Have been lurking here for a while. Hope you guys have some advise for me.
My experience with Sleep Apnea has been somewhat uncommon (I think).
Prologue
- Diagnosis - Was diagnosed 5 years ago, AHI 6, RDI 14, and was prescribed Resmed A10 in US.
- Symptoms - loud snoring, day time tiredness, fatigue, brain fog, etc. But I wasn't sure if SA is the culprit or anything else.
- Took a long time adjusting to the machine. Finally settled on nasal pillows. Started using the machine 95%+ times.
- But never felt much improvement in the symptoms (had some small improvement). Sometimes, I felt better, but most of the time, I felt like sh*t when waking up. Took 1 hour or more to be able to leave the bed.
- Did a self study with Resmed in 2019, in India, and this time AHI was 21.
- If I tried to stop using CPAP I couldn't even fall asleep as the tongue would fall back choking m eeven before I could sleep.
- Did another sleep study in US in 2020. The study went wrong as they messed somethings up but it still confirmed that I have OSA, and must use CPAP. Ruled out other common issues like narcolepsy, positional SA, very small CSA.
Last night, I took my first reading (after some sanity tests on the ring). No CPAP, just Ring O2. This morning, I was only slightly more tired than usual (as I didn't use CPAP). But that was not the biggest surprise.
Surprise
O2 Ring shows that my sleep was very good! I know, SpO2 cannot be used to diagnose SA, but I was expecting that I will have a high number of OSA events which would show a corresponding drop in SpO2. But that is not the case.
So when I put everything together, the only conclusion I can draw is that at least in my case, even though I have mild OSA, it is not accompanied by a drop in SpO2, and even though I do not see a major benefit or relief from symptoms, I must keep using CPAP on blind faith that somehow it must be doing good.
This is fine, but its just a bit demoralizing for my enquiring brain.
Next
I will take a few more measurements with and without CPAP machines. But would like to see what you folks think.