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+--- Thread: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help (/Thread-jaredtaskin-Therapy-Help)
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - TechieHippie - 01-18-2024
Are you still reducing how much caffeine you get? You might have to just ride that out; I suspect there will be ripple effects on your sleep for a little while but it'll be good in the end.
For getting to sleep, I go back over and over to a CD called " Resist Nothing", specifically track 3-4 of disc 2, though the whole thing is good. That track is an extended body scan looking for sensation that we are resisting (which actually makes it worse) and practicing letting go of the physical resistance. The next two tracks address emotional and subtle energetic resistance. When I listen to an audiobook it keeps me at a low level of activation. Whereas this completely relaxes me, and gets me into my body instead of my head. Being in my head really messes up my sleep.
I took a look at your initial sleep study. It looked like you were moving around an awful lot, and your deep sleep was fragmented. (As a tangent, I was surprised they used the 3% drops for AHI estimation, my 4% drops correlate more to the CPAP's estimation of AHI , but even so your AHI would be 16 which is still problematic.)
I think that has been my problem in the past, not much deep sleep and what I get was fragmented. I think for myself, over time I instinctively dealt with apneas by keeping myself at a higher arousal rate through the night. Looking at your sleep study oxygen graph, I don't see any big drops and I wonder if that is why, because you move and arouse yourself before it can get there. It might take your body time to trust that the CPAP is going to protect you during deep sleep. You might consider using the meditation above or another to relax into the discomfort of sleeping in one position for longer and see if it helps.
I don't know if it would work for you but I use pillows to keep myself in a more stable sleeping position so that I'm not constantly changing, I have fat one behind my back, one between my knees, and another to wrap my arms around. Of course that may not work with your setup but something to consider.
My gut feel for what it's worth, is that now might be a good time to get your brain away from sleep analysis and calculations for a few days (you can still collect data and refine things), focus on letting go of stress (not necessarily changing your external stress but how you react to it), increasing fun and joy, exercise, water, and healthy enjoyable food. I of course need to take my own advice! If you do this experiment, would you let me know how it goes because I only have a small data set? ?
Lisa
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - jaredtaskin - 01-18-2024
Thanks for all the advice! I did not end up weaning off of caffeine yet, because I started to feel more clearly like I had a flu bug or something, so I thought I should ride that out before making any changes.
I'm interested in what you have to say about my sleep study score. Could you (or anyone else) tell me more about that? Are you suggesting a more normal study would have scored me at an AHI of 16 instead of 33?
You are probably right that I need to stop over-analyzing things and just wait a few weeks.
Side note: this afternoon I took my first CPAP nap. Slept for about an hour with the mask on. Very refreshing!
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - jaredtaskin - 01-20-2024
I want to ask about my night last night, as it was typical of several nights I've had so far. I fell asleep easily around 10:30, woke up just before 3:00, then again at around 4:20. After that I stopped looking at the clock, but I think I woke up a few more times before getting out of bed at 6.
I feel alright this morning, and thankfully each time I woke up I was able to fall easily back asleep. I'm just wondering if there's any evidence in the Oscar report that would suggest why I'm waking up, and if there are any settings to change. It looks pretty clean to me. As I said, I've had several nights so far where Oscar looks pretty good to me, but I've woken up a few times through the night like this.
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - BoxcarPete - 01-20-2024
Your chart looks pretty good. Really good, in fact. If you hadn't told me you woke up and marked the time on your clock, I would have said those were both just REM cycles. If you're feeling OK, try your best to do as you just did to just relax and fall back asleep. Keep it up!
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - PeaceLoveAndPizza - 01-20-2024
I do not see anything of concern in the chart. Stay with it for a while longer and see if things improve any further. It takes time to adjust to things, so give it a chance and I think you will be pleased.
Note that not every night will be good even with everything perfect. The consistent inconsistencies of sleep and CPAP is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. It is not always possible to coorelate a bad AHI night with how you feel.
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - jaredtaskin - 01-20-2024
Understood. Thanks all! I'll just stick with it!
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - Crimson Nape - 01-20-2024
jaredtaskin - This is just a thought, but since your numbers are so low and your snores are nonexistent, move the respiration graph up into its place. This may show sleep disruptions that are causing your lack of feeling rested.
- Red
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - jaredtaskin - 01-20-2024
(01-20-2024, 11:29 AM)Crimson Nape Wrote: jaredtaskin - This is just a thought, but since your numbers are so low and your snores are nonexistent, move the respiration graph up into its place. This may show sleep disruptions that are causing your lack of feeling rested.
- Red
I moved the respiration graph up. I've got a screenshot of that, as well as a zoomed view of my two known wake up times (2:55 and 4:20). I don't know what that graph means, but there's definitely increased activity at these points.
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - Crimson Nape - 01-20-2024
It appears something is causing arousals about every hour to an hour and a half. This could be caused from a less than desirable sleeping environment (old or wrong mattress) and/or pain.
- Red
RE: jaredtaskin - Therapy Help - jaredtaskin - 01-20-2024
Interesting. For someone sleeping normally, would you expect resp. rate to be pretty uniform/constant all night?