Respiration rate spikes?

According to my reports I had a good night last night. Just one event - a hypopnea. I am a bit curious though why my respiration rates seem to spike all over the place. Might be normal, just trying to understand why. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a nice, even respiration rate on good nights?

Any idea what's happening?

Again, not complaining about the numbers, just trying to understand them all a bit better.

Thanks!
Joe

In general, you're staying around 18-20bpm. You talking about those spikes going up to almost 40bpm? I wouldn't worry about that. My guess would be some sort of machine artifact. REM sleep can cause anomalies but nothing like that.
CN

jdr999 wrote:According to my reports I had a good night last night. Just one event - a hypopnea. I am a bit curious though why my respiration rates seem to spike all over the place. Might be normal, just trying to understand why. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a nice, even respiration rate on good nights?

Any idea what's happening?

Again, not complaining about the numbers, just trying to understand them all a bit better.

Thanks!
Joe

You probably already know this but for everyone - zoom in!

The top graph will always show the entire night but every other graph will follow the curren zoom level. To zoom in on an event simply drag across it. All graphs except the top one will zoom (in terms of time) to the section you dragged across in any of the windows. Need to see the full night again simply drag across the entire top graph.

There are probably easier ways. This one works for me.

Similar results last night. Many spikes up to 50.... Any ideas? Could this be a result of tossing and turning? My lower back has been very sore in the morning..

Maybe related to REM stage sleep?
The increases are extremely short lived..like around 30 seconds. I don't know how accurate it is though. There seems to be a change in flow rate at the same time lasting about the same amount of time. Not enough to earn any sort of apnea flag.
I don't know that it means anything exciting though.
I had similar spikes when I used the S9 except my spikes went down more often than they went up.
I don't know if there is anything of importance here but I would have to compare same data using ResScan to make sure I wasn't looking at some sort of SleepyHead calculation bug thing...I also don't know how sensitive or accurate the sensors recording the respiration rate in the machine happens to be.
And I wonder if we are looking at an extrapolated number due to the short 30 second duration. I wonder how respiration rate is sensed and recorded and how.

The math doesn't compute in my head... Think about it...how can the respiration go to 40 and above during a 10 second window?
The first graph with spike at 00:39:20 shows upwards of 50 before it starts down at 00:39:30.
The only thing that I can possibly do at a rate of approx 1 per second is pant.. and I can't squeeze in 50 of them in 10 seconds very easily. The flow rate might support panting, it's pretty ragged but very tiny raggedness, at 00:39:20 time frame but doesn't support it at the 02:03:30 spike to 50.

Total volume seems to go down during these times...again panting maybe with minimal intake but the breath by breath flow rate doesn't support it except by really stretching things..maybe.

The first REM stage sleep normally occurs around 90 minutes after sleep onset and then as the night progresses we have more REM cycles occurring sooner and sooner and lasting longer. The pattern to the spikes makes me thing of REM cycles.

In short, I have no idea for sure what is going on because I don't know enough about how the data is collected then calculated and reported and we don't have ResScan to verify.
If I was a guessing person...My first suspect would be a change in sleep cycle and REM jumps to the top of the list.
This is what I call putting the data under the microscope and looking a whole lot deeper than it was intended to be looked at.

I'm noticing similarities between my respiration rate, expiratory time and tidal volume.

When my respiration rate spikes, my expiratory time drops. I'm also noticing that according to my sidebar that my max respiratory rate is only 34 - which is still high, but not as high as my spikes..

Resp. RateRespiratory Rate (breaths/min)
W-Avg: 16.65 10.20 16.00 20.60 34.60

Do do those three graphs make any sense in context to one another?

jdr999,
Think about it this way. If you breath in for 1 second and out for 1 second...that's a two second breath. And if you kept it up for a minute, that still would only be a 30 bpm rate. That's some pretty rapid breathing. So do you really think you could be breathing even faster then that, and still stay asleep? Seems unlikely to me.
CN

jdr999 wrote:Similar results last night. Many spikes up to 50.... Any ideas? Could this be a result of tossing and turning? My lower back has been very sore in the morning..

I really like the SleepyHead “zoom in time” feature that allows one to see what each event consists of. Yes SleepyHead is still in beta and there are a lot of bugs. The nice thing is that if you really need to know how the program is doing what is does the source code is available. As well if you want to correct a mistake or contribute a feature – well – I think you would be quite welcome to the project.

I have found it very useful to see the events in detail.

Adding recorded nighttime audio not only clears up a lot of wondering about what was going on but has often proven to help correct a problem (e.g. noisy neighbors with earplugs for a time). I like to use a Sonic Super Ear (see: http://www.amazon.com/SuperEar-Personal ... 000X2H8G4/ ) connected to a computer running Audacity (OSS audio recorder/editor). It takes a while to get the right levels on the Sonic Super Ear so the recordings work out well but you make a mark and simply use it. Audacity is designed to edit audio so the audio waveform is displayed as a graph much like in SleepyHead. You can “see” audio events and this allows you to find the flow waveform events SleepyHead will find.

At 00:39:20 I would kind of guess you were changing position - or perhaps clearing your throat, or both. The audio would help a lot to tell.

At 02:03:20 you are taking a big breath. You do not need to breath a lot after that so the system stabilizes with a series of wide spaced small breaths and then moves to end pretty close to the rate and flow that you started with. When I catch myself doing this as I fall asleep it will likely be the last thing I can remember before sleep. You may have been in a transition to sleep or a different stage at that time.

03:55:20 looks like a change of position perhaps related to throat clearing. Audio would help of course.

Not sure what to say about 04:34:40 except that it has some characteristics that may indicate an obstructive event.

I like to see my own minute volumes closer to 6 l/m. A couple of years ago my averages were closer to your 8 something but I am likely smaller than you. It does remind me, however, that I use a pulse oximeter for exercise specifically to make sure that I do not breath too much. Last year some arthritis was found in my knees as I began Personal Fitness Training at my Gym. Everybody agreed that the answer to this is to do a lot of repetitive low stress exercise. I think cycling is perfect and walking a good second. So I spend hours a day these days at the gym (weather drives us inside this time of year). If I over breath I will experience pain in the affected joints during exercise. If I do not over breath no pain. Indeed over time I am pain free and going for higher weight in the exercise where the pain was found. So when I hear about your back and see the high minute volumes I do wonder if they may be a little high.

From what I know now I think the breathing might be helped with some vitamin D. You should have your levels checked.
Those who are working with the D3 hormone (A.K.A. Vitamin D3) (e.g. Dr. Stasha Gominak, Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., M.D., Vitamin D Council) seem to be finding that the very low side of the “normal” range of 30-100 ng/L produces a range of symptoms including OSA, pain, and infection. All believe that a level lower than 50 ng/mL is not good and Dr. Stasha Gominak recommends 60-80 ng/mL for good health.

Comparatively speaking the night looks great!! Much above average I think.