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Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
I know your post was ages ago but yiur situation sounds very similar to mine, did it take you awhile to adjust to cpap?
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
A month of being sleep deprived.  All good now. Just persevere.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
I think a was one of the lucky guys: success from night one on.  And it went better and better.

Mike
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
Yes, it took a while. Like many others, I thought I was suffocating with the constant forced air. EPR made all of the difference for me.

Don't depend on your doctor to help you fine tune your CPAP experience. There is a great wealth of knowledge in these forums to help you on your journey. Don't be afraid to try new things to improve your experience.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
So over the last couple of years my AHI has been slowly creeping up to the point where my 30 day average was over 3.0 (still within compliance to keep my professional driver endorsements, but not good that it wasn't being stabilised).

I had been trying various settings on both fixed and auto to no avail.. and also found I was also having a higher number of large leaks, which turned out to be due to my jaw relaxing more than it used to and allowing air to escape through my mouth.
My F&P Eson nose mask had been fine up until this point.

Among the various solutions suggested from Sleeprider and others within this forum I tried strapping my jaw so my mouth stayed shut, but it didn't work.


So I changed to a ResMed AirFit F20 full face mask, which solved the large leak issue from my mouth, but still couldn't control the AHI consistently.

I was almost at the point of giving up on the Dreamstation in favour of a new ResMed machine, but it was also mentioned that I would need to change pressure and other settings due to the differences between the full face and the nose mask.. so I persevered a little more with setting changes.

In the last couple of weeks I have had great success with auto settings (originally I had reasonable success on auto when first starting on CPAP back in 2016, but for some reason my specialist ordered the clinic to change my settings to fixed a month in to my treatment).

I have now reached the point where I am on the lowest AHI average I have ever had.. 0.8 over seven days, and already back to 1.7 for my 30 day average.
In the coming weeks I'm certain my 30 day average will come below 1.0 AHI.
The AirFit F20 full face mask is great, very comfortable, and my wife says it is much quieter than the Eson mask was, and I'm maintaining 100% mask fit every night.
My sleep periods have gone from about 4 hours before waking, and then struggling to get back to sleep for any significant period.. to now getting 6.5 to 7.5 hours before waking, and then easily going back to sleep for another hour or two if I want to.

Flex didn't have a significant improvement in comfort (but then I've never had difficulty with the exhale pressure anyway) so I turned it off again after trialing it for a few days.
I upped my pressure from 7.0 to 8.0, then to 8.5.. with a max of 20.0, but still couldn't get a stable AHI or a decent sleep period.
What has finally worked for me was a change of the low pressure to 8.0, with the maximum to 15.0, no flex, and I'm now consistently on 0.6 / 0.7 AHI every night and sleeping for longer periods thanks to the higher 20.0 max waking me up at times.

Persistence has paid off (along with the "helpers" here on the Apnea Board Forum).

Thanks
- They are not spelling/grammar errors.. I live in Australia, we do it differently Down Under  Big Grin -
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
Congrats, Ockrocket! You're right, persistence -- plus active problem-solving and experimentation -- can really pay off. It's good to hear how well you're doing.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
(07-07-2020, 10:25 AM)Dormeo Wrote: Congrats, Ockrocket!  You're right, persistence -- plus active problem-solving and experimentation -- can really pay off.  It's good to hear how well you're doing.



Thanks..
The way my numbers were climbing I was looking at closing my hire car business within the next 6 months and handing in my professional driver endorsements just so I could keep a private driver's licence and still drive my campervan and ride my motorcycle.

Mind you with the current Covid-19 situation I'm not running my business anyway, I do mainly airport transfers and medical transport for my customers.. and with my wife being a cancer survivor and immune suppressed it is not worth me risking picking up the virus from a client and passing it on to her. 

But at least when things become safer I will still be able to continue my business.
Coffee
- They are not spelling/grammar errors.. I live in Australia, we do it differently Down Under  Big Grin -
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Smile 
RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
Cured By Healthy Keto + Intermittent Fasting + Physical Exercise

Has it been 2 years already?

What can I say, I've kind of struggled with my ResMed AirCurve 10 CS-A PaceWave (ASV) + AirFit P10 / N30i + CPAP Hose Bracket for around 1.5 years. The equipment did its job, but sleep quality was just not OK as I somehow could never accustom myself to it, especially as I prefer to sleep on my belly.

I was slightly overweight (with a maximum of 98 kg ~ 216 lbs) and loved to eat and drink (but not as an alcoholic), and I am a nonsmoker since my youth. Exactly one year ago I decided to stop drinking alcohol and changed my diet altogether. After some regular fasting and low carb I ended up with healthy keto, intermittent fasting and physical exercise consisting of almost daily 1.5 hours hikes (whenever the weather plays along) and workout every other day. Since then I have lost 20 kg ~ 44 lbs, added some muscle mass and my sleep apnea went away. I'm off my equipment for around a month now, monitoring my nightly behavior with a snore app on my mobile phone, which typically shows something like this:

   

I am going to stick to my routine and my whole family is more or less with it, especially with the knowledge of how carbs are responsible for pretty much everything bad that can happen to your body. We have learned a lot about proper nutrition, even the kids, and with that kind of support it's really easy to maintain that lifestyle.

So that's it for me, mission accomplished and good luck to you too!
In pursuit of a goodnight sleep | Receive a discount at Wellue Health
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
I would suggest a diagnostic PSG to validate that you are apnea free. I am happy for your success.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
(07-18-2020, 05:31 AM)bonum.noctem Wrote: Cured By Healthy Keto + Intermittent Fasting + Physical Exercise

“the knowledge of how carbs are responsible for pretty much everything bad that can happen to your body.”

Amen!
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