RERA's are they all that important?

[sheepless]

"Yes, but shouldn't you be aware of those times you woke up? The apneas and hypopneas don't wake you up, usually."

the only one in my list that I'm aware of when it fully wakes me is a leak.

the point is that all these i listed, including arousals, micro arousals, disturbances of any kind, can leave us unrested, even if completely unaware of them.

again, ignore the rera if you feel sufficiently rested.

[cathyf]

I use a fitbit which seems to show sleep stages. Everything that the fitbit flags as an arousal has a particular "look" in the OSCAR flow rate graph. (You've got to keep the clock on your cpap very close to the real time to be able to line up a watch/activity tracker with OSCAR). What I see in my fitbit is that these brief arousals -- especially the 30-90 second ones that I am totally unaware of -- will send me crashing out of deep or rem sleep. I often return to rem sleep after a RERA, but almost never go back into deep sleep. So a RERA after 5 minutes of deep sleep may mean I get just 5 minutes of deep sleep for the whole night.

Which is really brutal.

The whole point about sleep apnea is that it's something that goes on when you are unconscious. So, yeah, you don't expect to be aware of it!

[bbbl67]

If you know how to zoom in on the respiration rate (see the Organizing your Oscar Charts in my signature), you will see the problem. If not, and you don't care, then I'm fine with that too.

Thanks, I'll look into organizing those Oscar charts, and posting them here when I can.

I also took an alternative viewpoint at this. I noticed that my Oscar data goes all of the way back to 2017, which I didn't realize that that much data had been saved. Philips' own Dreammapper only goes back to late 2020, when I first started using that app, so I thought perhaps that earlier data didn't exist until I started recording it for the first time.

Anyhow, looking at those historical data, I noticed that my RERA's were very low back in the early days. RERA's hadn't started becoming noticeable until I started experimenting with my own settings, about a month ago. My experimentation found a way to reduce my AHI numbers even further, but it increased my RERA's! So looking at the settings differences, what I had done was reduce my CPAP fixed pressure from 9.0 to 8.5 cmH20. The other difference was that I had turned off the C-FLEX pressure relief setting. Tonight I'm going to re-enable the C-FLEX setting, and see how that affects tonight's readings.

[bbbl67]

I use a fitbit which seems to show sleep stages. Everything that the fitbit flags as an arousal has a particular "look" in the OSCAR flow rate graph. (You've got to keep the clock on your cpap very close to the real time to be able to line up a watch/activity tracker with OSCAR). What I see in my fitbit is that these brief arousals -- especially the 30-90 second ones that I am totally unaware of -- will send me crashing out of deep or rem sleep. I often return to rem sleep after a RERA, but almost never go back into deep sleep. So a RERA after 5 minutes of deep sleep may mean I get just 5 minutes of deep sleep for the whole night.

Which is really brutal.

Interesting, so you're wearing your Fitbit all throughout the night? I don't actually have a Fitbit myself. Also, the Clock on my Dreamstation is about as inaccurate as you can be. You can only adjust it to within 30 minutes accuracy, which is stupid for a modern digital device. Even analog watches could be adjusted to within 2 minutes accuracy.

The whole point about sleep apnea is that it's something that goes on when you are unconscious. So, yeah, you don't expect to be aware of it!

For me, I had been aware of my apnea even before I got my sleep study. It was the reason I requested the sleep study in the first place. I would often get 2 hours of sleep a night (don't even know how much of that was REM). In fact, falling asleep was a problem because I would often find myself snoring which would wake me up again.

[bbbl67]

Okay, so 1 night in, and it does look like the RERA's have gone down to almost nothing. Since it's only 1 night, I'm not going to make any conclusions based on that. Will wait a few more nights.

[bbbl67]

So it's been a few days already, and it looks like RERA's have definitely gone down, but not completely eliminated altogether. What's considered a good RERA/hour rate?

[sheepless]

idk what the standard is for rdi (like ahi is under 5) & we can usually do better than that, but we'll never consistently be without some disordered breathing. in the end, it comes down to how you feel. if fine, ignore residual events including rera. if not, then you keep chipping away at them if possible.

[bbbl67]

idk what the standard is for rdi (like ahi is under 5) & we can usually do better than that, but we'll never consistently be without some disordered breathing. in the end, it comes down to how you feel. if fine, ignore residual events including rera. if not, then you keep chipping away at them if possible.

I'm still feeling sleepy at some points during the day. I think maybe I'll investigate the other large numbers I'm seeing such as Vibratory Snore and Variable Breathing, but I'll ask about them in a separate thread. I think we can consider this case closed.

[cathyf]

...I'll ask about them in a separate thread...

Actually the practice around here is to keep all of your stuff together in one thread. It helps because there are a lot of things that you might think are independent of each other that turn out to be intertwined.