Suggestion: Try filming yourself

[3rdMarDiv]

I learned that the events happened always when I slept on my back.

This was me a couple years back. i'd frequently wake up gasping for air or wake up following bizarre nightmares, always on my back. it gradually got worse, to the point where lying on my back for 5 minutes was guaranteed to result in the wake-up-startle. this continued until i saw an ENT about getting my tonsils removed (they were apparently enlarged). gonna try your video idea and check if it's completely gone but at the very least i have no issues lying on my back while trying to fall asleep.

You can certainly learn more watching yourself sleep. Using a video combined with OSCAR flow Rate Chart is insightful. Mostly my results showed that I had Positional Sleep Apnea where if I sleep on my back I have apneas and when not on my back I do not. I have been only sleeping in the prone position over the last couple of weeks and have all but eliminated all apnea events. 

[3rdMarDiv]

The neck pain forums say that we should sleep on our backs. I thought that the CPAP should allow this so I tried it. I slept on my back without a pillow under my head, but with a pillow under my knees. OSCAR reported an AHI of 9.4 instead of the typical 3.5. But my neck felt better.

I am back to sleeping on my side. Today I ordered a pillow made for side sleeping with a CPAP mask.

I have heard both prone and supine are better for neck pain?? I've had no problems yet sleeping prone. I have however almost totally eliminated Apnea events and lowered my IPAP and EPAP pressures. Mask is far more comfortable and I sleep so much better all night. I have apnea event alarm set to 10 sec and it goes off maybe once every 3 nights due to my error.

[3rdMarDiv]

It has been a few weeks now since I began sleeping in the prone position. I have had a few mishaps where I did wind up on my back, such as, one night I got up for a few minutes and laid back down on my back and another I turned onto my back. But, 99% thus far has been sleeping in the prone position, which, surprised me as being pretty easy to accomplish. 

Here is a DreamMapper report for AHI. The 05/30 was my last day Supine and 05/31 was first night Prone. 

My AHI has consistently dropped and I have been able to lower I and EPAP pressures to more tolerable levels. I wake up during the night much less and feel much better the following day. 

I want to reiterate that filming yourself and syncing with Oscar may not result in your sleeping prone in order to reduce or eliminate Positional Apnea. I'm not advocating sleeping in the prone position. I'm just relaying information from my experiences. I am sure that other people will find this information useful. There may be other insights that can benefit you individually and you may find you do have positional apnea and be helped by sleeping prone.

I began filming just as a experiment or curiosity about my OSCAR Flow Chart reading. If you look at your flow chart reading and are curious about why they look they look really odd in places then filming is a great place to start looking for answers. 

I have also learned that my legs are moving a lot during my sleep, so I am seeing what I can do about RLS.

I have reduced mu OA's and CA's to 1 or 0 per night. Any AHI reading above 1 are due to Hypo's. I learned that I was still bending my neck toward my chest at times causing these Hypo's. I've since eliminated most of those occurrences. Some of the nights false positives were created by the machine.

If you remember the positive difference therapy originally made in your life, finding out about PSA and correcting for it has repeated that improvement for me again. It's that big of an improvement.

   

[sheepless]

3rdMarDiv, do you see patterns in your flow rate that look anything like the one I've attached?  particularly when your legs are moving?  no idea if you are having periodic leg movements (did your sleep study note any?) but fyi this is the pattern I've learned to associate with my plm.

[3rdMarDiv]

3rdMarDiv, do you see patterns in your flow rate that look anything like the one I've attached?  particularly when your legs are moving?  no idea if you are having periodic leg movements (did your sleep study note any?) but fyi this is the pattern I've learned to associate with my plm.

Yep, I sure have. I have not used the camera to study RLS as I have only been concentrating on CA's and OA's. I am intending to do more filming very soon and will be focusing in closer on RLS and Flow Chart. 

From my reading PLM doesn't seem to meet my symptoms as PLM seems to be active during sleep. Mine starts mildly in the evening and carries on into sleep. Since I have been sleeping much better lately I've noticed a reduction.
Now I will have to zoom in my toes to see if I have RLS + PLM...  

But, yes I've seen that pattern many times and always wondered why I'm getting some type of apnea event like a Hypo..?

Thanks for the great info

[sheepless]

I experience rls many nights lying in bed before sleep. making up a number, maybe 30-40% of the time. before cpap, I thrashed a lot - really a lot - including kicking and leg rolling as well as moving other parts of the body. with cpap I am oblivious to the movements but I've associated the pattern with times my wife tells me I'm having plm and she's made audio recordings in which you can hear the sheets rustle and my moan/groan in complaint. it's not clear to me that rls occurs in sleep. the term rls is sometimes used (misused?) in reference to movements in sleep and some folks on this site are of the mind rls can happen while asleep. it seems to me that rls ought to express itself as much in sleep as awake but most everything I've read suggests rls is awake and plm is asleep; you can have one or the other or both. IDK, but as a practical matter maybe not an important distinction if treatments are similar. however, a pattern suggests periodicity, which is not a characteristic of rls. as i do not have a camera, I am very interested in what you find out.

[3rdMarDiv]

3rdMarDiv, do you see patterns in your flow rate that look anything like the one I've attached?  particularly when your legs are moving?  no idea if you are having periodic leg movements (did your sleep study note any?) but fyi this is the pattern I've learned to associate with my plm.

Yep, I sure have. I have not used the camera to study RLS as I have only been concentrating on CA's and OA's. I am intending to do more filming very soon and will be focusing in closer on RLS and Flow Chart. 

From my reading PLM doesn't seem to meet my symptoms as PLM seems to be active during sleep. Mine starts mildly in the evening and carries on into sleep. Since I have been sleeping much better lately I've noticed a reduction.
Now I will have to zoom in my toes to see if I have RLS + PLM...  

But, yes I've seen that pattern many times and always wondered why I'm getting some type of apnea event like a Hypo..?

Thanks for the great info

I appreciate the information and I'm sure I will be doing much more research. I may well have PLM as it seems be during sleep and affecting the ankles and toes. Ankle movement may have caused some of the leg movement I witnessed. I do have involuntary leg movement late at night prioe to bed and while falling asleep. It is very uncomfortable and a real nuisance. I will have to review my tritation study as I know some info about leg movement was in it. Thanks again

[LANEWBEE]

I've really been getting into my apnea/cpap condition. I study the OSCAR reports, my DreamMapper results, any info I can find. I've been able to draw a few conclusions with the main one being that my apnea events are nicely clustered. I have sleep for awhile and then a bunch of closely timed rhythmic events happen for differing durations of time. 

I took my security camera and put it on a tripod next to my bed. The recording and OSCAR are synced in time by the computer so I can go to a second mark in OSCAR to that same second on the recording and vise versa. Studying this information I can see what a CA looks like when it happens to me after cpap reaction. Sharp rise in upper torso, the machine is louder from increasing pressure and a number of other reactions. It's not pretty and looks like a mini defibrillator was applied to me.

After looking at all the information for awhile I learned that the events happened always when I slept on my back. They started to the exact second when I moved to my back and stopped to exact second when I changed to my side. I mean literally to within one second when I changed position.

The night looked like the left and right sides of the cluster in the middle.



(OSCAR is not fully functional with my machine yet so apnea events are not marked)

I don't know if it will help you, but if nothing else, it is interesting and maybe you will learn something.

Now, if I can just figure how to not sleep on my back...  

Can you tell me what camera you were using and how did you sync the camera with OSCAR? I may want to have a try.

[3rdMarDiv]

I've really been getting into my apnea/cpap condition. I study the OSCAR reports, my DreamMapper results, any info I can find. I've been able to draw a few conclusions with the main one being that my apnea events are nicely clustered. I have sleep for awhile and then a bunch of closely timed rhythmic events happen for differing durations of time. 

I took my security camera and put it on a tripod next to my bed. The recording and OSCAR are synced in time by the computer so I can go to a second mark in OSCAR to that same second on the recording and vise versa. Studying this information I can see what a CA looks like when it happens to me after cpap reaction. Sharp rise in upper torso, the machine is louder from increasing pressure and a number of other reactions. It's not pretty and looks like a mini defibrillator was applied to me.

After looking at all the information for awhile I learned that the events happened always when I slept on my back. They started to the exact second when I moved to my back and stopped to exact second when I changed to my side. I mean literally to within one second when I changed position.

The night looked like the left and right sides of the cluster in the middle.



(OSCAR is not fully functional with my machine yet so apnea events are not marked)

I don't know if it will help you, but if nothing else, it is interesting and maybe you will learn something.

Now, if I can just figure how to not sleep on my back...  

Can you tell me what camera you were using and how did you sync the camera with OSCAR? I may want to have a try.

I am using an Samsung security camera. They are far more capable that what is needed for sleep monitoring. Even the best security camera still films in night vision infrared and the picture is not like a well lit daylight photo. A much less expensive camera will easily do the trick.

It is synchronized by way of day/date/time with your computer. All security cameras need to be precise in the time as if you have a security issue, eg, a break in, theft, etc., going to and knowing the exact time is VIP. They all film in the dark. Wouldn't be much of a security cam otherwise. 

Just check that they have software that you can use on your PC and smart phone. From the PC it's easy to toggle between OSCAR and the camera playback.

OSCAR is synced to the 1000th of a second and security cams are 100th. So anything that looks unusual or you just want to see maybe what your breathing looks looks when you are awake as opposed to asleep. Maybe you had a apnea event and want to see what was going on at that time.

I've learned a lot. I only use it occasionally, but plan soon to do some more research.

I have also just started to in combine/incorporate Fitbit heart and sleep monitoring into the mix.

I have seen security cameras at Targets for $40 dollars with 1080p. They just don't have remote pan/tilt, etc.

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes. I'll be watching for your thread.

[3rdMarDiv]

I have been doing quite a bit more filming and combining the OSCAR data with what I am seeing. I can now look at my Flow Rate Chart and with confidence see where I have changed position, scratched myself somewhere, coughed, repositioned the mask, etc., etc. Basically, I can read the flow chart quite effectively. I can read the chart and know what occurred without looking at the video. 

I have been able to find out why just about anything in my chart looks the way it does. 

I have virtually eliminated apnea alarms and stopped supine sleeping by 98%. When I do sleep on my back it is at most for a few minutes. 

I have also learned that temperature plays a bigger role in sleeping than I knew. Trying different temperatures and observing the video and flow chart has resulted in great improvement in my nights sleep. I has reduced my sleep movement, restless time and awake time. There is also information on the web about temperature and sleep quality. I'm seeing where it helps me stay in a deeper sleep longer where light sleep isn't as light.

I now have my camera to set to detect the slightest movement by me and then activate. By doing this I can review the nights sleep only when a movement happens. If I am laying still and sleeping well then I have fewer video captures. So basically, the less video the better my nights sleep was.

I'm trying to correlate my sleep with a Fitbit report and have seen where the Fitbit is excellent at nailing any awake or restless occurrences. The times it shows you as asleep is when you are asleep. It's not perfect, but at least 85% to 90% accurate. 

I cannot say the same about deep sleep or REM sleep as of yet. I can just see from the video where I am sleeping, restless and awake. The Fitbit captures those instances really well. 

Fewer apnea events, better sleep, higher quality of life...