SleepyHead--Pressure Question

I'm a newbie and today is my one week anniversary on CPAP. It's going well with only a few bumps in the road. I'm sleeping much better, no more morning headaches and awake feeling much more alert & rested. I'm waiting for that surge in energy that so many have described....hasn't happened, yet.

My question is about the pressure settings on the S9 AutoSet. I did not have a titration study so my prescribed settings are 5 to 20 and I have already increased the starting pressure to 6.4, no ramp. The last two nights I have had sudden awakenings and no clue why but managed to fall back to sleep. Early this morning between 5am-6am, I was awakened by a blast of air that kind of startled me and I had a tough time going back to sleep. Is there a pressure adjustment I can make to stop this from happening? Here is the SleepyHead graph for that time period.

Taz

Taz wrote:I'm waiting for that surge in energy that so many have described....hasn't happened, yet.

You know...I am still waiting. I kept hoping it would make me a "morning person" full of all this energy..but you know what...I was never a morning person anyway. I was kinda hoping it would make me into something I never was in the first place. Bummer.

Those people who see the miracle quickly...they are actually in a minority.

I don't see a "sudden" burst of air on that pressure graph except that small increase at 5:40 and the max it ever hit was 14.54 for the entire night (I can't see any of the other timelines but we know for sure that it didn't hit 15).

If you aren't hitting 15...reducing the maximum to 15 still won't prevent any sudden bursts of air..you are going to need to probably reduce it to 12 or 13 and let the machine maybe hit max briefly to stop the increases...and unless you know you woke up at 5:40 on the dot that may not be what is going on anyway.
Some people are sensitive to pressure changes though and when that happens compromises can be made. Reduce the range so that the changes aren't so apparent or switch to cpap mode so no variations in pressure but then usually a higher fixed pressure is needed all night which doesn't always feels so great either.

Pugsy,

Maybe I am overly sensitive to the air pressure, that's the first time I have ever felt the air pressure like that. Ok, so if I reduce the pressure to 13, what does that mean? If the machine needs to go above 13, can it?

Ha...I'm not a morning person, either!! Thank goodness, I retired 3 months ago and no longer have to get up at 5am. I would have to sit drinking coffee for 30 mins before I was a wake enough to get dressed. It was awful, that went on for many months and I had no clue I had sleep apnea. I took early retirement and have no regrets, it was time....17yrs at one job was long enough.

I like the P10 mask! The first night was a little strange....I actually missed the air blowing out of the Swift FX vent. The P10 was so quiet, at first I thought there was something wrong...it took a few minutes for me to realize it was working fine just much quieter than the Swift Fx. I'm not so sure about the head gear, it seems to slip around on my head during the night.

I've gotten ResScan d/l...I like it, it has some different features but I still think I prefer SleepyHead.

Can you please tell me what the pink flags are telling me?

Thanks,
Taz

The pink flags are obstructive apnea events that slipped past the defenses and the numbers in the little box are the duration of the event in seconds.

Taz wrote: Ok, so if I reduce the pressure to 13, what does that mean? If the machine needs to go above 13, can it?

Nope..that's what the maximum means...it can't ever go higher than the maximum is set. So if you reduce the maximum pressure setting from 20 to 13...it can't go above 13.
Now sometimes that's still okay. The machine doesn't always have to have free reign in where it goes. Maybe it is just wanting to increase the pressure in response to a flow limitation or snore that doesn't make criteria for a fully flagged OA. Sometimes it's just a matter of compromises...let a few OAs just happen if the pressure changes are creating a bigger problem with sleep quality than allowing a couple of events to happen would cause.
Sometimes forcing the machine to hit the maximum and not going any further doesn't really cause much of anything to happen.

If you think that you are extremely sensitive to pressure changes then the only way to find out is restrict the range and see what happens..

OK, that's very good information, I'm learning more everyday. I think I will try another night or two and see if it wakes me up, again. If so, I'll try reducing the max pressure. One more question, with everything I'm seeing on the charts....how does SleepyHead arrive with an AHI 1.21?

Taz

Taz,

I am not so sure that the machine woke you up. If the machine did an uptick in pressure, it was responding to something. The sleepyhead graph shows a small gap in the flow rate data, but the other graphs do not. It is possible that you had some kind of event. It might be that your brain woke you up, and then as you woke up, you noticed the higher CPAP pressure. Another possibility is that you were just coming out of a REM cycle where your brain already comes very close to waking up. You could have been aware enough that you noticed the pressure. Finally, it is normal for people to wake up several times during the night, even people who don't have a sleep disorder. You might have had one of those normal wake-ups. Most people are used to it and quickly drift back to sleep. However, with this new CPAP gizmo, it might have caught your attention and woke you up more fully.

You are still new to this, and still getting fully used to sleeping with the machine. After a while, the pressure becomes second nature. For example, I am so used to it that I have a hard time sleeping if I don't have CPAP pressure to breathe with.

As for the AHI number, it takes the total number of events during the session and divides it by the number of hours. It isn't a perfect measure because some events are more harmful than others (for example, OA events are generally the worst), and some events are OK if you happen to be awake but using the machine (like CA events). You want to minimize the number of OA events as much as possible.

-john-

Hi John,

Thanks for your response, I appreciate the info. Yes, the higher pressure of air really jolted me, I had not felt that before. As long as I know nothing is wrong, I will adjust and get use to it. I have no choice, I must make this CPAP machine my friend because I know we are going to be together for a very long time.

Taz