CPAPtalk.com

Sheriff Buford wrote:I think sleep debt does occur. We just had some workshops on sleep disorders and sleep debt was mentioned. It appears that it's something new and the jury is still out on it. I said here before... you are young, and the best news for you is that you are attacking this disease at a young age. You'll probably live 10 years longer if you stay compliant. What are you leak rates? They can interfere with the therapy.

I wonder what the equipment will be like in 20-30 years?

Sheriff

Thank you so much for your response! I hope I can prolong my life for another 10 years by doing this! That would be great! My leak rate has gone as low as 11, but has never went higher than 15. It has consistently stayed in that region since I started over a week ago. Is that a high, low, or normal leak rate? My average AHI has been 3.5 over this past week since starting (was 35 at sleep study). Last night was my best night yet, my AHI was 1.1

cosmo wrote:I don't know if it exist or not but its not going to change anything for me. I'll still use it each night and try to get 7+ hours of sleep each night.

Me too, definitely! I have got to make up as much lost time of the last 2+ years as I can!

A good question--maybe one that has no one answer. We are all different, our damage varies, our recovery does, too.
I was aware of lower levels of "energy", which I believe was withdrawal from my stress hormones.
Slowly, my endurance increased, but I didn't really feel "energized"--just a little more capable, clearer, less grumpy, or weepy.
No miracle--at least not overnight; except the headaches were gone right away. That's what kept me going.

tbhit wrote:My leak rate has gone as low as 11, but has never went higher than 15. It has consistently stayed in that region since I started over a week ago. Is that a high, low, or normal leak rate?

If you are sleeping through those leaks...they are within acceptable limits. Your leak number to try to stay below is 24 L/min.
Though short lived spikes above it aren't the end of the world. ResMed says that the machine can compensate for leaks up to 24 L/min so therapy is not greatly impacted.

Any leak that disturbs sleep needs to be worked on because we want to limit anything that disturbs sleep.

Some people do feel like they do better with minimal to 0.0 leak numbers. Sometimes that is very difficult to obtain. Depends a lot on the type of mask used and the pressure used. The higher the pressure the more difficulty sustaining that minimal to 0.0 leak number.

With time and experience your overall leak numbers will likely improve anyway.

So there is an "acceptable" leak rate up to 24 L/min. If you want to strive for perfection at 0.0 leak rate that is certainly within your perogative to try but sometimes trying to attain perfection causes more sleep problems than a little leak might cause.
If the mask isn't comfortable...we just don't sleep well and sleeping is the primary goal.

Myself...unless I spend a lot of time above 24 L/min leak line....I don't care what the "number" is.
I have had nights with near 0.0 leak all night long and I have had nights with a not so pretty leak number but I can't tell a bit of difference in how I feel or sleep.

tbhit wrote:Thank you so much for your response! I hope I can prolong my life for another 10 years by doing this! That would be great! My leak rate has gone as low as 11, but has never went higher than 15. It has consistently stayed in that region since I started over a week ago. Is that a high, low, or normal leak rate? My average AHI has been 3.5 over this past week since starting (was 35 at sleep study). Last night was my best night yet, my AHI was 1.1

Resmed says that the machine can handle an unintentional leak rate of up to 24lpm (the red line on the graph in resscan software. My RT says they like to see the 95% leak around 10 or less and I can say I feel better if I'm not crowding the 24lmp line but I don't notice any difference whether it's 14lpm or 4lpm so my non-answer is - If you feel good with the leak rates you have don't worry and if you think you should work for a lower leak rate, go for it! My current mask (optilife) gives me a mean leak rate of 0 and a 95% from 4lpm to about 14lpm with a max leak rate usually under 24lpm but occasionally as high as 50lpm (for a very short time).

I see Pugsy beat me to it. Oh well!

Pugsy,

I will definitely shoot for lower leak rates from here on out! I have slept an average of 7 hours each night since starting, and have slept through the night on all of them (with the exception of getting up to use the restroom once).

I see you are showing a full face mask in your profile.
There are people who get nice flat perfect 0.0 leak lines with a full face mask but let's face it...there is just more surface area there for a potential leak to sneak past.
It's always good to try to improve if we can...just don't let the "improving" turn around and make something else worse.

I can get a 0.0 every hour all night long if I wanted to try but I would have to use my mask really, really tight and tape my mouth shut to get it done. Mask too tight equals sore nose....not what I want to have and pain would cause me to wake up a lot.
Taping my mouth to eliminate maybe 15 minutes of mouth breathing...too much work and not worth it. Besides sometimes my mouth breathing is so small it barely shows up on the leak line as a little spike. The annoyance of taping all night would bug me more than worrying about a little excess leak.

So watch yourself that you don't become numbers obsessed. It's real easy to do. Been there...done that myself.

As long as your fixes for leaks don't hurt the quality of your sleep...go for it.

Just remember...number one goal always...get good quality sleep with minimal interruptions.

The sleep debt question arises fairly often, and really needs to be addressed fully. Other than for a brief period (a day or so), I agree with the scientists who suspect that long-term "sleep debt" is a myth.

Why the lingering effects from OSA? I suspect that it's largely because of the residual local and systemic inflammation and resultant tissue injury (from which can take a very long time to recover), and also the out-of-whack hormone survival response system that we develop in order to throttle ourselves partially awake (several times per hour) to keep from strangling. Also, I believe that the titration pressure level (or pressure range, for apaps) changes over the first 6 months, and that unless a new patient can keep the therapeutic pressure levels optimized, things slide back where we don't want them, and possibly think that they are just working off "sleep debt".

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Captain_Midnight wrote:The sleep debt question arises fairly often, and really needs to be addressed fully. Other than for a brief period (a day or so), I agree with the scientists who suspect that long-term "sleep debt" is a myth.

Why the lingering effects from OSA? I suspect that it's largely because of the residual local and systemic inflammation and resultant tissue injury (from which can take a very long time to recover), and also the out-of-whack hormone survival response system that we develop in order to throttle ourselves partially awake (several times per hour) to keep from strangling. Also, I believe that the titration pressure level (or pressure range, for apaps) changes over the first 6 months, and that unless a new patient can keep the therapeutic pressure levels optimized, things slide back where we don't want them, and possibly think that they are just working off "sleep debt".

.

Captain, a little more light on 'residual local and systemic inflammation', please.

Sleep debt doesn't care whether anyone "believes" in it...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... p-on-sleep

LinkC wrote:Sleep debt doesn't care whether anyone "believes" in it...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... p-on-sleep

I must admit, this made me laugh. I definitely believe in it.