Breathing Events Affect Sleep Onset

[Unison]

Hello,

I've been struggling to fall asleep at night despite CPAP.  My doctor has played around with the pressure settings, and even tried medications, but it hasn't seemed to make a difference.  Each night as I drift off to sleep I'm awakened by a single sudden, very rapid inhalation or exhalation.  It feels almost like a hiccup.  Jolts me right awake.  But the odd thing is that my machine isn't recognizing these as "events".  These breaths don't seem to be a response to an apnea, and they don't occur after a period of not breathing.  I don't know if it's because they're so short in duration or what.  This tends to happen every 10 minutes or so for a couple of hours.  My AHI is usually between 1.5 - 2.0, so it looks like I'm doing great, but I still feel exhausted every day.  I tend to wake up in the early morning hours with the same pattern of these single super jerky breaths.  

Any advice?

Thanks!

[Walla Walla]

Do you have SleepyHead on your computer? If so can you post your charts from a night on here? That would help out on trying to figure it out.

[Sleeprider]

What has your doctor done to pressure settings? Are your profile pressure settings still accurate 5-20?

If you would post a chart where these respirations occur, we could perhaps help more. I suspect if your minimum pressure is 5 that a minimum pressure increase would help. If you're using ramp, turn it off.

[Styx]

The same thing was happening to me. When I would wake I would feel a little short of breath with it. It would keep happening until I was tired enough to fall asleep. My CPAP was set at a minimum of 6 and could go up to 10 if needed. The doctor increased it to 7 to 10 and it really helped.

[Unison]

Here's one example.  I wrote down that it woke me up at 22:53.

My settings used to be min 5, max 20, but I has having trouble feeling like I wasn't getting enough air.  The doc then bummed it up to min 6.5.  But I kept having trouble falling asleep so he walked it up to 8.  Still having the same issue.

[Hojo]

I'm no expert at reading the Sleepy Head data, still learning.  That being said it looks like you have a lot of leaks, I think my DME told me anything under 24 was ok which I thought was high.  My problem is that with a FFM, when the seal gets broken I wake up with noise or a rush of more air.  I wonder if the rush of air is what is waking you up.

[pholynyk]

Actually, Hojo, this is another area where ResMed and Respironics do things differently. ResMed reports what they think is the un-intentional leak, assuming they know the intentional vent rate of your mask - (they make a pretty good guess). The Respironics machines report the total of leak plus vent rate (the top line in his chart) and SleepyHead subtracts what it thinks is the vent rate (and you can adjust that curve in Preferences).
So his actual leak rate is less than 5 - quite acceptable!

My guess is that he had more than one hyponea just before the area he selected for us, and that those disturbed his sleep enough to wake him. I'd like to see the selection expanded to include them.

Also, I wonder just how well the Dreamstations keep time - I know my ResMed AirSense 10 loses time badly.

[Walla Walla]

Good point about the clock! It wouldn't have to be off by much.

[PaulaO2]

Could you post a screenshot of the selection being a greater span? Include those events that happened just prior?

Check the time as well. Unless you got the time off the machine vs your phone or watch.

[SnoringInOregon]

I have a Dreamstation with wireless modem.

I've only checked the time once or twice, but it has been accurate to the second. That's probably because the machine gets time updates over the air from the Respironics servers.

(I'm making a leap of faith that the servers are actually operated by Respironics. Perhaps it's a third party.)