Apnea Board Forum - CPAP | Sleep Apnea
Keep waking up - Printable Version

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Keep waking up - spicerack - 10-05-2024

I've been using an APAP for a few years now. My AHI is always fairly low (just under 1, usually), but I still feel like I don't get a good night's sleep. I keep tinkering with pressure and EPR levels but still no luck.
I'm waking up numerous times every night. I finally just got an SD card and downloaded OSCAR so I can start looking at the data but I need some help. Here are screenshots from two recent nights. If anyone has any ideas, that would be great!


RE: Keep waking up - G. Szabo - 10-05-2024

The pressure swings are waking you up. Hence, you should increase your minimum pressure to 13 cm (perhaps even higher later).
You also hit your maximum pressure, which should be increased to about 18 cm. Keep your ERP =3 Full time and RAMP off.


RE: Keep waking up - spicerack - 10-05-2024

Thank you for the advice. I'll try a min pressure increase. 

I thought the pressure changes may wake me up and I tried CPAP mode a while ago but maybe I didn't set the pressure to be high enough because it didn't help.


RE: Keep waking up - G. Szabo - 10-05-2024

(Yesterday, 11:08 AM)spicerack Wrote: I thought the pressure changes may wake me up and I tried CPAP mode a while ago but maybe I didn't set the pressure to be high enough because it didn't help.

The issue with the CPAP mode, which has been advocated on YouTubeAcademy (irony) and even by some Advisory Members of this forum, is that your need for pressure support changes during sleep. Hence, constant CPAP pressure cannot fully accommodate these changing needs. When you need higher pressure than your CPAP setting, then you are running in a high flow limit regime and depriving your brain cells of oxygen, which will eventually die. When your pressure need is lower than the CPAP pressure, you are overpressurized, which increases the inflammatory markers of your blood work, leading to many conditions you do not want to hear about. Therefore, the more advanced APAP mode is the healtier choice, providing its pressure setting is optimized. 

Neverthesess, some sensitive person wakes up at the pressure adjustment of APAP. Those prefer to tolerate the CPAP with the flaws mentioned above.