My OSCAR data

Hi. Started CPAP therapy in early October 2021. My AHI average is around 10. Sleep study was 41 (didn't see the data; just what I was told by the clinic). Machine is a Resmed Aircurve 10. Started with settings of 17:12. Doctor reduced to 15:10.
Wanted to share last night's data and get your feedback. There's a gap where I removed the mask (Dreamwear full face) in my sleep (that seems to happen more often than not). So far aerophagia is my biggest complaint. Curious as to how I can Lower my AHI.

Is it possible you were awake when those clusters of CAs/centrals got flagged?
The 4:30 cluster I am fairly certain you were awake due to the breaks in therapy.
What about the other clusters? Does it take you a bit of time to fall asleep?....or do you fall asleep really quickly?

You probably should take a quick course on figuring out if you were awake or not with those CAs/Centrals.
See this page and watch the videos especially the last one.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software

If you weren't asleep when those centrals were flagged and making up the clusters....they don't count except to point to not sleeping so great and to fix/reduce them we have to figure out why not sleeping so great and fix that aspect.

Now if you were for sure sound asleep when those clusters of centrals got flagged your options available to try to reduce them are limited and will depend on what is causing them to be triggered.
During your second sleep session essentially no centrals worth worrying about which makes me really wonder if you were asleep when the others got flagged.

You don't take any sort of medication that might suppress respiration do you?? Like some pain meds?

So....how to reduce your AHI will depend on why you have so many central apneas getting flagged.
If you weren't asleep...we try to fix whatever it is causing the poor sleep.
If you were asleep....about all you can try is to reduce the PS (difference between inhale and exhale) and see if that helps or not.

J45 wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 03, 2022 2:42 pm

I removed the mask (Dreamwear full face) in my sleep (that seems to happen more often than not).

Pugsy has a Pavlovian style fix for that

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:22 am

Tape your mask straps to your face so that if you start to remove the mask the discomfort will wake you up so you can stop the unwanted behavior.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:43 am

So most likely the brain wants the alien on the face gone because it's not a normal part of his previous life.
This is fairly common and what we do is try to fix up something that breaks the brain from telling the hands to remove the alien while you are asleep. Hence the tape so that you can wake up and stop the unwanted behavior. With time the brain will come to view the new alien on the face as its best new friend and the behavior should stop.

J45, did you have a home sleep study or one in a sleep lab? And would you please request a copy of your sleep study from the clinic? It would be especially helpful to know the breakdown of your AHI into obstructive apneas, central apneas, and hypopneas.

This is last night and the red lines mark the times when I awoke (I kept notes). Answers to your questions: I don't take any meds or sleeping aids. I had a home sleep study as well as one in the lab.

Did you ever happen to have a sleep study done in the lab while using cpap?

The central apneas are still numerous enough we worry about them and if you were for sure asleep when they occurred then that's a problem.

About the only thing you can do with this machine to maybe help reduce the centrals is to reduce or eliminate the PS and that's a big maybe. For some people PS can trigger centrals but not everyone and some people have too many centrals even without PS.

Do you know if you ever had very many centrals during your sleep studies???? If they were present prior to starting cpap then my idea to reduce or eliminate PS probably won't help at all but if you didn't have many centrals on the diagnostic sleep studies and PS is the culprit...might get lucky.

What you can try is reducing PS and see what happens to the number of centrals...maybe even turn PS off.
I have a friend who gets about 15 centrals per hour with PS of 4 and only negligible number with PS of 3.
Another friend had to turn PS totally off to get rid of his centrals.
We don't know if it will work or how much without trying.

I wore a full face mask for my lab sleep study and they ramped up the pressure through the night (didn't sleep a wink). Don't know the results other than I was told I have severe sleep apnea (more than 40 per hour documented in the at-home study).

How would proceed with the pressure settings based on where mine are set now?