Central apneas keeping me from falling all the way to sleep

[justletmesleep]

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about 2 years ago. It took me about a year to actually accept that I was going to have to use this machine, and I've been using it pretty successfully for the last year, and seen benefits from it. Frequently though I have nights like last night (2/6/25) where I have a real hard time going to sleep, because every. single. time. I start to drift off, I stop breathing. Like it feels like as I fall asleep my breathing gets shallower and shallower until I'm not breathing anymore and then I jerk fully awake, and I have to start the process all over again. To me these feel like central apnea events. Eg. there is no snoring or catch in my throat like I can feel when I doze off without my CPAP on the sofa or in the car (passenger side lol). It took me over 4 hours to actually fall all the way to sleep and stay asleep last night, and I feel like miserable trash today. Most nights I don't have any issues, and my AHI is under 1.0, but every now and then I have nights like I just described. I can't find any rhyme or reason to them. I'd do pretty much anything to avoid these nights, but I have no idea what to do. Hoping someone here with greater experience has some advice.

I'm new to this forum and new to looking at my own CPAP data, so I'm not sure what info to provide, but I've got my data pulled into BMC RDMS (my device is not compatible with OSCAR), and I'm happy to provide screenshots or answer any questions that'll help y'all help me.

Thanks in advance.

[ozij]

Is your machine capable of distinguishing between central apneas and obstructive apneas?
Do you see your breathing flow diminish gradually in the data you get from the machine?

but every now and then I have nights like I just described. I can't find any rhyme or reason to them.

Try to keep a detailed log of your activity, especially before falling asleep, what you ate and drank (and when). It's the only way to figure out if those are random occurrences or not.

If you don't have data that can show the difference between breathing disruptions caused by obstructions, and those not related to obstructions, or, at the very least show you your breath flow, and if you find those disrupted nights happening too frequently, then maybe it's worth your while to get a machine that does record breath flow and apnea type. Think of a new machine as you would think of snow tires: in some parts of the world, nobody has them or uses them and if it ever snows, people don't drive for a couple of days. In other parts of the world, there are so may snow days that nobody would think of forgoing snow tires. Only you know how often those disrupted nights happen.