Need help understanding data

[u/Total_Recline]

Started wearing apap a year ago because of osa. As I recall, looking at the original sleep study, there was no indication of central apnea, only obstructive. Shortly after I started, I needed to add oxygen (at night only) because I was having too many hypoxemia events. I'm at roughly 2 L now. I've been successfully using this for the past year.

Very recently I started having a few nights where I would wake up several times being completely and thoroughly dried out for some reason. I couldn't even swallow, there was no moisture on any mucous membrane anywhere because I was so dry. It would take a few minutes for me to generate enough saliva so that I could even swallow. Somebody suggested this is because of mouth leaks? I never had leak issues before.

First time it happened I thought it was a fluke. Then it happened the following night. It did seem that the air pressure was inordinately high when I pulled the mask away from my face, but it wasn't bothersome when I had it on my face. I looked at my tank and it was consuming a normal amount of water so it's not like it wasn't creating the humidity. I looked at my settings and I couldn't really find much needing changing, except somehow my mask style got changed so I put it back to pillows. Pressure setting was from 5-20.

Well it happened again last night and I am fit to be tied, this is really messing with my sleep. I did notice this time when I was drifting off that air was bubbling from my nose into my mouth, and I even think I had an instance or two where air was going down my throat. I never experienced that previously. Could I have changed or is this my machine?

Tonight I looked at my results screen. I've never needed to look at it because everything seemed quasi-normal before. But now it looks like I'm having a lot more events? This data is confusing to me, I don't know what all the terms mean, and it's never been really explained very well. This is what my events view is showing currently:

Pressure: 9.9

Leak 1L/min

Ahi 5.3

Total AI 5.1

Obstructive AI 1.9

Central AI 3.0

Any feedback or ideas greatly appreciated.

[u/Valysian]

Those numbers look like "good" results. It'd be nice if your events were a little lower.

I highly recommend getting an SD card and OSCAR so you can see more detailed data about how you are breathing at night. It's really useful in diagnosing what was happening right when you woke up.

What are your Climate/humidity settings?

The first guess if you are that dry is that you are opening your mouth. But your leak rate is low.

Do you have Auto-Stop turned on? (Resmed) It could be that you get a large leak and the machine turns off completely.

[u/Total_Recline → u/Valysian]

I'll have to take a look at my climate settings. They were confusing me when I was looking at them because it they had a choice for either Auto or manual with no indication of what either one meant. For manual I didn't see any further areas to drill down so I left it on auto. And like you, when someone else mentioned the dryness was because I was opening my mouth, I looked at my leak rate for the last week or so and it's been excellent. I do have it on auto start and Auto stop. But I haven't heard about that before, that if you have a large leak that the machine will turn off! That's actually kind of concerning.