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AHI too... low?
#11
RE: AHI too... low?
I guess it's possible that if you never really sleep deeply during the night, you won't have apnea because your muscles never really relax or you don't get any REM sleep, etc. Many people only have apnea during part of the night.

You also could be sleeping poorly and immediately waking up partly every time you have the start of breathing problems, so you never have an apnea deep enough or long enough to be recorded on the machine.
Get the free OSCAR CPAP software here.
Useful links.
Click here for information on the main alternative to CPAP.
If it's midnight and a DME tells you it's dark outside, go and check it yourself.
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#12
RE: AHI too... low?
Some people have very low AHI but still do not get deep restorative sleep. Sometimes bi-level therapy solves the problem.

Take care,
--- Vaughn

P.S. Here is a thread which discusses RERA events (which do not show up in AHI but can prevent deep restorative sleep):
http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-...lts?page=2

Here is a link to the fantastic article "Flow Limitation/UARS and BiPAP" written by Dr Barry Krakow:
http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-...rry+krakow

The Advisory Member group provides advice and suggestions to Apnea Board administrators and staff on matters concerning Apnea Board operation and administrative policies.  Membership in the Advisory Member group should not be understood as in any way implying medical expertise or qualification for advising Sleep Apnea patients concerning their treatment.
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#13
RE: AHI too... low?
Thanks for the replies. To answer some of your questions:

I have hypothyroidism (being monitored and treated), diabetes (which can affect sleep quality or wake me up if my blood sugar gets too far out of control during the night), fibromyalgia (which greatly reduces sleep quality, delays onset of the deeper stages of sleep, etc.), some sort of disorder which we haven't been able to pin down but which affects my internal body clock (a test whose results will need to be verified suggests that I'm not producing melatonin, but treatment with melatonin hasn't been helpful - we're giving it another try when my schedule cycles around again), and possibly some other things which we don't currently have the tools to diagnose. One doc said I had both fibro and chronic fatigue, but most others seem to think that's just redundant. Oh yes, and of course apnea. Pretty much all of it is caused (directly or indirectly) by my hyperactive immune system. Even the apnea was triggered by my thyroid having gotten out of control, and the thyroid disorder is autoimmune in nature.

I need a baseline 9 hours a night. Anything less and I'm seriously impacted, usually for at least 2 days. I'm running at the edge of critical exhaustion. A single really bad night can cause me to go into the early stages of severe sleep deprivation (where I start having crazy thoughts, my mind starts coming apart, my emotions are all over the place, I feel beyond exhausted, etc).

If anything goes wrong, I need 10 or more hours. (To make up for a bad night, get over a brewing cold, etc.) Usually, I don't need that for more than a night or two, but sometimes I've needed it for longer.

I'm currently on bilevel therapy, as you can see by my mini-profile on the left here, under my user avatar. My machine is less than a year old. Without it, I do in fact have serious apnea, to the point that they did surgery to remove my tonsils, uvula, any extra tissue at the back of my soft palate, and whatever else they could safely cut out. That reduced my pressure by about half, but even after the surgery I need the machine.

I've been working with one sleep doctor/lab or another for about 20 years. I've gone to more sleep clinics than I can count offhand, including the Mayo Clinic (while I was getting a workup for some other stuff).

So, yeah. There are a lot of angles and I do my best to keep up with them all. Which is why I'm here. Because I've specifically noticed a pattern where having an unusually low AHI (which doesn't happen often or regularly but has happened more than a few times over the last several years) means I'm more tired than I expected. So I figured I'd ask around here and see if anyone had had any similar experiences or ideas.
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