Anyone ever move to a lower elevation for sleep apnea?

[camrewop]

Hello everyone!

I've been recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea from an at-home sleep study (AHI >32). I have my doubts, but I'd love to get some feedback on my situation and data.

I live at about 6200' in elevation
I know when I'm visiting lower elevations (~1000'), I sleep better and wake up feeling more rested
I have hypothyroidism
I'm male

We're in the process of selling our current home and trying to decide where to go (up or down in elevation). My AHI numbers have been all over the board at home. I've noticed improvements and stability when sleeping with the windows open.

When traveling to ~1000' of elevation, I noticed some improvements, and also some stability in numbers. Just in the last week or so we took a trip to see how 2800' looked, and again, my numbers improved and stabilized somewhat. Oddly enough, the first night of our trip, we stayed at 6400', and my numbers had improved quite a bit from being at home.

I'm trying to get an idea on if my sleep patterns/numbers are affected by elevation, or possibly some environmental factor around my house.

Reading lots of messages on the forums, I did adjust my flow last night. It's set at 6-9 with a flex off with some improvement, and was also at 4700'.

I've attached some images that show:

30 day summary
An 'average' night at 6200'
First night away from at 6400' (best night up until that point)
Best night I had (and it was at 2700')
First night back at elevation



I really can't find a correlation (other than elevation and possibly environment) to anything. I'm not sure if I should spend as much time as I have "chasing the numbers' to try and find a reason as to why my numbers are what they are. I'd assumed it was related to high altitude periodic breathing, but would love to get some more experienced folks to take a peek, time permitting.

Thanks!

[TheDuke]

Although I live in an area (Western Kentucky) with maybe 400 foot elevation, I have taken many vacations in the Mountain West at various elevations well above 6200 feet and always was quite comfortable with my machine's altitude compensation feature. My own opinion is not to seek a lower elevation for the sake of CPAP. So far as I know all modern XPAP machine have automatic altitude compensation and you should do fine at 6200 feet.

Good-Luck
The Duke

[jaswilliams]

it is likely the Altitude is causing the variation in your AHI, when at altitude it looks like your CA's are increasing. but your early in your therapy so the CA's may reduce over time naturally

[Sleepster]

I doubt those variations have anything to do with altitude. AHI is something that naturally varies from night to night. Note that, for example, mild apnea is defined as having a AHI in the range of 5 to 15. That's a range of 10 with no clinical significance.

[Sleeprider]

We generally see altitude associated with central sleep apnea. Your events are mainly hypopnea, and are clustered. You have only tried settings with a minimum pressure of 5 or one night at 6, which was an improvement. Based on your charts and summary, i think you need a minimum pressure of 9.0, so I really don't think you should be making decisions on where to live based on the very limited experience you have had with a Philips Dreamstation that is notoriously reluctant to increase pressure to meet your needs.

Let's take your minimum pressure to 8.0 and maximum to 12.0 and see what that does. I am certain we can find settings that are comfortable and provide better results regardless of altitude.

[camrewop]

Thank you, everyone, for the insight.

It's pretty amazing to see the amount and quality of the information provided by members here.

I'm going to update my settings this evening, and see how they look.