Tachypnea

Hello everyone, I've been a cpap user for about 8 years now. I also have asthma among other things. I don't get rested after a night with cpap. My AHI is perfectly fine, between 0 en 1. The problem is my breathing. During the day I breath slowly, with pauses between each breath. A rate of about 11-14. At night, somehow, my husband keeps telling me I breath 20-30 times a minute.... That's why I don't feel well I guess. My expiration time is mostly longer than my inspiration time, but both are from 1.2-1.8 in seconds. That's way too fast. I see other charts with median measurements like 3. .... seconds in and 5...... seconds out. My breathing is totally different and I think not ok. How can I change this? Could my asthma be the cause? And would ASV be able to tackle this problem?

I am not that familiar with asthma and what impact it may have on sleeping. I use OSCAR to track my CPAP data, and I see that I have a respiration rate of about 18. My wife also uses a CPAP and runs a little lower at about 15. I am not sure what is considered normal.

I am not sure if an ASV would help or not. As best I understand it, it tracks each breath and assists in breathing if you are not breathing on your own. What do you have for a CPAP and how is it set up. With a ResMed it may be helpful to set the Expiry Pressure Relief (EPR) at the maximum setting of 3 cm. Reducing pressure on exhale and increasing it on inhale may help you breath a little deeper and cause your respiration rate to be a bit lower.

What may be of more help is a BiPAP or BiLevel machine like the ResMed AirCurve VAuto. Instead of boosting inhale pressure by 3 cm compared to exhale, it can be set up to 10 cm, and may be more helpful in assisting breathing.

What you may want to do is track your CPAP data with OSCAR and then see your sleep specialist and ask about doing a trial with a BiLevel machine to see if it provides any benefit.