central sleep apnea

[WRX03]

I am around 50/50 central/obstructive. Regular CPAP takes care of my centrals too.

[ChicagoGranny]

one funny thing was
they didn't show any reduction in OSA .

Why would you think aerobic exercise would reduce obstructive apnea events?

[ShinRyoku]

I haven't read your other posts in other threads, so maybe I missed something. But if all we know about you is that you have central sleep apnea, then yes, it is possible that your CPAP machine will do the trick. Not everyone with CSA needs ASV or BPAP-ST.

Since OP has been on CPAP for at least the past 4 years (joined here in 2013) it's highly unlikely that regular cpap will do the job because OP has already been using cpap for some years now.
That's why I didn't go down the "cpap might fix it" road.

lastlib, for those of us who aren't familiar with your prior posts, would you mind sharing a few details about your treatment history? What pressure settings have you been on, what is your AHI composed of, do you have a recent SleepyHead screenshot to share, etc?

[Mogy]

one funny thing was
they didn't show any reduction in OSA .

Why would you think aerobic exercise would reduce obstructive apnea events?

They have done a number of studies showing that aerobic exercise reduces OSA.
They don't know the exact reason why it works, just that it does.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4216726/

[Woody]

I even saw one small study that just used about 20 people.
The study showed the pre AHI for each subject and the AHI
after the conditioning program. Although on average there
was a reduction in AHI of about 32% there was a lot of variation
in this. One poor fellow had his AHI increase a small amount
but on the other hand one lucky fellow had his AHI come down
from about 28 to well below 5 ( the graph was small and hard
to read but it was close to 0 )

[ChicagoGranny]

They have done a number of studies showing that aerobic exercise reduces OSA.
They don't know the exact reason why it works, just that it does.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4216726/

The people in that meta-analysis lost weight --> -1.37 points BMI.

[Mogy]

I guess they found the change in BMI was not significant.
From the study:

" Our findings indicate that exercise training has a statistically significant effect on AHI that seems to be independent of changes in BMI. An important finding of our meta-analysis is that the reduction in OSA severity was achieved without a significant reduction in body weight. "

[lastlib]

With the school shooting today my apnea feels unimportant. Our children are being hunted in their schools and now it is becoming more and more frequent. WHY WHY WHY.

[lastlib]

They are reporting 16 dead! WHY!!!

[ChicagoGranny]

They are reporting 16 dead! WHY!!!

You've started two OT threads about this. Are you going around now to see how many threads you can interrupt with your whining? Stick to one of your OT threads.

[lastlib]

I screwed up in posting. I am sorry these 16 children dying is only whining and interrupted your chain. I hope I never get a hard and cynical as you!!

[scruffies]

How do you know from the SH data if it's a "Central" or "Clear Airway" event?

For example, here's last night for me:

https://imgur.com/a/Aw7i4

(Sorry Pugsy for the link rather than an embedded image. Haven't master "embedding" yet.)

[Pugsy]

How do you know from the SH data if it's a "Central" or "Clear Airway" event?

Usually...for people with full data machines...
Clear Airway flag in SleepyHead from a ResMed machine is a central. If you were using ResScan you would see it called a Central apnea.
When SleepyHead was first being written it was designed for a Respironics machine and Respironics opted to use the term "clear airway" instead of central.
ResMed compatibility was added later but the Respironics term stuck.
So when you see clear airway flagging...think in your mind central because that's what you would see if you were to use ResMed's software ResScan.

[scruffies]

Pugsy... I didn't ask the question clearly. How do you tell if the "Clear Airway" events are just throw away SWJ events that you should basically ignore or "Centrals" that important? I think what I am really asking is: how do you tell from the data if the CA event is during sleep since the machine really can't tell if you are actually sleeping or not? Looking at my 2-14-18 data, it seems like I get a cluster of CAs right around "ramp" time which really distorts my overall AHI number if those are throw away events. Have I got this right?

[Pugsy]

Pugsy... I didn't ask the question clearly. How do you tell if the "Clear Airway" events are just throw away SWJ events that you should basically ignore or "Centrals" that important? I think what I am really asking is: how do you tell from the data if the CA event is during sleep since the machine really can't tell if you are actually sleeping or not? Looking at my 2-14-18 data, it seems like I get a cluster of CAs right around "ramp" time which really distorts my overall AHI number if those are throw away events. Have I got this right?

Ahhh.. sorry, I did misunderstand your question.

How to know the difference? You have to learn how to evaluate the flow rate zoomed in up close and personal and then manually adjust your AHI by removing SWJ events.
It's a lot of a newbie to learn and get a handle on which is why I don't go into it much unless asked. Even now after many years of looking at flow rate up close I can't always tell for sure if it is real or SWJ.
If you see a cluster of anything right next to a known awake time you can pretty much safely bet it's SWJ.

Forum members RobySue and JayAitchsee have a couple of really good threads where they explain things and show various examples but I can't seem to find them at the moment and I am short on time.
I did find this one below. It's got a couple of examples.
Maybe someone else has the links to RobySue and Jay's stuff handy.

viewtopic/t157010/The-Cpap-process-is-v ... ating.html

In general for newbies like yourself where the AHI is within acceptable limits and there's a good chance of SWJ elevating the AHI but the AHI isn't bad...I usually suggest they try not to worry about centrals and just concentrate on learning the basics and getting good sleep and then later worry about putting the flow rate under the microscope if needed or they are curious.