[Diagnosis] New on the path to a better nights rest

[mhartley]

I'm having some hip pain, so I think the optimal position for me is also the left side.  On another note, I used the Somnopose app last night, opened the board this morning and was amazed to find Oscar imports the CSV directly. Can't sing enough praises for the world of open-source software.  Anyway, examining an import from the graph last night, I can see some solid evidence that corroborates the case for positional apnea.  It shows 24 Obstructive and 6 Central apnea events between 22:48 and 23:12 (up position) - then when I rolled to my left side, clear sailing.  The minute vent graph changed dramatically as well. I guess the trick with Somnopose is to find a comfortable way to sleep with an iphone strapped to your chest! I saw some clothing on Amazon with center pockets for about $40 USD, but my daughter offered to sew a pocket in the center of one of my cotton shirts, and that seemed to do the trick. Guess I'll be sleeping with my phone for a bit until I get it figured out.  Also adjusting my EPR and pressures nightly thanks for the tips from you guys. Thanks to the board contributors and developers of Oscar, I'm starting to make some progress down the path of better sleep.

[mhartley]

 

I’m happy to report three nights now of continuous quality rest.  Kudos to SarcasticDave94 (Apnea Board Monitor) and Staceyburke (Advisory Member) for immediately replying to my post.  To summarize, I began to realize my quality of sleep was a problem and began monitoring my sleep data using Oscar in late October 2021.  The problem I was originally trying to solve when I found the board, was waking up after sleeping several hours. Initially I thought I was waking up to pee, but one day it occurred to me that there might be other causes and a bathroom break might not be the primary culprit (doh!). I gradually dawned on me, after examining my sleep data and reading many posts, that I had what you guys call “clusters” of OA’s and maybe that’s a sign of positional apnea.  My first and only post to the board has been this one.  Both Dave and Stacey confirmed my suspicion of positional apnea and also noted my EPR setting were ineffective.  I made max, min and epr adjustments in the days that followed and now feel like the settings are helping to resolve periods of some serious apnea without waking me up. In addition to the pressure adjustments, I found Somnopose and began using it to track my body position. I was surprised to discover Oscar has the ability to import the Somnopose data (kudos again to the developers of Oscar), so it was easy to correlate the OA clusters with body orientation.  The past 3 nights, I have used the Somnopose alarm setting to prompt me away from the “up” position.  I’m not sure how many times it’s gone off the past three nights, but I was only consciously aware of the alarm once (could be a case of classical conditioning).  Results: Typically my average AHI readings prior to the modifications were between 5 and 12) and it was rare to sleep the entire night without waking.  The past three nights my average AHI has been (1.4, 1.82, and 1.22) – and I have been sleeping the entire night! I attached a screenshot from last night in case you’re curious.  Although I feel there’s still a lot to learn (curious about some of the other import options and devices), I can’t believe this post is only a week ago.  Seems like ages. I decided to post my progress in hopes that it might help others struggling with similar sleep issues. Thanks!