Dry Throat and Bad Dreams

[sleepwreak]

Frequently I awake with a feeling that I just died (an awful feeling of dread and racing heart beat) and I think it may happen when my throat gets dry and sore during the night. My doctor has told me that the sore throat may be confusing the mind and trying to make sense of it be creating the nightmare. Has anyone experienced this?

I have been a CPAP user since 2007 and here is what I have been doing to deal with this issue:

Gradually tightening my chinstrap (Deluxe Chin Strap/302425).
Raised humidity setting to 5 (max is 6).
Raised heated tube to 77 degrees.

By the way I use the ResMed S9, but I don't use the auto pressure mode. I talked to my doctor and we agree that I'm better off with the regular CPAP mode and I'm set at 10. She said that some people like me are too sensitive of sleepers to use the auto mode.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Rick

[PoolQ]

Obviously I am no doctor, but here is what I would do. I would turn on auto mode BUT with a very small range, say 10-11 or 10-12, just so I could get some data. IF and this is a big IF, it is set at 10, but this is lower than it needs to be, I would assume I am feeling starved for air and that can trigger the dreams.

Thinking more about it perhaps you can get actionable data without changing to auto, by looking at flow limit to see if this is causing the issue. I really don't know enough about how the machines work to know what you can see in sleepyhead when in fixed pressure mode.

Have you looked at the plots?

[sleepwreak]

I noticed the references in other posts to Sleepyhead, but I haven't used it yet. It sounds like it is available to use with a ResMed S9.

I would be willing to try out the automode again. I remember that was something my doctor suggested, but there is something about this mode that disturbs my sleep that my doctor really can't figure out.

Thanks for the reply!

[AshSF]

Sleepwreak: you should first install Sleepyhead software and upload your data to it.

Some people don't do well on autos due to microarousals caused by changes in pressure. You may be one of them.

Dry throat may most likely mean that your mouth is open during part of the night and that makes your therapy pressure ineffective leading to multiple apneas. That is something we can find out by looking at the leak rate graph in sleepyhead. So the next step for you should be get data aware by using sleepyhead.

[PoolQ]

sleepyhead can be used with:
Philips Respironics System One (450P models and above, lesser model numbers are not data capable!)
ResMed S9 families (Not the Escape models, as they are not data capable), plus AirSense 10 support as of 0.9.8!
Fisher & Paykel Icon (It's still a work in progress, but it's getting quite good)
DeVilbiss Intellipap CPAP/Auto (These machines don't store flow waveforms)
Weinmann SOMNOsoft2 / Balance machines support is comming soon

so your good to go. http://www.sleepfiles.com/SH2/
you will need an SD card reader to plug into a USB port

don't forget to slide the little write protect tab before putting the card into the reader and then enable it again when you put it back into the machine

[trish6hundred]

Hi sleepwreak,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
Your machine will work with SleepyHead very well, from what I have read here on the board.
Much success to you with getting your CPAP therapy optimized to work well for you.
Hang in there for more responses to your post.