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Apnea while awake? - Elizabeth25 - 11-24-2014

I've been at this a month. Chief complaint prior to start apap was daytime fatigue, many night wakings, and middle insomnia (wide awake from 2-4, for instance).
I've looked at Sleepyhead the last few days and it looks like I'm having apneas when I am awake (lying still). What do you think of this? Is there a name for that? Is there a chart in Sleepyhead that would best show when I was awake, rather than asleep?
Is Sleepyhead in Standard Time rather than Daylight Savings?
Thank you.


RE: Apnea while awake? - archangle - 11-25-2014

Ignore any "apnea" reported by the CPAP machine during the time when you're awake.

When you're asleep, your breathing is more regular unless you have some sort of problem. The CPAP machine makes its decisions based on normal sleep breathing. Normal "wake" breathing is affected by your thought processes and activities.

Some people do have harmful breathing patterns when awake. They don't call this "apnea" and the diagnosis and treatment is different.

Unless you're stopping breathing for 30 seconds or so, or you're seeing something really bad, or are out of breath, don't worry about it.


RE: Apnea while awake? - DeepBreathing - 11-25-2014

Hi Elizabeth, welcome to the forum.

Sleepyhead doesn't know if you're awake or asleep, neither does your S9. You need an EEG or similar for that purpose to directly measure your brain waves. I think it's pretty common for a machine to record apneas and (especially) hypopneas while you're still awake or transitioning in and out of sleep. If you're just lying there quietly, there will be times when your breathing slows right down or becomes very shallow - I think it's normal and nothing to be worried about. But the machine might record those occasions as events.

As for the time, SH just takes that direct from your machine (for Resmeds - Philips are a bit different). So if your machine is set for daylight savings, your SH outputs will reflect that.


RE: Apnea while awake? - Ghost1958 - 11-25-2014

I simply count as false anything my machine flags during a period I am certain im awake. Actually after enough days of looking at wave forms I can pretty much tell when I fell asleep after going to bed and when I woke up. Looks totally different.


RE: Apnea while awake? - JimZZZ - 11-26-2014

(11-25-2014, 11:41 PM)Ghost1958 Wrote: I simply count as false anything my machine flags during a period I am certain im awake. Actually after enough days of looking at wave forms I can pretty much tell when I fell asleep after going to bed and when I woke up. Looks totally different.
I noticed that too. When I'm awake, the pressure curve is very flat unlike the sharp peaks and valleys when I'm asleep.