Updated Graph With Mouth Tape

Hi All,

I think I have found a mouth tape that doesn't rip my skin off (Niveus Gentle Strips). Last night I slept around 4 1/2 hours with the tape on but felt like I was suffocating. I didn't have a chin strap and think it might be needed. Leak rate looks good and while I had 6 CAs I don't think I can lower the pressure any further as I start getting Hypopneas.

https://imgur.com/a/bD5A7Pj

I have the humidity lowered to 1 as I found when I was waking up in the middle of the night and trying to get back to sleep that my nose was stuffy. This helped and I might need a setting of 2 to try at some point.

If at some point I try to go full mask, generally you need a high humidity level to keep you mouth from drying out, is that correct?

Thanks

Take the OSCAR green cursor, place it on the CA's (of which you have very little) and you'll see they seem to happen when your pressure goes down and flow limitations start happening. They could be waking you up.
(OK, let me be more careful: "I believe that if you take the OSCAR green cursor etc.")

That, to me, indicates you're letting the pressure go too low, definitely not too high. If anything, if this were my data, and I felt like I was choking I'd raise the minimum.

Here are the CAs that have been Zoomed in. It seems that the pressure is around 10-11. So do you think I need to bump up my min pressure to 11 and max to 13? I just recall having a lot of CAs last time I did this with a higher max pressure.

https://imgur.com/a/X5BO3xA

npolite wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 02, 2025 1:50 pm

Here are the CAs that have been Zoomed in. It seems that the pressure is around 10-11

You didn't place the green vertical line on the CA's.

So do you think I need to bump up my min pressure to 11 and max to 13?

Whatever gave you the idea that this is what I think?
I said nothing with numbers, nor did I say anything about changing the max.

When did you feel like you were choking?
How long have you been sleeping with a taped mouth on these settings?

Here's what I see:
6 images, what happens before the CA

1 perturbed breathing, pressure at less than 10.5 change in pressure.
2 perturbed breathing, but pressure on its way down from 11
3 perturbed breathing, pressure at 10
4 perturbed breathing, pressure at 10
5 perturbed breathing, pressure at 11 on its way down
6 perturbed breathing, pressure at less than 10.5 on the far left and rising

Based on this single night - which may or may not be representative - I have two hypotheses, which don't exclude each other.
Your minimum pressure could be too low, letting your machine drop the pressure to where breathing is perturbed and the disturbance, or pressure change are disrupting your sleep. Conclusion: don't let the machine go there
Alternative: The pressure change itself is causing arousals.
Check that on you other data, use the green vertical line on the CA to help you see the pressure, and zoom a bit less.
Possible conclusion[s]:

• Use CPAP instead of APAP, start out at 10.6 because you're spending half the night at that pressure, or higher, anyway and its possible that pressure changes are causing arousals.
• Alternative: stay on APAP but raise only the minimum gradually and see how that affects your sleep

Don't make change in any setting until you've tested it for 4-5 nights, unless you feel it's very bad.

From a leas perspective, I don't see that you need a FFM.

Thanks for the reply. I am trying to understand OSCAR, I now see that the pressure is dropping before the CAs.

I will try a CPAP setting this weekend as I don't want to impact my work during the week in case things feel worse. Alternatively I will try to bump the pressure up but will need ramp up. I am not able to fall asleep if the pressure is 10 or above so will need to start it at 9 and ramp up after 45 minutes either way.

Thanks again and I'll report back

If you need the ramp, try to set it on Auto - in my experience it does a good job of identifying when I've fallen asleep, only raising the pressure when my breathing has become regular.
I set up auto ramp out of curiosity, wanted to see how it compares with my Polar watch about the time I fell asleep put at a tiny bit less than my therapy pressure, just for the experiment. Polar and ResMed agree - in other words, at least in my case, auto ramp is reliable.

There was no auto ramp 20 years ago when I started therapy, and the pressure, low though it was, made me so anxious that I would actually stay awake out of anxiety until ramp time ended... so I stopped using ramp entirely.

You can raise pressure in 0.2 increments, letting yourself get used to the change. Don't jump to a minimum of 10 of you find it so bothersome.

Good luck, and please come back to tell us how things are going.