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Verne7

Verne7
Joined Sep 2016
Verne7
Joined Sep 2016

I just recently found that turning my EPR back on, allowed the machine to go below 6 (on exhale)- even though my low setting was at 9. 6 is too close to the number that causes afib, and yesterday, I was in afib when I woke, with a pulse of 80 and blood pressure of 164/115. My blood pressure goes up when I sleep badly. The therapy worked, and those numbers dropped quickly. But, my blood pressure dropped too much when I took my meds. When I've been having good pressure recently, it's normally 134/88. So, I finally had recreated the CPAP therapy that was so good for my blood pressure, I think I was really close to some good numbers and didn't want to lose that benefit. I wasn't sure whether to change the EPR from 3 to 2, or to raise my lower setting from 9-10. Either one would keep that EPR pressure from going to 6. Also had to change my meds, because evening my blood pressure dropped to 111/64 and worst was my pulse was 40-42, per doctor I need to be above 50. So, I took half of my next ration of bp meds (2) of them anyway, and set my machine at 10-16, because I still do get up to 15, and a EPR 3. My last 3 days I've had an AHI of 0.11, 0.44, and 0.39 last night. I had CA's the first two nights, but not a single one after the last settings change. And, my waking bp showed no sleep problems at 140/85 pulse 64. I think I see a connection to respiration rate. Last night, my respirations went up only into the 30's as opposed to nights the charts show I can close to 50. The CA's I get seem to be getting, are a period where I stop breathing for about 16 seconds or so. There was something about a Clear Airway pulse being generated, but I'm not sure what that means. I'm thinking this last pressure change might be enough pressure to keep the airway open and prevent CA's. That's a guess from last night's charts.

Just an idea here... I am an illegal. That is, I reset my machine myself. Mainly, because my sleep "doctor" started me at 5-15 and that led to some of the worst sleep I have ever had. At 5, the low pressure was like trying to breathe through a single straw. That first night, I slept 11 hours, and had to sleep 6 more after I took the mask off. I was ready to give up 4 days into it. But, with Afib and pretty uncontrollable high blood pressure it wasn't an option. My "dr" would not have given me ANYTHING without data to back it up, so I simply learned how to change them myself. I've ended up at 9-16.

Now, the last strange part is that in the data I noticed the low pressures also had low AHI's when I switched to my full face, which also ended most of the Large Leaks on the Sleepyhead chart. However, the fact that I had some low AHI's seemingly caused by low pressure, made me to look at the charts again. I certainly couldn't try the low pressure again, because that led to an Afib attack. The DME told me I could turn off the Pressure Relief when I got "used to" the machine. However, turning that off turns off the prescription EPR. So, possibly the DME confused me by talking about Ramp and Pressure Relief at the same time, and possibly he had only meant it was okay to turn off the Ramp. Anyway, I was curious and looking at the charts I had a lot of high respiration around the events. And, I thought, maybe Pressure Relief could stop all that high respiration I was seeing in the charts. So I turned the Pressure Relief back on and I went from AHI's in the 1.x range to 0.11 last night. I had one CA during 9:20 hours of sleep. Last night, my respiration's were without the spiky high readings.

The one good thing I can say about my sleep "doctor" is that her ignorance helped me learn things that helped me set up my own cpap. If my respirations continue low, I can probably change the upper number back to 15 as well.