Shnoozer wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2024 10:03 am
I like my mask but evidently it leaks from time to time, and i worry that it's waking me up. But the data doesn't exactly show that.
When you say that you are
worried that the leaks are waking you up, do you mean that you remember waking up a lot during the night, but you don't know or are not sure that you remember the mask leaking at the time you are awake?
Or do you mean that you are worried about a lot of mini-wakes/arousals that you just don't remember when you wake up in the morning?
[qute]Also, I'm not sure what a realistic leak rate is
[/quote]Resmed machines report only excess, unintentional leaks. Your overall leak data indicates that yes, you are experiencing some frequent leaks. But most of the time those leaks stay well below Resmed's official definition of "large leak", which is a leak rate of 24 L/min or higher. And most of the time, your largest leaks are short lived. There's one largish leak that
might be problematic: The leak between 12:25 and 1:00AM looks like this:
That leak is just below the "red line" and because the flow rate is depressed throughout the period of the leak, this is an example where a leak is just barely large enough and long enough where it had the potential to adversely affect your therapy a bit. But having said that, I'll also add, that if you zoom in enough to see the individual breaths, they look like normal sleep breathing. The ragged breathing that starts at just after 12:50 does look like an arousal. And it is reasonable to assume that this long, persistent, and borderline large leak probably did wake you up, particularly since the leak goes to 0 after you re-establish good sleep breathing.
And I'll also add this: Roughly 30-40 minutes of largish leaks over a course of an 8 1/2 hour night is probably not something to get worried about, particularly if you're not waking up with a dry mouth and you are waking up in the morning feeling decent enough.
In other words, this is a leak line that is not "great" but is far from "awful". If it were my data, I would not base an intervention on just this one night. Now, if I were having a 30 minute leak every night that looks like that one between 12:25 and 1:00 AND if I was waking up with a dry mouth every morning, then I might start trying to figure out if there's an easy way to stop it from happening.
But there's also the fact that you are worried about leaks potentially causing wakes. My own view about wakes is this: If I have a few short wakes during the night and I get right back to sleep and I wake up in the morning feeling fine, there's no point in worrying about those few short wakes. If I know I'm waking up a lot or if I have trouble getting back to sleep after one or more wakes or if I'm waking up really tired and cranky, then some investigation into the wakes is worthwhile. The first thing I do to try to track troublesome wakes is to turn the machine OFF and then back ON. This provides a visual break in the graphs when viewed in Oscar or SleepyHQ. That in turn can help me figure out what might have caused the wake. And I can also usually tell how long it took me to get back to a sound sleep.
And it seems like I am having OA from time to time, without a leak precipitating it, so perhaps the min pressure is too low?
Like Ozij, I think your minimum pressure setting may be a bit too low, and for the same reasons: Your snores and your flow limitations seem to start when the pressure hits your minimum setting and they resolve as the pressure is increased. Your AHI is low enough that I wouldn't worry about the few events that are getting through the CPAP defenses. (Some of them may be "false positives" anyway since some of them occur when it looks like you may have been awake or transitioning back to sleep after an arousal.)
Joined as robysue on 9/18/10. Forgot my password & the email I used was on a machine that has long since died & gone to computer heaven.
Correct number of posts is 7250 as robysue + what I have as robysue1
Profile pic: Frozen Niagara Falls
