CPAP data for those with sleep apnea

[marcf]

Not sure if this will be useful here in your Q&A forum, but I do believe there are a number of trainees that have sleep apnea and use a CPAP every night like I do that might benefit from this resource. CPAP owners may already know that in most CPAP models, there is an SD card in a slot in your machine that records your sleep data every single night. I'm also willing to bet that most CPAP users never remove that card to look at the data, or don't know how.

You can download this software to read that data: SleepyHead CPAP Review Software

And this is the glossary/index to help you get an idea of what you're looking at: Sleep Disorder Glossary - SleepyHead Wiki

This information is extremely useful, especially if you look at it side-by-side with your workout log. It shows you how many apnea/hypopnea events you have per night, and depending on your machine it can also show you how often you snore, events where you're struggling to breathe and how long those events last, when those events wake you up, etc.

I looked at my CPAP data again tonight after ignoring it for 3-4 months. When I look at my workout log/notes, I can see exactly how and when my sleep affected my training, or vice versa.

[Bill Been]

What general effects do you see? How old, big, tall, fat, and male are you? This would interest me too, especially as you said - overlaid with your training log.

[marcf]

What general effects do you see? How old, big, tall, fat, and male are you? This would interest me too, especially as you said - overlaid with your training log.

Hey Bill, I didn't see this until now.

I just turned 35, I'm 6'1" and 235 pounds. But I've had sleep apnea for a while, even back when I weighed 210.

Monitoring my sleep and looking at the data gives me rough ideas about what affects my quality of sleep. For example, I had very few apneas or incidents when I slept on my cousin's couch 3 straight nights for a wedding two weeks ago. When I sleep on my girlfriend's extremely firm mattress, my apneas are usually 1.5-2x higher per hour.

So, if I have a heavy training day coming up, I won't spend the night at her place before I train.

I've also looked at how my sleep affects the way I *feel* while training, and comparing that to bar speed as I record myself. A mediocre night will sometimes make the weight feel pretty damn heavy, but the bar moves fine. Several apneas or events per hour and I can feel ok-ish, but the bar speed isn't quite there.

I haven't been doing this long enough to find any significant correlations, but I am beginning to see a pattern in how my total sleep and quality of sleep affects my training days.

One thing I've considered is adjusting my CPAP base/starting pressure based on certain situations (e.g. raising from 6.5 to 8 when I sleep at my gf's house).

[Bill Been]

Thanks very much. Great information.

[indigo]

Don't get this. I thought the whole point of CPAP machines was that you would not have apnea events occurring.

[Luke S]

Do you think you slept worse on your girlfriend mattress because of its firmness or could it be from sleeping with another person?

My sleep quality is always (subjectively) worse when my girlfriend sleeps with me and I can feel in the next day. I don't have sleep apnea or use the CPAP.

[heavyiron8]

Do you think you slept worse on your girlfriend mattress because of its firmness or could it be from sleeping with another person?

My sleep quality is always (subjectively) worse when my girlfriend sleeps with me and I can feel in the next day. I don't have sleep apnea or use the CPAP.

How big is the bed you two share? If it's a king sized mattress, she shouldn't really disturb you during sleep too much.

[Tiburon]

Cool!

Have you done any analysis on the data? Some lagged correlation would be neat.

[marcf]

Cool!

Have you done any analysis on the data? Some lagged correlation would be neat.

I want to wait until I've got about 3 months of logged data on my CPAP's memory card. Then I'm going to take a look at my training log and see how my sleep patterns affected my training, if at all.

[marcf]

Don't get this. I thought the whole point of CPAP machines was that you would not have apnea events occurring.

A CPAP doesn't completely eliminate apnea events from occurring, but they minimize the events so that you can have better quality sleep. Well, that's the idea, anyway. You can go from having 30 events per hour to just 3-4 per hour with a CPAP, which I'd say is a pretty good improvement. When you do have an event, however, it probably won't last as long with a CPAP on your face, especially the kind with variable pressure that can create a pulse or surge of pressure when it detects an event (I've purposely held my breath while awake to see how long my machine takes before it decides to pulse air and it's about 8-10 seconds, which seems long, but some people will stop breathing in their sleep for 30 seconds or longer). Sometimes they can go away completely with a CPAP.

A number of factors can occur that would prevent you from getting good sleep with a CPAP: pressure is too high or too low, mask comes lose during sleep from tossing/turning/moving, air leaks from the mask if your seal or hose comes lose due to movement, constantly waking up because you're not yet used to the fact that you're wearing a contraption on your face that is continuously trying to force air into you, etc.

Sleeping with a CPAP is annoying, especially with all the travel I've been doing recently, and even after two years of continuous use, I've never gotten used to it. However, overall results are net positive: I could barely even keep my eyes open to drive to work on some days before I learned that I had sleep apnea. The thought of working out back then never even crossed my mind. My main concern was not lashing out at friends and family for my irritability, and not killing myself or some innocent person in a car wreck.