I'm 69 years old, and have been suffering from excessive obesity for a number of years. It was because of this and based on observations from my wife about my snoring and other symptoms of late night breathing issues that I picked up a Philips Respironics System One RemStar Auto with A-Flex about five years ago. At the time we didn't have medical insurance so I chose to buy a CPAP unit off of our local C-list without going through the normal process of being sleep tested first. I simply assumed that I might be suffering from some form of sleep apnea and thought it might be helpful (yes, in retrospect, I realize that this sounds at best eccentric and at worst, a little nuts - but as it turned out I was right). I did barely enough research at the time to realize that using a CPAP device was unlikely to be harmful and might help. In point of fact, it did. When I used it I felt better after a night's sleep than I did going without it.
However, even though I used the device fairly regularly with a full face mask for most of those years there were months at a time when I didn't use it at all. Before finding this forum I had no idea what an Auto CPAP was nor why it mattered if the machine I was using had a default high pressure setting of 20 or low pressure setting of 4. Nor did I have any notion that those settings could be changed or the results measured by excellent software like Sleepyhead. I just went with it. Lucky for me it was set on auto!
Fast forward five years, two heart attacks, one triple by-pass, and significant weight loss combined with regular exercise later. Since my heart by-pass surgery I've gone from the 335 lbs that helped put me on the operating table to 260 and still dropping. A few months ago I made a total lifestyle change - from meat eating to a sugar-free, salt-free, plant based diet - from being somewhat inactive to walking five miles a day. I want to live the years I have remaining with as much good health and quality of life that I can manage.
In the meantime I've grown concerned not only about apnea interrupting my night's rest but also about what the latest research indicates regarding how terrifically harmful that can be to both my short as well as long term health. I realized that I really haven't been getting a good night's sleep nor enough deep sleep for a very long time. Typically, I sleep no more than five and a half hours a night and sometimes less. Current research indicates that deep sleep is imperative to good health. That seven to eight hours of normal sleep a night is optimal in order to get enough deep sleep. Once I realized that not only wasn't I sleeping long enough but that the few hours of sleep I was getting were likely being constantly interrupted by hypopneas and RERAs etc I went in search of the information that eventually brought me here.
With the help of invaluable info garnered by searching this forum I've learned to adjust the settings on my Remstar and to track my nightly CPAP results using Sleepyhead. I discovered that in general, my apnea problems are considered relatively mild. My five year historic AHI levels rarely exceeded 15 and since I began tweaking the settings have more often been hovering between 5 and 10. Recently with the help of this forum, I've been able to bring my AHI numbers below five and my RERA numbers below five as well. In general my RERA numbers have been consistently higher than my AHI numbers which has been a major concern. Since switching from a leaky old face mask to the (for me) more airtight nasal pillows my AHI and RERA results these past few days have both been drifting even lower. Two or three of them have yielded AHI results below 2 with low (below 5) RERA results as well. With the benefits from delving into the many supportive threads I've found here I think I'm on the right track. I want to thank you all once again - truly.
I do believe that my 5+ year old model 550-P may have become outdated and might not be altogether as reliable as it once was. One sign of this has been it's seemingly random and independent choice of whether a nightly session will be "APAP-(variable)" or "CPAP" even though I've made absolutely certain that the settings indicate 'AUTO'. This could also be a glitch in the Sleepyhead readings as there is at least one that I know of - Sleepyhead consistently indicates that I've got the unit set to 'auto-off' when, in fact it's the reverse. But I doubt it because when in CPAP mode the pressure readings are a constant straight line. When it 'chooses' CPAP the pressure settings are constant at the lower of the two numbers I've set rather than the higher. In this case, 9.5 rather than the higher 13.5. Playing around with the settings one day, trying to intentionally set it for CPAP only the machine blew a straight and stunning 20 (cmH2O). Either way, it seems to be making that choice without any input from me which I'm thinking isn't right. But I'm pretty new to tweaking the machine and may simply not yet fully understand how it works.
Hoping to improve even further on the recent good results and based on the many positive reviews to be found here, I've ordered an upgrade - an AirSense 10 Autoset that should be arriving here in a couple more days. That should help to eliminate any problems with a possibly failing older machine and provide me with the fine tuning capabilities that could provide even more stellar results as well.
My goal is to reduce my apnea related sleep interruptions to a bare minimum and increase the overall quality as well as amount of my night time sleep.
That's about it for now. Next time, perhaps I may share what it's been like to feel as if I have an octopus clinging to my face at night while a boa constrictor wraps itself around my head - but I imagine most of you already know that story well and it should therefore go without saying...