Breathing Question

I have noticed different breathing patterns during any given night. When I first fall asleep, and before I wake up naturally, my breathing is very slow, often less than 10 per minute. After that beginning, and before that period before I wake naturally, my breathing picks up a little but is still quite slow. My question relates to other periods, typically in the middle of the night, when my breathing is faster, often around 25-30 per minute. The following example of this pattern is from last night (especially good at 0.0).

I believe that 25-30 breathes per minute is faster than when I am awake. Any ideas what might be going on during those faster breathing periods while asleep? Would they be associated with a particular sleep phase? Both my leaks and flow limitations were quite low all last night.



P.S. The right end of the graph is truncated. It would otherwise show a slowing dip like the one at the beginning of the graph.

http://www.sleepdisorderchannel.com/stages/index.shtml

Wondering if this could be increased respiration often found associated with REM stage sleep?

That must be it. I'm a little surprised that respiration would accelerate at the same time voluntary muscles relax deeply. I learned something today. Thanks!

Hmmmm. I wonder if DIY types like me could use this to get some idea of when we're in REM. Obviously it wouldn't be as good as being wired up like a motherboard, but maybe it could be useful.

OTOH, maybe not. If it were straightforward and even remotely reliable, you'd think that Philips would have this alongside their RERA guessing algorithm.

Otter wrote:Hmmmm. I wonder if DIY types like me could use this to get some idea of when we're in REM. Obviously it wouldn't be as good as being wired up like a motherboard, but maybe it could be useful.

OTOH, maybe not. If it were straightforward and even remotely reliable, you'd think that Philips would have this alongside their RERA guessing algorithm

Well if you are really bored and want to minutely dissect things you could probably come up with a WAG by looking at those respiration graphs and the "normal" stages of sleep and when REM is most likely to occur. Normal REM stages start around 90 minutes after sleep onset and progress coming more frequently the longer we sleep and lasting longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep

Also have to factor in that sometimes respiration doesn't always increase in REM, just that it does sometimes.

Sounds like more work than I would want to do.

If you happened to be much worse (regarding OSA) in REM sleep then you might see a small pattern on the reports in regards to groupings of events and possible REM stages. Again it is a WAG but much less work than dissecting the respiration graph minute by minute. Of course the same applies to supine sleeping so........surely not exact science but for WAGs not bad. Then of course fragmented sleep disrupts the whole WAG again because it messes with the normal sleep cycle.

I am documented worse in REM (much, much worse than non REM) I can see the pattern sometimes and especially in the wee hours of the morning right before I wake up. 90% of the time if I have any multiple events they will occur then. Just something I have noticed on the reports over the nearly 2 years I have been doing this. It isn't exact but then it doesn't have to be, just a WAG that is interesting.