Fascinating thread with great input by all. (Health warning: another Loooonng post [yawn]
)
@Albigensian
Nasal vs Full face Mask:
Certainly worth a go, you will only know if you have tried it for a while, a week maybe.
Best not to overthink this. Just try it.
For me:
Nasal mask = uncontrollable mouth leaks.
(side note: nasal
mask leaks still occur but less of a problem)
The leak occurs because the pressure in the mouth from the CPAP is higher than atmospheric pressure.
Your mouth acts like a valve: if the valve has a high threshold for leaks to occur, you won't mouth leak.
If your mouth leak threshold is low, you will need to control the "valve" with something like mouth tape, Alice bands, other stuff.
Oranasal mask (aka Full Face mask) won't give you mouth leaks per se...*
Why? because the pressure inside the mask is the same at the level of your nostrils and your lips.
Hence you eliminate the Mouth Leak ...
*Unless you get mask leaks first: so you get mask leak first, the pressure in the mask falls and if it falls below your mouth leak threshold, then you have both mask leaks and mouth leaks, dry mouth, more fun etc! If you can control the mask leaks you will be up and running!
AHI
Once your AHI is less than 5 and you are feeling OK then there is so much day to day variation between AHI readings it's not worth stressing about.
The goal is not AHI 0, in fact I regard that as overtreated.
Eventually you won't even focus on the AHI, just how you feel.
Obtructions:
I ignore my OSA score. I only worry about them if the OSA are long, say 30 - 50 seconds and clustered.
Other than that they are normal, and I am quite happy with them. Most of us have them. That is why a normal value for AHI is < 5 and not = 0.
I try (hard!) to ignore the day to day variations: and prefer try and look for trends. Wood for the trees etc.
Flow limits: enough discussion already. Don't try and understand the Proprietary reasons for the difference of appearances of
FL chart and numbers. As Gideon said in #24 if you really want to see FL zoom in on the Flow Chart.
"It does torment me to see data that I can't interpret, though!!"
Yes it can do your head in. The numbers you want to focus on are the ones that make you feel better.
Establish a scoring for yourself wrt sleep quality, side effects etc and then try and establish what effects what.
Try and find a pattern between the two. You are well on the way already!
@SleepHenry.
Exactly, that's right, for me, maybe not others.
There are many other factors that effect this, for example: random variation (each night is different), sleep deprivation, pressure settings, diet,
level of hydration, exercise, stress, medication and many more.
Still I find these are significant correlation numbers.
How many nights? N= 264 running total for this year 2021.
Lastly, and hopefully to put an end to this long post of mine here is some more data, if you like that kind of thing.
[attachment=35884]
Last year I looked at days where I had the same Pressure Settings and Machine Settings and the same mask.
I only changed the EPR and looked at the effect on the Achieved Median EPAP and 95% EPAP.
When I lowered the EPR (red numbers) the EPAPs went up (green numbers) and vice Versa.
For example between 20 and 21 March the increase in EPR from 0 to 3 gave a fall in EPAP values and so on.
I just include this in response to your original post and hope this gives you some idea of how this kind of works for some of us.
Of course if you change the Min Pressure and Max Pressure and EPR at the same time things will get a bit more messy!
Caveat Emptor etc.
So if you are on a
fixed CPAP of say 7 cm H20 with EPR 0 and you then want to increase the EPR to 1 for some reason, you will want to also increase the CPAP value to around 8 cm H20 otherwise your EPAPs will fall to around 7, and may fall below the level you need to stave of (most of) your Obstructions.
Hope this helps a little.
Above all, have fun with this.
Glad to see you taking ownership of your own therapy.