially a 10 second central apnea. The airway is open but no air is moving because you are holding your breath. That's what happens when the brain doesn't send the signal to breathe....you just hold your breath.
A random 10 to 15 second holding your breath isn't a big deal. It becomes a big deal when we have a truck load of them and we sleep like crap and feel like crap.

We try the easy stuff first to fix the problem...sometimes easy works.
And in your situation looks like easy worked.
Now let's deal with the remaining obstructive stuff with a higher baseline pressure to better prevent the airway from collapsing.

I am thrilled with your results from last night. Now let's see what happens with a higher minimum pressure. If all goes as planned you should be real close to optimal settings in just a couple of nights.

This is consistent with 6 of the 8 recorded CA and about 2/3s of the H and OA.
Thoughts? it look like to me that there are still central apneas occurring.

Pugsy, thanks for the links! very helpful!

You are zoomed in a little too closely and I can't see enough of the flow rate prior to the first flagged event or after the second flagged event.
But from what I can see....looks like preceding the OA flag was arousal breathing and not asleep breathing and same thing after the central flag. It's a bit too irregular.

Looks like you have zoomed in to about a minute and a half time frame. That's a little too close to best evaluate the flow rate.

If you go to the Events tab....then click on one of the categories like the CA category and go find that timed CA flag at around 02:31 and click on it the graphs change to the best level of zooming in for flow rate evaluation...I think maybe 3 to 4 minutes time frame or thereabouts.

And remember....we are most likely going to see some central flagging happening that is normal to see anyway.
We don't expect to kill off every single central or OA/hyponea for that matter.

When you zoom in too closely it distorts the flow rate so it all looks too weird. Makes it hard to evaluate.

We need to see the flow rate prior to the flag so when asking about a particular event put the flag about 3/4 down the graph to the right so we can see the breathing prior to the flag.

This is the best level of zooming in.
This CA/central isn't real. See the big gulp of air that I circled in red? We don't do that when we are asleep.


This is zoomed out a little too far but it's still easy to spot nice regular asleep breathing vs arousal/awake breathing.
Not asleep breathing before and after the flag. SWJ flag


Asleep breathing circled in red. Then the rest of it including the flagged event is arousal/awake related breathing.


Same as the above with red circled asleep breathing zoomed out a little further....everything after that is arousal related.

Wasn't on page 2 to see your reply before my last couple of posts. I will say I feel great by comparison to what I have in a long time. I have the min pressure set to 8.5 for tonight and will post results in the morning. The episodes that I had wed into Thursday and thursday during the day were scary. Thank you so much for your help. I actually have some energy today. Starting to get back to normal. Have a wonderful day!

Kevin

Your prior reports were indeed very ugly and I don't blame you one bit for being scared.
I am just glad you were open to some ideas to try and see if we could make things less scary for you and get you some decent sleep so you could see that all this stuff does work.

There's obviously still some work to do but we can get there. You know how to eat an elephant??? One bite at a time.
I know while you think these reports were god awful.....I have seen much worse. Which is why I wanted to at least try some things to see if we get lucky with some minor tweaking and get you some decent sleep and feeling not so much like death warmed over.

Have some fun today. Enjoy your new found energy. FWIW...one of my best days followed a night with AHI of 10.4. Go figure that one.
Makes no logical sense at all but I have long said that if I could duplicate that feeling I would gladly live with AHI of 10.4.

As much as I am looking forward to fine tuning it and getting it better, I honestly would be happy if this is the best that it gets. I don't think I fully realized how bad I have been and how long I have been like that. I truly haven't felt this good in a very long time. I would have to say at least 5 yrs.

If there is one thing I have learned in life, it can always be worse. Be thankful for what you have. It wasn't the chart that was scary. It was the roller coaster of start to fall asleep and abruptly wake for a breath one after another. Thank you for the gentle push to try something to correct it. Like I said, I would be happy with what I am feeling right now. If it gets better that is great but I feel great right now.

Kevin

Had a nap with the new minimum pressure. Here are the results from it. Didn't feel as good as I did this morning. Pressure increase defiantly helped. Clear airway is gone and AHI drop significantly. Only issue I am now seeing is was woken up once to a leak out of my mouth and a couple of times to chipmunk cheeks.

So here is what little sleep I got last night Kids crawled in to our bed and I got an elbow to the face a couple of times and the wife came to bed late and started snoring which meant sleep was not going to happen unfortunately. Paybacks for years of my snoring I guess Im trying to convince her to go for a sleep study! Will try again tonight. Hope everyone enjoys what is left of the weekend. It is supposed to be 55 degrees today in chicagoland will hopefully throw a ball with my oldest for a while.

Here is last nights chart. Again mouth leakage issues.

(Edited for spelling)

Start out on your side and end up on your back?

Or from about 5:00 on you were half awake and half asleep????

Good Morning Pugsy!
From about 5, half awake.
Is there a way to stop the mouth leaks or is that just part of getting used to it?