Help with CPAP data...newbie!

Hiya everyone,

Newbie here!.. I started CPAP a month ago and was hoping some kind souls could help me interpret my data. I cannot see anything problematic, but I am very keen to optimize wherever possible to reap benefits as quickly as possible.

Here is a few days of data.. is there anything I should be aware of or any improvements I could possibly make? This is all very new to me (I only got Sleepyhead a few days ago).. but it looks good to me on the surface, with low AHI? Thank you for any advice/comments and please let me know if I can share anything else!..

jlrsr wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:00 pm

Hiya everyone,

Newbie here!.. I started CPAP a month ago and was hoping some kind souls could help me interpret my data. I cannot see anything problematic, but I am very keen to optimize wherever possible to reap benefits as quickly as possible.

Here is a few days of data.. is there anything I should be aware of or any improvements I could possibly make? This is all very new to me (I only got Sleepyhead a few days ago).. but it looks good to me on the surface, with low AHI? Thank you for any advice/comments and please let me know if I can share anything else!..

welcome to the zoo! how are you feeling upon waking up? any fatigue? headaches? or anything of that sort?

it's always important to report how you feel. you didn't report any specific problems, but i see your minimum pressure is at 4. usually, people have trouble breathing against that pressure. it sounds counter intuitive, but it's easier to breath with a higher pressure, say 6 or 7. but if you are good with that, i have nothing to add.

these charts are fine. but next time, would you remove "mask pressure" and put just "pressure" in it's place?

i'll now sit back to see what the experts have to say.

good luck!

Welcome! You are off to a great start, with good usage and very good AHI numbers. I might suggest that you use some EPR—expiratory pressure relief—both for the sake of comfort and because it might help a little with flow limitations. You could start with 1or 2 and see how it goes.

zonker wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:24 pm

jlrsr wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:00 pm

Hiya everyone,

Newbie here!.. I started CPAP a month ago and was hoping some kind souls could help me interpret my data. I cannot see anything problematic, but I am very keen to optimize wherever possible to reap benefits as quickly as possible.

Here is a few days of data.. is there anything I should be aware of or any improvements I could possibly make? This is all very new to me (I only got Sleepyhead a few days ago).. but it looks good to me on the surface, with low AHI? Thank you for any advice/comments and please let me know if I can share anything else!..

welcome to the zoo! how are you feeling upon waking up? any fatigue? headaches? or anything of that sort?

it's always important to report how you feel. you didn't report any specific problems, but i see your minimum pressure is at 4. usually, people have trouble breathing against that pressure. it sounds counter intuitive, but it's easier to breath with a higher pressure, say 6 or 7. but if you are good with that, i have nothing to add.

these charts are fine. but next time, would you remove "mask pressure" and put just "pressure" in it's place?

i'll now sit back to see what the experts have to say.

good luck!

Hi! Thanks for the reply.

Honestly I find the pressure just fine, almost soothing? (in a weird way..) Although, I used a MAD for 2 years before getting my CPAP, and I find this MUCH more tolerable than the MAD (it made my teeth ache constantly, ulcer problems, etc).

With the CPAP, I'm still waking up with quite heavy fatigue, but I kind of chalked that up as normal as I know recovery can take many months in some cases. I went undiagnosed most of my adult life (33 now). I know It's a journey and I need to be patient, but just wanted to check if there was anything I could further optimize.
Oh, and the only other thing I have noticed.. if I'm honest.. is occasionally waking up with pain in my stomach and extreme gas/wind that takes a few hours to.. "pass".. (sorry, TMI!)

I'll make sure to swap in Pressure on any future charts Thanks again!

Miss Emerita wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 20, 2020 10:40 pm

Welcome! You are off to a great start, with good usage and very good AHI numbers. I might suggest that you use some EPR—expiratory pressure relief—both for the sake of comfort and because it might help a little with flow limitations. You could start with 1or 2 and see how it goes.

Hi! Thank you! I'll look into this

jlrsr wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 3:14 am

Oh, and the only other thing I have noticed.. if I'm honest.. is occasionally waking up with pain in my stomach and extreme gas/wind that takes a few hours to.. "pass".. (sorry, TMI!)

no not too much information. a certain percentage (not sure of the number) get this as a side effect of treating apnea. it's called aerophagia which is just a fancy word for what you describe. for some, this goes away after your body gets used to the treatment. for some, like myself, it seems to take forever. i still get bouts of it every now and then.

and you are quite right about the fatigue taking awhile to dispel.

all in all, looks like you are off to a good start. if you have any questions, just be kind enough to keep them in this thread. if you think you are straying from the topic of this post, just change the title and carry on.

continued good luck!

zonker wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 10:44 am

jlrsr wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 3:14 am

Oh, and the only other thing I have noticed.. if I'm honest.. is occasionally waking up with pain in my stomach and extreme gas/wind that takes a few hours to.. "pass".. (sorry, TMI!)

no not too much information. a certain percentage (not sure of the number) get this as a side effect of treating apnea. it's called aerophagia which is just a fancy word for what you describe. for some, this goes away after your body gets used to the treatment. for some, like myself, it seems to take forever. i still get bouts of it every now and then.

and you are quite right about the fatigue taking awhile to dispel.

all in all, looks like you are off to a good start. if you have any questions, just be kind enough to keep them in this thread. if you think you are straying from the topic of this post, just change the title and carry on.

continued good luck!

Thank you so much for the warm welcome and help! I'll try and keep up the good work

I actually do have one more question.. I looked at my data from last night and got a little scared by one event in particular.. A 45 second OA episode.. I'm not sure whether to be worried or whether there is a less sinister explanation I'm missing (trying to learn as much as possible for future reference..) I'm guessing there might be.. as surely this is something my CPAP would correct long before the 45 second mark?

I attached a screenshot. And thanks again

jlrsr wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 4:58 pm

surely this is something my CPAP would correct long before the 45 second mark?

Actually these machines never do anything at all during the apnea event. They don't blow the airway open at all. They can't generate that much force. They will increase the pressure after the OA has resolved and you see that on the pressure graph.

Go here
viewtopic.php?p=1345745#p1345745
and scroll down to the 9th or 10th post where I explain how apap works.

I start it with this

It's a common thought that the machine senses an apnea event of some sort and immediately thinks "OMG I need to increase the pressure" and it does it and blows the airway open.
Nothing is further from the truth in terms of what actually happens.

As far as the random lone 45 second OA...it happens and as long as you don't have a bunch of them back to back they aren't going to really cause much of a problem.
You would be better off to prevent it from happening in the first place with a higher minimum pressure.
Looks like you were in the neighborhood of 6.5 cm pressure when that happened. Maybe you rolled over onto your back or something then and it caused the airway to collapse. If you see this happen often you might want to use around 7 cm minimum pressure.

jlrsr wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 4:58 pm

Thank you so much for the warm welcome and help! I'll try and keep up the good work

I actually do have one more question.. I looked at my data from last night and got a little scared by one event in particular.. A 45 second OA episode.. I'm not sure whether to be worried or whether there is a less sinister explanation I'm missing (trying to learn as much as possible for future reference..) I'm guessing there might be.. as surely this is something my CPAP would correct long before the 45 second mark?

I attached a screenshot. And thanks again

you are most welcome. i want to reinforce what pugsy is saying. pay close heed; she is the top person when it comes to advice. she has this down cold.

when i first started out, i was alarmed by all the information! because i was trying to discern from my charts what this thing meant, what that thing meant and what the other thing meant! it's overwhelming.

to this day, i'm not the best at interpreting charts and that's putting it mildly. i leave it up to the folks here who are better at this than i to read the "tea leaves" that make up a chart.

so yeah, listen to pugsy and you'll be right.