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+--- Thread: Need help desperately with Oscar Data (/Thread-Need-help-desperately-with-Oscar-Data)
Need help desperately with Oscar Data - BreakingBaddd - 10-09-2023
Hey guys! First time posting here so please excuse any poor forum ettiquette. 25F that got diagnosed with apnea (AHI of 13.5). I have a ton of symptoms that I believe are related to this going untreated for years! I'm very fatigued & lethargic all the time, mood is terrible, anxiety is through the roof, bad digestion, insomnia, etc. I eat very healthy & exercise hard 3-4 times per week & am a student in college so I go to all my classes, but that's about all I have the energy for. I have been using my cpap machine with extreme compliance for about 1 month now and barely notice any benefits (except that I no longer get hypnotic jerks in Rem & don't have nightmares all night long anymore). I sleep about 7-9 hours of somewhat light & broken up sleep (wake a couple times due to the anxiety). I have attached my oscar data from the last 8 days. I am trying to manage my expectations but I thought I would've at least noticed some improvements by now, I'm wondering if it's just going to take months to undue the damage. I'm just hoping to be functional again. Any advice or help is highly appreciated!!
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RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - gainerfull - 10-09-2023
Welcome to the forum - I'm sure we can help you out. Can you please post a couple nights of the "Daily View" from OSCAR with the calendar minimized?
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - BreakingBaddd - 10-09-2023
(10-09-2023, 01:22 PM)gainerfull Wrote: Welcome to the forum - I'm sure we can help you out. Can you please post a couple nights of the "Daily View" from OSCAR with the calendar minimized?
Thank you so much for the quick reply!
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RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - gainerfull - 10-10-2023
Thanks for the data, here are some recommendations:
1. Your leak rate could use improvement - ideally your 95% leak rate should be 0.00. What this means is since you're using a nasal mask your mouth is likely coming open at night and impacting your therapy.
Here are a couple of solutions:
- Switch to a full face mask, I recommend the Resmed F20 - this will simplify your therapy tremendously - even if your mouth opens it's fine with full face.
- If you want to stay with nasal mask, start experimenting with taping your mouth and breathing exclusively through your nose. Try cloth medical tape from the drug store.
- As an alternative, some have found a chin strap works well at keeping their mouth closed at night.
3. Since you have relatively low events but are experiencing consistent central apneas, you may consider switching your EPR down from 3 to 2 as the pressure difference may be washing out too much c02 causing you to pause breathing.
4. Turn off ramp, during ramp your cpap is likely not providing a therapeutic pressure
5. Go to bed earlier and keep it consistent - I've noticed that if I'm in bed by 10p my sleep quality is way better than if I go to bed around midnight / 1a like you have been.
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - BreakingBaddd - 10-10-2023
Wow that was extremely helpful thank you! No way I would have been able to come up with that myself.
1) I did buy a full face mask, specifically the F30i but that one seemed to cause even more leaks, and any time I took a deep breath through my mouth it would resuction to my face. It also made my neck kind of hurt. Do you find the F20 is better than this one?
I could try mouth taping again but the two seperate times I tried that, I woke up very dizzy the next morning & experienced aerophagia (which I usually don't) and I'm not sure why that happened. Does it just take time to get used to the mouth taping & forcing your body to breathe out of the nose? Maybe now that I'm using a constant pressure (was just in APAP for the first month) I should try again??
As for the other 2 I will 100% turn off the ramp & will turn down the EPR to 2. I stuck the SD card back in so I will be able to see how this changes the results.
Literally thank you so much, my sleep doc won't give me any help whatsoever, just says AHI under 1 you're fine!!! Really if I'm fine then why do I feel like sh*t & can barely function while people my age are running laps around me.
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - CPAPfriend - 10-10-2023
hey fellow BB evangelist,
gainerfull already provided some very valuable advice, but I thought I'de just add some colour.
With regards to the F30i versus F20, it just comes down to the individual. Some people hate the F20, others love it. On average, the F30 is considered more comfortable.
You could also try a soft-cervical collar to keep your mouth closed, which is the option I found the most help from, as well as others.
You are a only a month in, and it's not impossible to still have treatment-emergent CAs at that point in time, especially if you havent been using the PAP for that entire time (I see about a week's worth of usage in your data). That said, turning down EPR could be helpful, as mentioned by gainerful.
Your nasal breathing might be pretty comprised if you're having that much difficulty with taping your mouth.
And yes, most healthcare professionals do not understand sleep medicine in the slightest. I'm not saying I do, but more times than I can count I've received recommendations, heard takes, or received advice opposed to well-established literature. I even made a video ventilating about that specific feature of the sleep-medicine world.
Let us know if you have any other questions
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - Old Mike - 10-11-2023
My opinion for what it's worth is that your leak rate is negligible and is not an issue unless it's waking you up frequently. Your apnea looks like it's well controlled too. So, it you're still tired, it's likely due to something else. There are several things which can lead to daytime tiredness/lethargy. Have you done any blood tests?
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - Sleeprider - 10-11-2023
I'll second that the leak rate with nasal pillows looks more than acceptable. None of your charts shows a high leak rate, but minor seal breaks might be disruptive. The mask appears to be working well for you and I think you will find a full face mask harder to seal due to its larger profile. Your baseline AHI of 13.5 is mild and while therapy is needed, you actually caught the issue early. A feeling of recovery is often prolonged, and symptoms may not be related to the therapy or apnea. It sounds like you are a young, fit individual. With therapy looking very good, I think it may be worth focusing on developing a good sleep hygiene routine and watching nutrition as possible ways to improve. To be sure we're not missing anything, it may be worth looking a a zoomed in view of your respiratory flow in a 3-4 minute resolution. This can just be a random screenshot, but it will show any artifacts in respiration that won't show up in statistics or in the full-night view. There are occasional spikes visible in the flow rate, and you might want to zoom in on that so we can see if these are sleep disruptions or have an origin we can address with CPAP.
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - BreakingBaddd - 10-11-2023
I have actually been using the machine for diligently for 5 weeks. I only put the SD card in 1 week ago though so that's why it shows a weeks worth of data. So I changed my settings EPR down to 2 & turned off ramp and my AHI did go down to 0.2 so that's good!
I think I will try the cervical collar or chin strap. I think the reason I struggled with the mouth tape may be due to the fact that it was on APAP mode & the EPR was on 3 so I think I was just dizzy since I wasn't breathing in enough air. So I am open to trying it again.
I also did go to the ENT & they told me I have a deviated septum, collapsing nasal valve & enlarged turbinates so I scheduled a surgery to fix that. In the mean time I do use breath right strips every night with the pillows to hold open my ariways.
RE: Need help desperately with Oscar Data - BreakingBaddd - 10-11-2023
Sometimes it does wake me up when my mouth is really hanging open so I think Ill at least try the chin strap thing.
This whole thing is so frustrating. I've already had blood tests and everything else looks fine. I've had apnea since 2020 (when I originally got diagnosed but I'm sure I've had it for way longer) and only started treating it now, so I guess I was hoping that maybe it would just take some time to see results given that I've had it for so long :
Some people like on reddit said it took a couple of months to see results so that made me more hopeful