Switched from ASV to CPAP, finally getting some sleep.

[Stom]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think People should be trying EER's without medical supervision. It could end up being fatal due to an overdose of CO2.

You have a very good point. One difficult part of risk assessment is accurately determining relative risk, and humans are very bad at determining relative risk, especially when we don't have good data. We take some pretty big risks every day that we've become inured to. Millions upon millions of drivers are all one single twitch from a fatal head on collision. But we need cars to do work and other tasks, so we take the risk of driving without giving it much thought relative to the other things we consider to dangerous to do.

Playing with EERS could be a bad risk on the basis that doing it may be unnecessary, thus even if the risk is low, the risk/benefit ratio might argue strongly against it. I would say, however, that we deal with the risk of CO2 poisoning every single day of our lives, between every breath, both awake and asleep, and our body signals us when to breathe based, in part, on CO2 levels. Unlike, say carbon monoxide poisoning or inert gas asphyxia, the human body is designed to detect and react to excessive levels of CO2, and that is the whole point of EERS, to encourage the body to react to CO2 and breathe normally.

[Walla Walla]

I agree it's a good tool to have in correcting a specific problem. I'm more worried about the lone ranger out there that reads about this and plugs his mask vents without any kind of medical input. We have lot's of resources for tracking O2 levels at home, but none for tracking CO2. If someone was thinking about doing it I would hope they'd at least get a gas blood test to check their CO2 levels to make sure they're CO2 isn't too high already.

Just consider this the warning label on the side of the bottle.

[Stom]

I'm more worried about the lone ranger out there that reads about this and plugs his mask vents without any kind of medical input.

I needs to be *quality* medical input more than just medical input.

When I went to Kaise,r having never used home PAP treatment, with a copy of my old laboratory split night sleep study showing my longest apneas were during the "treatment" phase during the manual titration attempt (including a 1 min 48 second apnea, with corresponding O2 desat), Kaiser sent me home with an APAP to try auto-titration, alone. Can't say that seemed especially smart or safe. Not sure an EERS set up that follows careful protocol would be more dangerous than the unknown risk of suffocation under long apneas during PAP titration that Kaiser subjected me to
:-/