Sleep Well Canada

Well I’m sure that I can list 125 reasons why losing weight would be beneficial to all of us but I was inspired once again by another patient “BB” who lost 125 pounds and improved her Obstructive Sleep Apnea significantly.   Her OSA has improved so much that there are no more traces of drop in her blood oxygen levels that would be of any cardiovascular risk.  So is she “cured” of OSA, well I’m not one to make that conclusion and she would need further testing however I can say that I am so proud of her because using CPAP to improve her sleep quality and the way she feels upon waking is now a choice and not a necessity.

I’m sure there are many more people like her… imagine 2 people who I have known for years and who have struggled with moderate to severe OSA have all but received a clean bill of health with regards to their OSA.  If that doesn’t inspire you, then nothing will.  Losing 125 pounds is not easy for anybody and I personally would need to lose less than that to achieve an ideal weight and body mass index (BMI); that’s even more a reason why I know I can do this over a realistic time frame of a year.

Since starting this program I switched to using an Auto CPAP to track my trends for titrated* CPAP pressures and Apnea/ Hypopnea Indexes.  I started with a 90th percentile pressure** of around 14 cmH2O and an AHI of around 2.5 events per hour.  A recent download of my data has shown that my pressures have now been reduced to around 10.1 cmH2O and an AHI slightly elevated to 3.2 events per hour.  More importantly , I feel just as good upon waking and I exhibit no sign of a degrading sleep quality.

If there was one change in my exercise routine that I had last week was that I had a personal training session.  Let me tell you that was 1 hour of pure effort and exhaustion.  If I was not motivated, I probably would’ve quit 20 minutes into it!  Guess what I made it through.  Even after days of aches and pains, I proved to myself that I’m getting there.  Its the little achievements that’ll keep us going.  Whether it be a lower CPAP pressure or survival of an extreme workout, at the end of the tunnel will always be “NO MORE OSA”

Definitions:

*   Titrate: The adjusted pressure that is ideal for managing one’s OSA to keep the Apnea/ Hypopnea index below 5 events per hour.

** 90th Percentile Pressure: The CPAP pressure determined by an Auto-CPAP that will eliminate at least 90% of Apneas and/or Hypopneas over a period of time.

Filed under: Sleep Apnea, Tips Tagged: | alternative treatment to OSA, CPAP and OSA, no CPAP for OSA, Weight Loss and OSA, Weight loss and sleep apnea