CPAPtalk.com

FWIW, I had alot of trouble with mouth-breathing initially and I tried breathe-right strips to help get better flow through my nose. Made a world of difference at least for me.

Also, dont get discouraged about not sleeping. I started this whole adventure less than a month ago. In the beginning, I did not sleep for the first four times I wore the mask and tried to sleep...AT ALL...including logging only 22 min of sleep over 8 hrs of trying for the titration study (I didn't know you could sleep in 77 second increments!) And I definitely dont have insomnia issues, I'm usually out about 37 seconds after my head hits the pillow....totally maddening to not be able to sleep.

When I got home I did the same thing as you...wearing it and then taking it off at some point to *finally* get some sleep. BUT, I DID KEEP WEARING IT. My kids suggested I set a goal of making it just 15- more minutes each night no matter how long or little I actually slept. If I woke up after 3 hours, I put the mask back on and kept it on for just 15 more min, then if I was still awake I took it off and went to sleep. Woke up after 45 min, put it back on just for 15 min, fed up after and hour, stuck it that 15 more min. It was a goal completely within my control no matter how much or little time I slept with the mask and made me feel like I could make progress every night.

I also made it a point to wear it a little bit during the day as well (30 min at a go). If my coworkers could have seen me teleworking And limited any snoozing during the day to make sure I was ready for bed at night, and even if I decided to power nap, even just 10 min, I wore the mask.

I was getting tremendously discouraged and started to feel like my diaphragm was just tired from breathing against the pressure. My kids were real troopers to put up with grumpy mom for a bit. Then, one night, I went to bed with the thought of' maybe 4 hours tonight', then whammo I logged over 8...didnt wake up once. While I didnt feel like a totally new person or anything, I cant remember the last time I slept more than 4 or 5 hours straight.

I wont lie and say that it has all been easy since, but getting over that initial night was a HUGE mental boost. Now I am consistently logging at least 5 hours, usually closer to 7. Enlisting my kids to cheer lead a bit and ask me in the am how it went...just for a little accountability definitely helped. If you are that kind of person who needs a workout buddy, enlist a mask buddy, tell them proudly every morning about how you made it just 15 more min

Ht538 wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 07, 2020 3:23 pm

FWIW, I had alot of trouble with mouth-breathing initially and I tried breathe-right strips to help get better flow through my nose. Made a world of difference at least for me.

Also, dont get discouraged about not sleeping. I started this whole adventure less than a month ago. In the beginning, I did not sleep for the first four times I wore the mask and tried to sleep...AT ALL...including logging only 22 min of sleep over 8 hrs of trying for the titration study (I didn't know you could sleep in 77 second increments!) And I definitely dont have insomnia issues, I'm usually out about 37 seconds after my head hits the pillow....totally maddening to not be able to sleep.

When I got home I did the same thing as you...wearing it and then taking it off at some point to *finally* get some sleep. BUT, I DID KEEP WEARING IT. My kids suggested I set a goal of making it just 15- more minutes each night no matter how long or little I actually slept. If I woke up after 3 hours, I put the mask back on and kept it on for just 15 more min, then if I was still awake I took it off and went to sleep. Woke up after 45 min, put it back on just for 15 min, fed up after and hour, stuck it that 15 more min. It was a goal completely within my control no matter how much or little time I slept with the mask and made me feel like I could make progress every night.

I also made it a point to wear it a little bit during the day as well (30 min at a go). If my coworkers could have seen me teleworking And limited any snoozing during the day to make sure I was ready for bed at night, and even if I decided to power nap, even just 10 min, I wore the mask.

I was getting tremendously discouraged and started to feel like my diaphragm was just tired from breathing against the pressure. My kids were real troopers to put up with grumpy mom for a bit. Then, one night, I went to bed with the thought of' maybe 4 hours tonight', then whammo I logged over 8...didnt wake up once. While I didnt feel like a totally new person or anything, I cant remember the last time I slept more than 4 or 5 hours straight.

I wont lie and say that it has all been easy since, but getting over that initial night was a HUGE mental boost. Now I am consistently logging at least 5 hours, usually closer to 7. Enlisting my kids to cheer lead a bit and ask me in the am how it went...just for a little accountability definitely helped. If you are that kind of person who needs a workout buddy, enlist a mask buddy, tell them proudly every morning about how you made it just 15 more min

Thanks for sharing your experience, I'm glad it's starting to working out for you! That's encouraging.

Just curious, how's your nasal breathing in general on a day to day basis, without the mask? Did you ever consider switching to the full face mask? My two sleep studies were done with the full face setup, and it seems like it might be a bit more comfortable/natural for me at this point in time.

souldrifter wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:40 pm

Did you have to stay off the machine after when healing? How long?

I had my surgery done several years prior to starting treatment. I was originally tested for OSA in 1996. At that time, CPAP machines were much larger than they are now, and the mask selection was was very limited. My job at that time required me to do a lot of travel by air, and I was already carrying a nebulizer machine with me, and I did not want to have to also try taking a CPAP machine with me. Since I had a badly deviated septum, I decided to see an ENT about the possibility of having surgery to treat my OSA. I had the deviated septum fixed, turbinate reduction, cleaned out the sinus cavities, and had UPPP surgery done at the same time. The symptoms of OSA that I had disappeared for several years. I no longer snored and I did not stop breathing when sleeping. However, in 2014 I had a knee replaced, and while in the hospital, the nurses noticed my blood oxygen levels dropped quite a bit every time I fell asleep. My doctor scheduled me for a sleep test, and I have been using a machine since May, 2015.

Night 2


Below is my Night 2 OSCAR data (last night), I'm not going to bother posting my Night 1 data since it's much more all over the place and I'm assuming its inaccurate as I was just getting used to the machine.

Overall I was able to sleep much better last night with the mask, it felt like I was asleep for a solid 5 hours with the mask on. Using a Breathe Right strip and saline spray before going to sleep and it really made a big difference.

When I woke up, the only thing that was bothering me was that my nose may have felt a bit dry, which is the reason I took the mask off at around 7:30AMish. My machine is currently automatically dispersing humidity but I'm not sure if it's going above the "4" setting. It used about half of the water in the chamber throughout the night. I'm considering trying to manually set it at 5 or 6 tonight. Any thoughts on this?


As for the OSCAR data, I'm not going to try to interpret it too in-depth since I'm still green, but I did read Pugsy's posts and I think I have a decent understanding. When providing feedback, please keep in mind that I'm a noob.

I used a fixed pressure of 4 (prescribed setting) to serve as a baseline. It actually felt pretty comfortable, more so than last night, probably because my airways were opened more by the nasal strip. I'm wondering how I should adjust this tonight.

The only thoughts that I want to share: It looks like my AHI is decent. To my understanding, I first want to focus on getting it under 2. It looks like my main issues are hypoapneas and clear airway events. I'm wondering how many of these are potentially related to opening my mouth/mouth breathing. I am actually surprised I didn't do this more. I was going to try the snoring strap tonight to see if that makes a difference.

Also, I think I recall remember taking off the mask for the night at about 7:30ish, and I noticed that a large number of events occur after this. I didn't turn off the machine, I just took the mask off and it might have kept running a bit and interpreted this as leakage/events. Is this possible?

That being said, how do you approach taking off the mask when getting up for bathroom breaks/water/etc? Do you turn off the airflow or let it run? As you can see below, I am not displaying the data from the first 1hr 21min I had the mask on while watching TV before I got up to use the restroom (put it back on afterward and went to sleep, which was the beginning of the data below).

Please feel free to provide feedback in regards to settings tweaks/data interpretation/advice/etc.

Thanks!




Click For Full Screen: https://i.imgur.com/QkTX3h8.png

Jas_williams wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 07, 2020 4:13 am

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 07, 2020 2:10 am

I even wonder how accurate these sleep studies are when it comes to Centrals? After all our CPAP machines mark any sort of arousal or deep sigh as a Central. Couldn't the same thing be occurring in these studies?

That is not correct an event needs to be over 10 seconds long to be scored do you often sigh for over 10 seconds and the machines are pretty good at deciding if the events are obstructive or central they just don’t know if your asleep or not

Hmmm, now I am confused..., I think when I queried on this forum (or maybe it was another forum) some time back about all the CA's that were marking, I was informed they looked like only arousals, not proper CA's. The waveforms showed that I wasnt properly asleep before the events. So I've just been ignoring them since then thinking the machine is marking any disturbance and theyre not proper CA's, hence my comment about true CA's. They make up the bulk of my AHI score. Not wanting to hijack this thread so will maybe post on a new thread for someone to look at again.

Good idea .

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:06 am

Not wanting to hijack this thread so will maybe post on a new thread for someone to look at again.

Then don't, and quit obsessing over nothing.

palerider wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 9:41 am

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:06 am

Not wanting to hijack this thread so will maybe post on a new thread for someone to look at again.

Then don't, and quit obsessing over nothing.

If only you knew how poor my health is from fragmented sleep and trying to figure out whats causing it and to treat it.

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 10:47 am

palerider wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 9:41 am

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:06 am

Not wanting to hijack this thread so will maybe post on a new thread for someone to look at again.

Then don't, and quit obsessing over nothing.

If only you knew how poor my health is from fragmented sleep and trying to figure out whats causing it and to treat it.

Fragmented sleep is horrible...believe me I know first hand.
BUT.....a few centrals here or there isn't the problem and more than a few centrals that are arousal related are symptoms of the poor sleep and not the cause of the poor sleep..
Fixing the caused of severely fragmented sleep.....not an easy job at all. First you have to identify the cause which is often very elusive.
Not everything that messes with our sleep is related to sleep apnea or airway issues...the list is miles long.
Remember that the machine only fixes one item on that potential sleep disruption list....apnea or airway issues. Anything else it's totally useless with.

Worrying about a few normal centrals is doing nothing but adding stress to your life. That's why you need to not obsess over them.
1....they are normal to have in small numbers and real or not...not a problem
2....nothing you can do about them anyway
3....more stress is always bad for a person.

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 10:47 am

palerider wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 9:41 am

PatOnCPAP wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:06 am

Not wanting to hijack this thread so will maybe post on a new thread for someone to look at again.

Then don't, and quit obsessing over nothing.

If only you knew how poor my health is from fragmented sleep and trying to figure out whats causing it and to treat it.

It does not matter how poor your health is and how fragmented your sleep is with relation to the insignificant number of centrals you have.

Focus on what is fragmenting your sleep, not on the centrals, they *are not the issue*.

Night 3

Here are last night's results. Used fixed pressure 4.2, as of now I'm going to keep bumping it incrementally over time and see how I feel. Unlike night 2, I felt like I hardly slept so I'm not sure how accurate the results are. On top of that, I don't know why but it seemed like the seal was noticeably worse. At this point, I've pretty much decided that I'm done with the nasal mask and I'm going to stop posting my OSCAR data until I get started with the face mask on Wednesday.

As for OSCAR, I'm still not exactly sure what I should be looking at primarily and/or what I can do to lower my AHI. Any resources/feedback appreciated.




Click For Full Screen: https://i.imgur.com/AqB1I9B.png

Just wondering, can a "Clear Airway" event ever be attributed to either open mouth/mouth breathing?

What about a leak? In last nights results, it looks like there might be a correlation between Leak Rate and Clear Airway events

Clear Airway continues to be my biggest issue. It will be interesting to see how switching from the nasal to full-face mask changes things.

CA are not normally associated with mouth breathing as when you open your mouth flow is recorded by the machine and a CA represents no Flow

Soul drifter....my day to day awake nasal breathing is off as well. BOTH my ex and current bf have commented on my sighing/breath holding...they both have said it’s like I’ve taken a breath but the exhale is very delayed. I never connected it until you asked. I am in the process of navigating through my PCM to get to an ENT to check things out. The breathe right strips create a significant enough improvement that sometimes I don’t take it off in the am until I’m ready to leave the house.

Ht538 wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 11, 2020 2:11 pm

Soul drifter....my day to day awake nasal breathing is off as well. BOTH my ex and current bf have commented on my sighing/breath holding...they both have said it’s like I’ve taken a breath but the exhale is very delayed. I never connected it until you asked. I am in the process of navigating through my PCM to get to an ENT to check things out. The breathe right strips create a significant enough improvement that sometimes I don’t take it off in the am until I’m ready to leave the house.

Yes, it really seems like it could be possible.