Centrals and Medicine

Has anyone experienced getting centrals when taking medicine. I strained my back and am using an topical anti-inflammatory creme (diclofenac). I am now getting an average of 10- 12 centrals since I have been using this cream. Has anyone else had this experience with medicine and centrals as I have had the occasional central but never this many each night. The medicine has really my back however I am nervous about all these centrals. Thank you for your time in advance.

I think the CAs are more from your pain and restless sleep rather than from the meds. That many CAs spread over the night are not a problem.

It's also possible that the centrals aren't real...meaning that the pain is waking you up and you are tossing and turning some and pausing your breathing and the machine thinks that pause in breathing is a central apnea.

These machines don't know if we are awake or asleep. They only measure flow rate. Awake or arousal breathing is highly irregular and the machine can and will flag those irregularities as some sort of apnea event.
I see it happen all the time and it's not just for central flags...it can be any flag.

Now there are some medications that will suppress respiration and a real asleep central can happen but the biggest chance is the central flag isn't from being asleep and not breathing but being awake/semi awake and not breathing and if you aren't asleep they don't count.

If you want to learn how to tell the difference between awake and asleep breathing and flagging...watch all the videos here
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software

FWIW I see this happen fairly often myself. One night a while back I had an AHI of 3.6 and that's unusually high for me so I took the time to look at all the flagged events. It wasn't just centrals either.
Every single flagged event was related to awake/arousal breathing. Not a single flagged event was real.
Didn't surprise me though....the night was an extra bad night in terms of tossing and turning and frequenting awakenings due to extra bad back and pelvic pain.

Thank you!