How can I lower my AHI?

[jstro84]

I did an "official" take home sleep test about a month ago and the results are in. AHI was 9 that night, so I've been dubbed as "only" having mild OSA. Dr doesn't seem to think it's a big issue, insurance might not pay for a ResMed machine without a "comorbid" condition (unspecified), and I am very annoyed by this whole process. 

Should I tell my Dr that I've been "illicitly" using a second hand refurbished PR DS1 to self-titrate for 3 months already? Or are they gonna throw me in jail or something. It's taken 3 months to get here since my original visit to my MD to complain of daytime sleepiness, and it's going to take probably another 6-8 weeks to get a follow up appointment to "discuss treatment options." My first night on the factory standard settings (APAP 4 - 20 cmH2O) was 18 AHI.

This is the kind of Dr who seems to be annoyed that I know more than he does about my condition and how I am feeling. And I quote him here:  "There is absolutely no urgency to this because the findings are quite mild." 
EASY FOR YOU TO SAY!!!!!

Anyway thanks everyone for being here with me on this journey. 

(Mods, can you change the title of this thread to jstro84's Therapy Thread?)

[Kathy14225]

I'm not familiar with all the events your machine flags. Are flow limitations in there? A trained eye can see them in the flow rate but I have a separate graph for those. I was helped on this forum with getting those down by raising my EPR. They are little events not low O enough to be a 50% hypopnea and they suspected that was why I was having arousals and disruptive sleep that I didn't even know about. Effected my quality of sleep. By upping it to 3 my flow limits are now under .1 and I do feel somewhat better. Just passing info I received on here, not sure it pertains but I'm getting better sleep.

[Kathy14225]

Disregard my reply about flow limits, I no see they are zero! Do you know what you did to achieve that? So those small events aren't causing the arousals which I know wasn't your post anyway.

[jstro84]

Philips does not have a separate flow limit graph like ResMed, it's just counted as an event and shown on the Event Flags Graph in OSCAR. 


I don't know if the Philips algorithm even really picks up FL's very accurately :\ But according to my data, I don't have a problem with FLs (0.03 average over 3 months)

[jstro84]

Wondering if anyone has the same experience I had last night/this morning - 

I woke up feeling very good at about 5:30am after a solid 4.75 hour session, but thought "I am up way too early and definitely didn't sleep long enough to feel this good, it must be a fluke" and went back to sleep. 

But my 2nd session (a measly 2 hours) had nearly 4x the AHI. I woke up at a "normal" time (8am) and now am feeling tired again. 

Does this happen to anyone else?

[jstro84]

Just got my "official" diagnosis and HST results. Can someone help me interpret this? 

Specifically:
* Does anyone know what supine/non-supine/upright actually mean in this report? 
* Are there any "red flags" in this data other than what I already know (ie, I have OSA)

I also looked and saw that there have been several updates to the AASM since 2007, but it doesn't surprise me that my provider is still using 20 year old evaluation standards smh

[jstro84]

Bump!

Been using a SCC (Velpeau) but not seeing the kind of improvements in positional apnea that I expected. 
Jan 2 is a no-collar night and Jan 13 is a yes-collar night. 

Any other suggestions to help with the positional apnea problem? I could try to DIY one of those pool noodle things to make sure I'm sleeping on my side.