+- Apnea Board Forum - CPAP | Sleep Apnea (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Public Area (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Public-Area)
+--- Forum: Main Apnea Board Forum (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Main-Apnea-Board-Forum)
+--- Thread: New to CPAP - need help with falling asleep? (/Thread-New-to-CPAP-need-help-with-falling-asleep)
New to CPAP - need help with falling asleep? - firewalkwithme - 03-19-2022
Hi everyone! I received my ResMed Airsense 11 recently - finally was able to secure some distilled water as there's been a shortage where I'm from everywhere. So far, I've felt the difference from using the machine, thankfully! I am able to wake up and not feel the need to lay in bed for 3 hours until I get ready for the day.
However, I have run into a problem and that is I noticed that when I fall asleep, I wake up with strain in my upper back from sleeping in the same position all night. It's usually in my upper back. Has this happened to anyone else? Is this something that will get better with time? I also have found that I only sleep for around 6 1/2 hours per night - I have to force myself back to sleep once I wake up. Will this go away as time goes on? Or will this be a thing I have to just deal with? It's strange to feel somewhat "awake" on that amount of sleep as I would need 7 1/2 - 9 hours of sleep prior, and even then I'd wake up feeling exhausted.
I also noticed that at first, I had the tubes hovering over my body and it was making it difficult for me to fall asleep. Someone else recommended that I have the tubes sort of dangle over my headboard and that made all of the difference for me. Hopefully, this stays the same for me and my debilitating symptoms start to ease - I've struggled with brain fog, excessive daytime fatigue, high blood pressure, ED, dizziness/vertigo.. the list goes on. I found out I potentially had sleep apnea through a series of blood tests consistently showing "polycythemia". Thankfully, the polycythemia was secondary.
I was curious also if anyone could look at the data I imported to OSCAR and make sense of it for me? I'm trying to understand everything that it lists, as well as see if there's anything out of the ordinary. I am aware that my AHI is low, and during my sleep study I had an AHI of 5. My oxygen desaturation level went down to 82 during my sleep study which I thought was pretty alarming. I posted my results on the sleep apnea Reddit page and someone suggested that I could have UARS due to my low AHI level, but I really don't know for sure. They suggested a BiPAP machine, but I already feel better with the CPAP so it probably isn't UARS after all. It's probably sleep apnea.
Sorry for the rambling in my post, I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out and introduce myself! I appreciate any thoughts or insights at all. Looking forward to hearing from any of you!
RE: New to CPAP - need help with falling asleep? - staceyburke - 03-19-2022
I don't know if this will help with the problems you are describing But you setting could stand some improvement.
Take a look at you flow limits - compare it to your pressure graph. You can see a real correspondences to higher flow limits and higher pressure. Flow limits ARE apnea just like any obstruction event. (O, H) They can cause people to wake up or never get into deep sleep.
We use EPR (exhale pressure relief) to control FL. To use EPR you min must be raised and EPR set to 1, 2 or 3. Full time
I would suggest a min 7 - EPR3 full time, keeping your max at 15.
your min is the absolute lowest the machine can go which is 4 - 4 is used for childern and I need at least 9 before I can leave mu mask on....