Build Home Sleep Lab < $1000

Lizistired wrote:I stayed up late last night practicing bad sleep hygiene. The sun woke me up so I didn't get much sleep but my AHI was 0.0 again.
Liz

That's one way to get your AHI down-stay up all night

I was going to mention I thought you had comparatively a lot of REM. Don't have any idea what the norms might be, but I was thinking something like 90 minutes or so. Staying in bed later than normal might have given you another REM cycle. It seems if I go back to sleep past the time I would normally get up, a lot of that is in REM.

Have you tried using the "smart alarm" function of the Zeo. That's supposed to wake you in the "right" stage of sleep? Honestly, I know nothing about it since the last thing I need is an alarm clock!

Interesting about my deep sleep and Vitamin D, huh? It seems to have leveled off at about 20 minutes, which is an improvement, but still too early to tell. It had started back up, but last night I had a rather fitful night and only got about 9 minutes. The Zeo dropped about 45 minutes so the data isn't reliable for trend analysis. We'll see.

Jay

Hi Jay, I downloaded the "Gentle Alarm" for my phone before I considered the ZEO. I played with it some but I'm retired and don't have a sleep schedule. Oddly after I started taking D3 I started going to bed earlier and waking up around 5am pretty consistantly so I had thought of trying that again or the Zeo alarm. The problem is there is alot of traffic noise and a dumpster in the neighborhood that gets emptied very early in the morning. Oh and people here still think loud muflers are cool. White noise seems to help sometimes but I just don't want to add anything to that mix yet.
I do have REM in the am if I wake up and go back to sleep. That may be another reason to try the alarm or just get back to going to bed early. I hit it really fast if I take a nap too, but when I go to sleep at night I hit it consistantly at the 1 hour mark.
I do think my deep sleep in increasing.
I didn't realize you stopped a med when you started D3. That's great. I hope it keeps going that way for you. There is definitely something to this.

Hi All, thought it about time I post another picture.
Here's what we have: The top half is last night's data from my S8. Fairly typical, my 3 month average is 0.6/2.1/2.7, AI/HI/AHI.
The multi colored bar is my sleep position taken from my time lapse video; Green=left Side, blue=back, red=right side, and pink is up. The yellows are time markers
Below the position bar is Last night's data from my Zeo showing the amount of awake, light, REM and deep sleep and when each stage occured. Note Zeo dropped the signal from 5:10-5:15 and I got up at 5:20, back in bed by 5:25.
Below the pie chart are two trend lines from my Zeo showing the last week's amount of nightly REM and Deep sleep. Now, the interesting thing here is that I started Vitamin D and B12 supplementation on 10/26. Not shown here but immediately my deep sleep peaked. Then, as shown, it started back down to around my historical average of about 14 minutes. My REM increased from my historical average of about 1:45 to around 2:15 and then also started back down toward its historical average.
What does all this mean? Really, I don't know. I think it shows that adding vitamin D3 (4000IU) and Vitamin B12 (2000 mcg) had an immediate effect on my sleep. However, it looks as though the effects may be temporary and I am returning to norms. I think it is too early to draw any conclusions.
At my last labs, my vitamin D was low normal at 36 and my B12 was low normal at 365. My goal is to get D to 50-80 and B12 to 500. I have more blood work scheduled for January to check the levels, maybe by that time firm conclusion can be drawn.
Jay

I like the home sleep lab concept described here if someone is experienced and is fine-tuning their settings. I've ordered the card reader and software so I can direct and understand my treatment as well. I realize that is where most of this post is directed and you aren't telling people to not see a doctor.

The subject line did throw me a bit, at first I thought this post was intended for initial diagnosis. Based on the post subject line, I wanted to mention the initial sleep study and talking to the analyst and doctor afterward really helped start me on my way.

I imagine for some folks lack of insurance or financial situation may force a person to figure the apnea out on their own with an APAP machine off of e-bay, and that is better than not knowing or treating your apnea.

For me, the analyst and doctor helped explain the seriousness of what was happening as well as what kind of target AHIs I should be moving toward.

Having my doctor tell me that my oxygen level was dropping occasionally to 86%, and for comparison he put emphysema patients on oxygen at 88%. He clarified that I wasn't STAYING at 86%, but he said he wanted me to understand the seriousness of Apnea for me.

I haven't read a lot on the forum about how spouses react to the new CPAP machine in the bedroom, but it also helped me to have "facts" from the doctor about apnea to share with my wife. It took her a while to understand why her 48 year old husband would need to have what looked like a life support system hooked up to him at night.

Hey Jay, I was wondering if maybe the med you stopped had built up in your system and has depleted with time.
Maybe someday we'll have a home D3 test kit like the glucose meters. I wish we knew more about absorbtion and depletion rates of D3. But I'm sure that is very individual with lots of other variables. Shame we can't FFWD to January and see how much your numbers go up.

Good doctor; this one sounds like a 'keeper'.

Hi Java Time, welcome to the forum.
I agree with you about the importance of the initial sleep study and, as you surmised, my "home sleep lab" is not intended for initial diagnoses, neither is it intended to replace subsequent sleep studies as required for treatment.
What it is intended to do is help one monitor the results of treatment so adjustments can be made, if necessary. Preferably, with the aid of a "good" sleep doctor. The logical follow on to the "card reader and software" you mentioned.
You seem to be off to a good start with your doctor and analyst. That's great. Unfortunately, many of us weren't so lucky. Just read the posts and you'll find many people who are struggling with treatment with little help from their medicos. I was one of them. I had my first sleep study in 2006 and was left largely to fend for myself. When I complained the treatment wasn't working, I was told "try this and come back in six months". It was literally years before I learned I could get any kind of meaningful data from my machine. But when I learned it, I took charge of my treatment, fired three sleep doctors till I found one that would work with me, and got my AHI down to about 3.
Now I have my apnea under control, but still don't obtain restful sleep. What my sleep lab allows my doctor and me to do is monitor my treatment as prescribed and see relatively quickly and objectively if it's working. I am fortunate to have a found a doctor who will work with me, uses my sleep lab data as an aid to understanding my sleep and says, come back in two weeks or a month. No more "try this and come back in six months". Currently, my doctor and I are looking for other factors which may be causing disturbed sleep, but it's a lot of trial and error. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I am confident we'll eventually find the answer.
Really, my posts are meant to help those who are struggling with their treatment. First and foremost, I would advise those folks to become involved and educated in their own treatment, keep searching until they find, as you and I did, a good doctor who will work with them in their treatment and therapy and, if necessary, build a home sleep lab.

Jay

Lizistired wrote:Hey Jay, I was wondering if maybe the med you stopped had built up in your system and has depleted with time.

Liz, I rather imagine stopping the one drug had an influence on my sleep. Maybe it had promoted REM over deep and what we're seeing is a rebound effect. Tough to know. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't started and stopped at the same time. I know better, but I was just so anxious to fix something that looked like it might be broke.
Come on January!

Jay

Jay, What is the top line in your ResScan data?

It's pressure, Liz. I've got the autoset at 9-13. I hit 13 sometimes, but I don't wan't to go higher. AI's OK and higher causes more leaks.
Leaks are next line down.
Jay

Jay Aitchsee wrote:Hi Java Time, welcome to the forum...
I agree with you about the importance of the initial sleep study and, as you surmised, my "home sleep lab" is not intended for initial diagnoses, neither is it intended to replace subsequent sleep studies as required for treatment.

Thanks Jay for the welcome. I've been looking at a lot of threads the last few months and this one is definitely on the technical high end as far as things folks are trying.

I'm hoping the software and basic fiddling with masks, humidity, how to hang a hose and adjusting pressure settings will get me pretty close to a restful nights sleep. If not, it is nice to know there is an "advanced" area here. Thank you for leading the discussion.

I was fortunate I suppose in assuming there were good forums on CPAP and finding CPAPtalk.com in my first few days of searching for apnea/CPAP/sleep study info. This let me go into my initial sleep study with my eyes open and some understanding of where I was headed.

I kind of laugh when I look at all of the info in this particular thread and think of how little so many of my CPAP friends know. After a few weeks scanning this website I was talking to couple of friends and relatives who are long time CPAP users. They didn't know what an APAP machine was, didn't know they could go to their insurance if things weren't working and ask for additional masks, a humidifier, etc. I've now become a resource to several "older" CPAP brothers and sisters. I pass on this website to everyone who will listen.

Thanks to all of you for allowing me to have a fairly short learning curve!

Jay, have you ruled out noise and/or light disrupting your sleep? I recall that as I began to get Cpap working for me, I still had a hard time sleeping through the night. Among other things, I was unusually sensitive to light and sounds. I eventually figured out that any change of light through my bedroom window, such as the neighbor turning a light on or off, or headlights shining through the curtains, would arouse me. Taping large, heavy dark sheets of of paper over the window helped a lot. Later--much later--the situation subsided, and sounds and light no longer bothered me that way.

Thanks for the suggestions, Moresleep. I can't say that I've absolutely, positively, ruled out light as a factor, but I live in the country and there really isn't much artificial light to cause a distraction. My videos haven't picked up any and I have tried a sleep mask. Noise, on the other hand, could be a possibility - coyotes yipping or dogs barking maybe. I haven't tried to record the night sounds. Maybe it would be worth while. Or, maybe earphones with white noise.
Some things to consider.
Thanks,
Jay

[quote="Jay Aitchsee"}
". . . SUMMARY DATA


"Detail of position The yellow blocks are time markers 1AM, 2AM, etc." [/quote]

Beautiful job, Jay. How did you get the CMS-50 graphs to line up on their time scale axis so perfectly with the ResScan graphs time scale axis?

Thanks, --papit

Thanks Papit, I'm not sure if you followed thru how I put this together but essentially I took a snip of a screen and copied it to Open Office Draw. There, I could expand or contract the snip so that its timeline matched the other snips. Easy, if the data being copied has a timeline referenced to real time like resscan, zeo, and my video do. The cms-50 has a timeline but it is not referenced to real time. As you probably know, it just starts running an elapsed timer when the recording starts. What I did with the cms-50 was creat artifacts at known times. Putting it on and taking it off will creat artifacts or spikes. Then all I had to do was stretch the snip of CMS-50 so that the known times of the artifacts matched the known times of the other data snips.

In later sheets, I made a template in Draw with vertical hour lines which made lining up the snips even easier.

Does that make sense?

Jay