Hello all. I thought I'd start a new thread to describe some interesting things that have gone on recently. Back story: 64 years old, with complex apnea, using a Philips System One ASV. I had been experimenting with manual backup rate settings, instead of auto. That's described in another thread tucked away here somewhere.
Anyway, I was doing very well with PSmin=0, EPAPmin=8.5, BPM=5. My AHI with these setting was consistently around 1.1. Note the past tense.
On December 26, I flew with my family from Philadelphia to Taiwan for a 16-day holiday. I expect a bad night after a long flight, and indeed the first night in Taiwan, my AHI was 5.2. But after that it settled right down. In fact, it stayed at about 0.8 for a week, and I felt fine. Then we took a four-day trip to Tokyo. Interestingly, for all four nights in Tokyo, my AHI was higher, between 4 and 5, with a number of centrals sneaking in. I didn't change the machine settings during any of this. Then we went back to Taiwan for a couple of days before returning to the US. In Taiwan, my AHI dropped back to around 1.0.
I realize we're not talking about a lot of nights, but it's interesting how the AHI changed in Tokyo.
Anyway, upon returning to the US I had to deal with some horrible jet lag for up to a week. For some reason, it's much worse for me when traveling eastward. I've made this trip once before and had the same experience. Back in the States, my AHI rose back up to around 4.5 and stayed there for a while. Even after the jet lag was over, my AHI didn't want to come back down for a while. Gradually, over a period of a month or so, it started to drop back down. As of last week, it was back down to around 1.3. Then I got some kind of head cold with a cough, leading to some high numbers, such as 11.5 last night, and 10.6 two nights ago. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night (unusual for me) due to this dry itchy cough, and I woke up three times feeling like I had a fever.
I realize that AHI numbers are pretty meaningless when you're sick in a way that interferes with normal breathing. What's more interesting to me is the way the travel disrupted my sleep, and how long it took to return to "normal" AHI.
One other thing: A while back, I decided not to check AHI until the end of the day, rather than checking it when I wake up. I discovered that the correlation between AHI and how rested I feel is very weak. In fact, I have to say that the days after a very low AHI night are generally not the days when I feel most rested.
"Sock it to me!" 