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Hi all! i've had sleep issues for quite a while, but always thought it was normal. Over the summer I had an upper endoscopy and my GI doc told me to get a sleep study done. My sleep study results revealed only mild ahi at 7.8 with an RDI of 29 and maxden10 at 67. I've been on Cpap therapy for about 3 weeks now and today in particular woke up very tired, and stayed tired all day. My mood has been pretty bad(either depressed or flat) for years/decades - irritable, depressed and i'd like to see if the community can help me out while I wait on my pulmonologist appt. My numbers seem decent, I at least can see some improvement going from 7.8 to under 2 typically, but i'm not really seeing the results i'd hoped for, nor progress for that matter.
so far I think I sleep best with EPR on at 3, its a bit difficult to exhale without it, but if you look and feel that it'd be worth it to tough it out then so be it. Also I take Unisom and melatonin each night before bed to help me sleep. I skipped a night saturday night and ended up waking up at 3 or so and couldnt fall back to sleep.
Thanks heaps!
Also I have Oscar, but not access to a device that can use it properly at the moment. Can reupload there if preferred, not sure if it makes a difference but ask and you shall receive!
Welcome! And thanks for providing the SleepHQ link. I should mention that I could see only last night's chart; you might check whether there's a different link that would let us see data for multiple nights.
Your RDI of 29 means your respiration was causing you to have arousals on average once every two minutes. That's a lot of sleep disruption. Just eyeballing your chart, I'd say you're having fewer respiratory disruptions now, though more than will allow you to have a restful night's sleep.
You're doing really well with leaks, and your flow limit graph looks good too. I'd stick with the EPR if I were you. It can make breathing a lot more comfortable.
You could try raising your minimum pressure a little bit, to see whether that will prevent some OAs. One nice thing about your machine is that you can change your pressure in very small increments of .2. I'd say go up by .2 to 10.6 and leave it there for at least three days, to see whether you do OK with it. If you do, try another .2 and again wait a few days to evaluate. By then you should be able to see whether you're having fewer OAs.
What really strikes me, though, is that you don't pause much at all between breaths. Your respiration rate looks normal, so I wouldn't think of this as hyperventilation, but it's an unusual pattern. I hope some other members will have thoughts about this, and it would be great if you could ask your pulmonologist about it. (You might want to bring a device with you to the appointment so you can show him some zoomed-in segments of your flow rate.)
Okay, looks like i hit my 3 image limit here lol, but hopefully this is helpful. Please let me know if theres something you'd prefer I zoom in on etc. Last night was not a great nights sleep, but was also kind of a one off in my opinion. Elections going on etc was keeping me awake.
Thanks for access to all your SleepHQ charts. I've taken a quick look at many and a closer look at some. They confirm my impressions from that first one. Do try inching up your minimum pressure to see whether you can avoid some of those OAs.
I'll add that it sometimes takes a while to feel the benefits of PAP therapy. You need some time to get used to the novel experience, for one thing. So don't despair!
(I've started getting the hang of SleepHQ charts. One thing I like about them is that I can zoom in myself, without requesting zoomed-in Oscar charts. To zoom in, I select a segment. To zoom all the way out, I hit "r" on my keyboard.)
