normal breathing

[Sleeprider]

Well, that image I posted is "normal" but it's not typical as my breathing is usually more irregular. If you have a screen shot of what you're dealing with, we might be able to offer some insight.

[storywizard]

OK, well here is a shot from last night:

[img][/img]

I am trying to get a sense of how disturbed my breathing is while I sleep..

Storywizard

[BadGoodDeb]

I have no charts of this, but I seem to have a longer breath cycle (while awake) than others. When doctors are listening to my chest, and tell me to breath normally, I do. They then say "again" .... before I am ready to do so. They seem to want to speed me up. Perhaps it's just to speed up the office visit, but this is *all* doctors, and they don't all seem rushed.
My asthma "lung capacity" tests (where you breath out till your lungs invert, you know?) indicate that I have more capacity than is average, perhaps due to playing musical instruments as a teen. So maybe I have a deeper breath cycle, and a longer pause/stop after each breath. I wonder if this would look like the stop you are mentioning above. Which you say people don't have while awake.

[quiescence at last]

Cool, storywizard! I think we can safely say that the exhale portion of each breath is quite normal. There are also things about the inhale portion that clearly indicates what type of breathing issues you were dealing with at this point in the night. The rugged, bumpy, somewhat concave profile of the inhale curve is consistent with flow restriction or limitation. This is not going to be a big deal for you unless those are disruptive (it does not seem like you were awakened by them.)

I believe you are A OK - keep up the good work.

QAL

[quiescence at last]

@deb - I also played a wind instrument. I have had situations where I have been fine with my slow breath only to be encouraged by the doc to take another breath. This is mainly because I try to breath more deeply when the doc is listening to my chest, getting more oxygen, and being more capable of holding my breath (or more slowly exhaling). I do not see myself doing so while asleep, and I think that is because breathing while sleeping is controlled by a different mechanism.

QAL

[TyroneShoes]

I have posted that normal non-REM sleep breathing halts briefly after the exhale, as seen in Sleeprider's chart above. normal awake non-sleeping has no halt - just continuous inhale exhale inhale exhale. In REM sleep, normal breathing is abnormal-ish and awake-ish. It generally has no halt (as in awake) and it usually has bizarre-ish respiration and tidal volume shiftiness. I hope that is crystal-clear.

QAL

Clear enough.

This is fascinating stuff, and stuff I did not know about.

But the pattern seems to not show a pause after the exhale as much as it does during mid-inhale. The spikeness at the bottom of the cycle seems to indicate that inhalation starts immediately after full exhalation, and that there is no pause of any kind there, and then half-way through inhalation it levels off (essentially halts), and then starts to increase on its way to full inhalation.

The steady fall during exhalation seems to represent normal exhalation, which is not a process driven by the CNS, but by simply no longer sending any "constrict" commands to the diaphragm, which means the lungs then just let out the inhaled air passively like a balloon having the air let out of it.

But that pause in mid-inhale is interesting. If that happens consistently, the xPAP should be able to tell when you are asleep, and when you are either awake or in REM. But, it doesn't. So maybe it just isn't reliable enough to base that conclusion on.

It also puzzles me as to exactly why that pause occurs.