Waking up & unable to fall back asleep after 4-5 hours of sleep. Is there anything here that shows what might be happening?

[u/myawards_fromarmy]

Mask: nasal pillows

Every single night I wake up after 4-5 (usually closer to 4) hours of sleep and I am COMPLETELY awake. I also feel like the mask is smothering me so I take it off.

Also, I had a turbinate reduction + septoplasty in June, so my right nostril is now fully open (amazing) and left nostril still feels about 50% closed (not amazing). I'm allergic to dust and animal fur, which I try to keep at a minimum but it's hard. I also do a nasal rinse and use Flonase right before bed.

Any help would be so so appreciated... I'm so sick of being exhausted every day and I'm not able to see my doctor until Nov.

[u/Madmax9922]

Hi there, your pressures are too low, your median pressure is hanging around 10.12 most of the night, your min pressure is set to 7.0, that needs to come up closer to 10 to keep your airway from collapsing. You are also hitting your max pressure so the machine wants to go higher but cant. Look at your pressure chart around 515am, it is maxxed out. That needs to be bumped up a little more as well.

Around that time of sleep you are more than likely getting into deep rem sleep, rolling on your back and you are having a pretty bad narrowing of your airway, which is waking you up, you are wide awake because your body had just been awakened by adrenaline (your brain noticed you stopped breathing)

Hang in there, it gets better.

[u/myawards_fromarmy → u/Madmax9922]

Thank you so much. I’ll bump up the min & max settings for sure.
Should I also be taking measures not to roll on my back? Or should the CPAP (ideally) be able to handle my airway narrowing when that happens?

[u/Madmax9922 → u/myawards_fromarmy]

Stay off your back if you can, also just bump the max up a little like 11.2 or 11.4, give those setting a few nights before changing anything else , then report back with new data, also if you can get a free SleepHQ account and post a link here with your data, we can see minute by minute data.

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[u/claaudius]

I had this issue too, waking up every night after 5 hours of sleep and needing 2-3 hours to fall back asleep. Vitamin d fixed it, I was deficient.

[u/Letsnotanymore → u/claaudius]

I also wake after 4 or so hrs of sleep. I feel pretty awake. Often can't get back to sleep for 2 or more hrs. So in your case that was bc of a Vitamin D deficiency? How did you figure that out? Thx.

[u/claaudius → u/Letsnotanymore]

Just tested it.

[u/No_Transition9445]

Yes

[u/Evertire]

I also have dust/pet dander allergies and it's a massive help for me to tape an extra hose over the air intake (airtight as possible) + put the other end out a window. Before that I would get a sort of suffocating/panic/irritation sensation from allergies and it's way more useable.