AHI has shot up

[movingon]

Hi All,
I have been using cpap successfully for years, thanks to the help I received at this web site. A few weeks ago I started waking up with dry mouth...so I got a chin strap which I have learned to tolerate.Then I started to notice that as I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep I would be having these little burps of air escaping out of my mouth, after I started using the chin strap. So I started playing with the pressure. Things have gone from bad to worse. I am out of my league and need help from the collective brain. I sleep on my back and it has not been a problem...so far. My AHI before all this started was in the neighborhood of 1.5 or much less, I've had a few 0 AHI nights. I have lost about 20 lbs. recently because of metastatic prostate cancer, but I am years from kicking the bucket! I'm attaching a screen shot that I hope will be of some help to you all.

[LSAT]

Part of your problem is that you have blocked the machine from increasing your pressure to stop apneas. Your max pressure of 11 is not high enough. Why have you set it at 11? What happened at 1:00 that caused you to turn off the machine for 30 minutes?

[Miss Emerita]

Hello, Movington. Can you look at the Statistics page in Oscar and see what your settings were before your AHI shot up? And can you experiment by returning to those settings?

[movingon]

Hi,
Thanks for responding! I don't know what woke me up at that time, but I'm beginning to suspect that it has been happening more often now that I've been playing with the settings. The reason I lowered the pressure was because of the dry mouth and I was getting, and mouth burps as air was escaping from my mouth as I lay waiting to fall asleep, hence the chin strap. I will include a snippet of my statistics (hopefully) I have been wondering if I should try to go back to the old settings, but the really dry mouth is what started this roller coaster! I'm aware of the trap of trying to chase 0 AHI, but I've been there before and I can't go on with the lousy nights that I have been getting lately.
Thanks for any advice you can give me.

[Pugsy]

Open your maximum pressure back up to 20. You need more pressure to deal with the apnea events but with the restricted maximum the machine can't do what it needs to do.

You can't fix dry mouth with pressure changes but you can sure mess up your therapy with pressure changes like you are doing.
There are other better ways to deal with dry mouth.

[movingon]

Thanks,
o-o-okay I can do that, should I do anything with the minimum pressure?

[Pugsy]

Lets not do anything with the minimum pressure at this time. Lets see just how much letting the machine function like it is supposed to function does.

Dry mouth is normally from mouth breathing (unless you are having medication side effects causing the dry mouth) and it doesn't matter what pressure...can be 5 or 10 or 15 or 20. We first have to treat your OSA though...that's the primary problem right now. The dry mouth we deal with later in various ways depending on how bad it is.

Did you know that if you have a lot of apneas happen (which you are having now) it can actually cause MORE mouth breathing because you are actually gasping for air more ....trying to move more air. Lets fix the apnea problem and then work on any dry mouth issues that remain once the OSA is better managed.

[movingon]

Thanks Pugsy,
I think I intuitively know the answer to this question...but I have to ask it: If I bump the pressure up to 20 does that mean that the machine will run at 20, or is it just capable of going there if necessary? I know that that is one of the reason why I didn't bump the pressure up in the first place (as well as the mouth leaks).
Thanks for the help

[Pugsy]

No...the pressure won't necessarily go to 20 unless it senses a real need to go there. If the machine only could go to 100 and you set the max at 100 and it only needed to go to 15...it would never go over 15.
It's like your car...it can probably go to 120 but only if you put your foot in it to cause it to go that fast. Just because something can go there doesn't mean it will go there.

[movingon]

OH HAPPY DAY!!!
Thanks Pugsy for reaching out to help me, and thank you everyone else who took the time to respond! I am including a screenshot of last night. I will run with these settings for a week to make sure it was not a fluke (which I highly doubt). Then maybe we can fine tune it a little more. There was no dry mouth,no mouth leaks, and I think I may have woken up once, but I'm not too sure. I am sooo grateful I was directed to this wonderful site with so many helpful people...thanks again!