My 1st post of SleepyHead data

[trickyneedsleep]

Just an extra note the data from my Dreamstation gave an AHI of 9 when my settings was Min pressure 8.0 and Max pressure 13.0. Just wanted to put that out there!

[robysue]

Was the diagnosis a surprise to either you or your wife?   Yes!!!! A BIG surprise!

1) Do you put the mask on when you first go to bed every single night? If not, why do you choose to not put it on some nights? Most nights I do. I say 4 out of 5. Sometimes Ill be too tired to take a chance on NOT getting a good nights sleep so I just keep it off.

You are not going to like what I have to say, but please hear me out:

Every time you just go to bed without the mask on your nose, you make it harder to get over the hump of fully adjusting to the mask.

You should at least try to get to sleep with the mask on every single night. You want to reach the point where putting the mask on is just like brushing your teeth---in other words, it's something you just do as part of the bedtime routine without giving it much thought. I know that sounds impossible now, but it really is a significant part of fully adjusting to sleeping with the machine.

On those nights where you are "too tired to take a chance on NOT getting a good night's sleep", you should still put the mask on.  Give yourself 20 minutes or so (without looking at the clock) to get to sleep.  If you are as tired as you think, you may just fall asleep with the mask anyway.

2) Have you woken up only to find that you have taken the mask off in your sleep?  (It's actually a pretty common problem for newbies.)  If so, what do you do when you wake up and find that the mask is no longer on your nose? Yes, I have woke up to find it off. Most of the time I put it back on and if I don't go to sleep soon I take it off.

Putting the mask back on is a GOOD habit. You want to continue to do that. You don't need to try to figure out why you took it off in your sleep. If you always put the mask back on before going back to sleep, eventually your brain will figure out that Time to Sleep = Time for the Mask.

But I do have a question: You say "If I don't go to sleep soon I take it off."  How long is "soon"?  Do you only give yourself a couple of minutes? Or do you allow about 20 minutes to get back to sleep?

3) Do you ever consciously take the mask off after a middle of the night wake and allow yourself to go back to sleep?  (This is also a common newbie problem.) YES!!!

This is a VERY BAD HABIT.  It's a habit that you absolutely MUST break if you want to become fully compliant.

Here's the thing: Your conscious brain has not yet fully accepted that you need CPAP to sleep well. This diagnosis came as a surprise, and you're still having a tough time wrapping your mind around the need to teach yourself how to sleep with a six foot hose on your nose. (Been there, done that, and I have tons of T-shirts to prove it.)

And every single time you consciously choose to go to sleep or go back to sleep without using the mask, you are reinforcing your denial that you need to find a way to make this work.

Yes, it's hard at the start to put the dang mask on every single time you go to bed. And every single time you wake up in the night.  But you need to work towards that.

Until you are actually using the machine much more consistently, it's not going to get any easier to fall asleep or stay asleep with the mask on your nose.

Any problems with waking up with a very dry mouth? Never! I make sure the humidifier on my Dreamstation is on.

Good. That's one common newbie problem that you are NOT fighting.

Was your wife surprised at the results of your sleep test? Yes!! She says I snore a little and never grasp for air (when she's awake of course).

What lead to the sleep test? High blood pressure
If it wasn't your wife saying you snore loudly and sometimes quite breathing at night, what made you or your doctor think that a sleep test was a good idea? High blood pressure

High blood pressure by itself usually does NOT wind up leading to a sleep apnea test.  What kind of things did you and your doc for treating your HPB before you got the sleep test? How well did they work? What was it about the HPB that caused the doc to order the sleep apnea test?  Any chance your HBP has been very resistant to standard drug therapy?

And was the doc who prescribed the sleep test surprised at the results?

And any chance your apnea is worse in REM? I don't know but last night at a setting of 9cmH20 and 12cmH20 I slept VERY well. Only woke up cause nature was calling. AHI was 12.3.

"Woke up cause nature was calling" is a very, very common symptom of sleep apnea.

[robysue]

Just an extra note the data from my Dreamstation gave an AHI of 9 when my settings was Min pressure 8.0 and Max pressure 13.0. Just wanted to put that out there!

Until you are sleeping more consistently with the machine, I'm not sure the machine reported AHI is very meaningful.

Some people have wake breathing patterns that "trick" the machine into scoring a lot of "false" events, and yes, it's possible for those events to be scored as an OA instead of a CA in some people---it depends on whether you close your epiglottis when you are holding your breath for a few seconds.

Here's a pair of experiments that are well worth doing in your case: DO THESE EXPERMENTS FAR AWAY FROM BEDTIME.

Experiment 1) Set the machine up in your living room, den, or family room.  Put the mask on and then turn on a favorite TV program or get the laptop/smart phone out and start web browsing. Or read a book.  The point is that you need to be doing something that requires just a wee bit of concentration every now and then and that is also sufficiently interesting to help you get your mind off paying close attention to your breathing while masked up.  Try to keep the mask on for a good 30-40 minutes. (An hour would be even better.)

And then download the data from that 30-40 minutes when you know you were wide awake and not paying much attention to your breathing.  And look for how many events were scored and what kinds of events were scored.  Keep in mind that since you were wide awake, NONE of these events are "real" in the sense of being genuine sleep disordered breathing events.

Experiment 2) Set the machine up in your living room, den, or family room.  Put the mask on and then concentrate on your breathing.  (Most newbies are very, very conscious of their breathing when they mask up at the beginning of the night, and sometimes this focus on their own breathing makes it much harder to just fall asleep at the beginning of the night.)  Keep concentrating on your breathing with the mask for at least 10-20 minutes if possible. If you notice sensory sensations that are disturbing, uncomfortable, or bothersome, make a note of what you're feeling and compare that to how you feel when you consciously take the mask off at night because you can't seem to get to sleep with it on.  And then look at the data in SH.  You may notice that concentrating on your breathing does not really "smooth it out" very much. You may wind up seeing even more false events in this experiment than in the first one.

The point of these two experiments is this: First, the data will give you a good idea of what your normal wake breathing actually looks like.  And knowing what your normal wake breathing looks like will help you determine whether some of the event clusters that are keep appearing right after you put the mask on at night are nothing more than wake breathing being mis-scored as sleep disordered breathing.  Once we know that, we'll then know how much to worry about your machine scored AHI.

[trickyneedsleep]

Was the diagnosis a surprise to either you or your wife?   Yes!!!! A BIG surprise!

1) Do you put the mask on when you first go to bed every single night? If not, why do you choose to not put it on some nights? Most nights I do. I say 4 out of 5. Sometimes Ill be too tired to take a chance on NOT getting a good nights sleep so I just keep it off.

You are not going to like what I have to say, but please hear me out:

Every time you just go to bed without the mask on your nose, you make it harder to get over the hump of fully adjusting to the mask.

You should at least try to get to sleep with the mask on every single night. You want to reach the point where putting the mask on is just like brushing your teeth---in other words, it's something you just do as part of the bedtime routine without giving it much thought. I know that sounds impossible now, but it really is a significant part of fully adjusting to sleeping with the machine.

On those nights where you are "too tired to take a chance on NOT getting a good night's sleep", you should still put the mask on.  Give yourself 20 minutes or so (without looking at the clock) to get to sleep.  If you are as tired as you think, you may just fall asleep with the mask anyway.

2) Have you woken up only to find that you have taken the mask off in your sleep?  (It's actually a pretty common problem for newbies.)  If so, what do you do when you wake up and find that the mask is no longer on your nose? Yes, I have woke up to find it off. Most of the time I put it back on and if I don't go to sleep soon I take it off.

Putting the mask back on is a GOOD habit. You want to continue to do that. You don't need to try to figure out why you took it off in your sleep. If you always put the mask back on before going back to sleep, eventually your brain will figure out that Time to Sleep = Time for the Mask.

But I do have a question: You say "If I don't go to sleep soon I take it off."  How long is "soon"?  Do you only give yourself a couple of minutes? Or do you allow about 20 minutes to get back to sleep?

3) Do you ever consciously take the mask off after a middle of the night wake and allow yourself to go back to sleep?  (This is also a common newbie problem.) YES!!!

This is a VERY BAD HABIT.  It's a habit that you absolutely MUST break if you want to become fully compliant.

Here's the thing: Your conscious brain has not yet fully accepted that you need CPAP to sleep well. This diagnosis came as a surprise, and you're still having a tough time wrapping your mind around the need to teach yourself how to sleep with a six foot hose on your nose. (Been there, done that, and I have tons of T-shirts to prove it.)

And every single time you consciously choose to go to sleep or go back to sleep without using the mask, you are reinforcing your denial that you need to find a way to make this work.

Yes, it's hard at the start to put the dang mask on every single time you go to bed. And every single time you wake up in the night.  But you need to work towards that.

Until you are actually using the machine much more consistently, it's not going to get any easier to fall asleep or stay asleep with the mask on your nose.

Any problems with waking up with a very dry mouth? Never! I make sure the humidifier on my Dreamstation is on.

Good. That's one common newbie problem that you are NOT fighting.

Was your wife surprised at the results of your sleep test? Yes!! She says I snore a little and never grasp for air (when she's awake of course).

What lead to the sleep test? High blood pressure
If it wasn't your wife saying you snore loudly and sometimes quite breathing at night, what made you or your doctor think that a sleep test was a good idea? High blood pressure

High blood pressure by itself usually does NOT wind up leading to a sleep apnea test.  What kind of things did you and your doc for treating your HPB before you got the sleep test? How well did they work? What was it about the HPB that caused the doc to order the sleep apnea test?  Any chance your HBP has been very resistant to standard drug therapy?

And was the doc who prescribed the sleep test surprised at the results?

And any chance your apnea is worse in REM? I don't know but last night at a setting of 9cmH20 and 12cmH20 I slept VERY well. Only woke up cause nature was calling. AHI was 12.3.

"Woke up cause nature was calling" is a very, very common symptom of sleep apnea.

But I do have a question: You say "If I don't go to sleep soon I take it off."  How long is "soon"?  Do you only give yourself a couple of minutes? Or do you allow about 20 minutes to get back to sleep? Honestly, just a couple of minutes. I know, not enough time.

This diagnosis came as a surprise, and you're still having a tough time wrapping your mind around the need to teach yourself how to sleep with a six foot hose on your nose. (Been there, done that, and I have tons of T-shirts to prove it.) Tons of t-shirt? I don't get it.

And was the doc who prescribed the sleep test surprised at the results? I don't think he was. I think he thinks that is one of the reasons for my high blood pressure

"Woke up cause nature was calling" is a very, very common symptom of sleep apnea. Well if sleep apnea is the reason why I wake up to go to the bathroom then I'm glad I got sleep apnea!

[trickyneedsleep]

Just an extra note the data from my Dreamstation gave an AHI of 9 when my settings was Min pressure 8.0 and Max pressure 13.0. Just wanted to put that out there!

Until you are sleeping more consistently with the machine, I'm not sure the machine reported AHI is very meaningful.

Some people have wake breathing patterns that "trick" the machine into scoring a lot of "false" events, and yes, it's possible for those events to be scored as an OA instead of a CA in some people---it depends on whether you close your epiglottis when you are holding your breath for a few seconds.

Here's a pair of experiments that are well worth doing in your case: DO THESE EXPERMENTS FAR AWAY FROM BEDTIME.

Experiment 1) Set the machine up in your living room, den, or family room.  Put the mask on and then turn on a favorite TV program or get the laptop/smart phone out and start web browsing. Or read a book.  The point is that you need to be doing something that requires just a wee bit of concentration every now and then and that is also sufficiently interesting to help you get your mind off paying close attention to your breathing while masked up.  Try to keep the mask on for a good 30-40 minutes. (An hour would be even better.)

And then download the data from that 30-40 minutes when you know you were wide awake and not paying much attention to your breathing.  And look for how many events were scored and what kinds of events were scored.  Keep in mind that since you were wide awake, NONE of these events are "real" in the sense of being genuine sleep disordered breathing events.

Experiment 2) Set the machine up in your living room, den, or family room.  Put the mask on and then concentrate on your breathing.  (Most newbies are very, very conscious of their breathing when they mask up at the beginning of the night, and sometimes this focus on their own breathing makes it much harder to just fall asleep at the beginning of the night.)  Keep concentrating on your breathing with the mask for at least 10-20 minutes if possible. If you notice sensory sensations that are disturbing, uncomfortable, or bothersome, make a note of what you're feeling and compare that to how you feel when you consciously take the mask off at night because you can't seem to get to sleep with it on.  And then look at the data in SH.  You may notice that concentrating on your breathing does not really "smooth it out" very much. You may wind up seeing even more false events in this experiment than in the first one.

The point of these two experiments is this: First, the data will give you a good idea of what your normal wake breathing actually looks like.  And knowing what your normal wake breathing looks like will help you determine whether some of the event clusters that are keep appearing right after you put the mask on at night are nothing more than wake breathing being mis-scored as sleep disordered breathing.  Once we know that, we'll then know how much to worry about your machine scored AHI.

That's makes good sense! You help is so appreciated!!! I'll do that asap and post the data!

[robysue]

This diagnosis came as a surprise, and you're still having a tough time wrapping your mind around the need to teach yourself how to sleep with a six foot hose on your nose. (Been there, done that, and I have tons of T-shirts to prove it.) Tons of t-shirt? I don't get it.

Silly internet saying. "Been there, done that, have the T-shirt" essentially means: I've been there, dealt with the same problems, and have the scars (often just mental ones) to remember (and understand) the pain that someone else is going through.