[CPAP] New CPAP user trying to understand what Im doing

[crentiist]

Hi all,

Was diagnosed last September with mild apnea, 6 AHI, but I was exhausted, incredibly high anxiety and extreme difficulty staying asleep and falling asleep for a couple of years (as the anxiety got worse so did the sleep issues). Tried the APAP a few nights, gave up almost immediately then switched to a Somnomed Oral Appliance, had great success with that for about 9 months, anxiety went away, felt pretty good day to day, but then I started to slowly feel worse and decided that adjusting the appliance more forward would only make the bite issues more uncomfortable.

Switched to the CPAP in July, had an on again with little success at first but was determined to make it work. With help from this forum I've calibrated a few things and settings along the way and can now fall asleep and generally stay asleep with it on. I'd say I've had about 2 weeks were I've had the settings somewhat dialed in and I've gotten ok sleep. But I'd love for some people who know better to look at my data and see if I'm optimizing properly, the doctors have been zero help, all they look at is AHI and leak rates. I know this will take time for me to get back to "normal", and I don't expect to feel like that yet, but I do want to miss anything obvious because of my ignorance.

I greatly appreciate any and all help you can provide, these forums have already made getting started significantly easier.





   

[G. Szabo]

A slight pressure increase might improve your treatment, making your sleep smother with fewer pressure bumps. Also, it would be best to realize that you hit the current pressure ceiling a few times.
Try the pressure min/max = 10/13 setting.
Also, your inspiration time is longer than your expiration time. It should be the other way around, with 1/2=ins/expiration. To understand it, would you mind providing a few 3-minute windows of your flow rate throughout the night?

[crentiist]

Great, I'll bump up the pressure tonight, here are three random flow rate sections

[G. Szabo]

In your second and third samples, the exhalation period is quite bumpy, which misleads the software's algorithm. Hence, the reported exp times should be disregarded. 
However, you might want to monitor this pattern because something is periodically blocking your exhalation. It might progress to a palatal prolapse, which you can read about on this forum, among other places.

[crentiist]

Could this also be from a sinus infection? Been dealing with that for about a week as well