Sleep Stealers

 
 
 
 

The Real Deal About Insomnia

published by Guest@Zeo on Wed, 02/29/2012 - 16:06
It's March; time for another Zeo Featured Blogger!  This month, in time for National Sleep Week, we're thrilled to feature the team at REM Sleep Labs, an accredited sleep testing center with Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County Sleep Centers. Their goal is to develop and maintain high
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Why Do I Never Feel Rested?

published by Ryan@Zeo on Mon, 02/27/2012 - 14:56


Undefined

Pregnancy: When Polyphasic Sleep Makes Sense

published by Ryan@Zeo on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 11:22

In my house, time no longer matters.

My wife and I are both going to bed late at night, and waking up long after the sun rises, but our sleep in between is erratic and broken by periods of restlessness. It’s like we have become untethered to the cycles of the sun or any other outside conditions.

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More deep sleep with alcohol? (fluke?)

published by redsoxgal on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 07:28
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I have been using zeo for a few weeks now, and gradually increasing my total sleep, but one area I would like to improve is deep sleep (I have read the article where it says "rule 1 is don't talk about deep sleep..."

That being said I understand that - avoiding caffeine esp late in the day, avoiding alcohol at least 3 hrs before bed, and gettin exercise should all increase deep sleep.

Forums:

Wake time at end of night

published by Sloth on Thu, 01/19/2012 - 00:16
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Just wondering about time in Wake that appears right at the end of a night.

I might have a good night's sleep, and wake up and just lie about for a while, hoping to get a bit more sleep, but I might not get any more sleep.

If I leave my headband on, then my sleep graph ends with a whole bunch of wake bars, which then count as sleep stealers, even though they're not really part of my night's sleep.

I would have thought that wake times that occur right at the end of a night should not count as sleep stealers, as they're really not part of the night of sleep.

Forums:

13 Surprising Facts About Insomnia

published by Guest@Zeo on Thu, 01/05/2012 - 10:33
It's another month; time for a new Featured Blogger! This January, our Featured Blogger is Doug S. from Build Better Sleep, a blog devoted to unraveling the mysteries of insomnia and how one can treat it.
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How To Add CPAP Data to Your Zeo Data

This is the 3rd Featured Blogger post from the Hypnagogia blog.  In this entry, they discuss how to overlay your CPAP data with your Zeo Data in order to get a better picture of how well you sleep - and what changes you might want to make.
 

I've posted on a couple of CPAP boards (and read at more) and it's clear that there are a lot of us who like to see what the ventilators are doing overnight and how many apneas & hypopneas there are. Quite a few of us own pulse-oximeters too, so this data can also be included.

One problem is that each device has it's own printout, making comparing them tricky.  However, with a little time and Photoshop, you too can create your own sleep data page.

How to Create an Easy-as-Pie, DIY Data Report

I created an A4 page in Photoshop and found that it was then easy to align all the graphs as long as all the monitors were were started and stopped at the same time (or as close as you can manage).

You can either print all the various outputs to PDF files using either Adobe or the free CutePDF then open them in Photoshop or you can take a screenshot from each piece of software.

Then cut and paste each graph onto your A4 blank and stretch them so that the start and stop times align.

Violà - Data!

Below is an example of one from a night of a family member's BiPAP data. 

It includes: 

  • BiPAP output (Pressure, RR, flow rate, triggered breaths, apnoeas etc)
  • Transcutaneous CO2 (actually a reprocessed photo of the onboard graph)
  • Oximetry trend
  • Pulse rate
  • Zeo 30 second resolution hypnogram
  • Zeo 5 minute resolution hypnogram

 

 


I then pasted bits of relevant data from Zeo and the oximeter around the edge.

This is from a night of making adjustments to the backup rate of breaths and is a good example of what aligning the data can reveal.

What Data Overlay Can Reveal About Your Sleep

Take a look at the highlighted strip and work down from the top...

  • The backup rate had been increased a couple of hours before. 
  • Then in the highlighted part you can see that the number of breaths increased even more.
  • However, there was a much higher increase in the number of breaths they was doing

Why?

When you look down to the Zeo hypnogram it becomes clear. The extra breaths were waking them from sleep, hence their spontaneous respiratory rate increased even more.

The backup rate was too high, so I reduced it.

I have also tried the Zeo with CPAP on myself.

Here is a simple overlay of the Zeo hypnogram onto the ResScan report. (I pasted the hypnogram into a new layer in Photoshop and then made it semi transparent).

A correlation between minute ventilation and periods of being awake (actually broken REM according to the 30 second hypnogram) is easy to see.

Also the apnea flags point to me losing deep sleep due to apneas.

More about that and what I plan to do about it in another post though.

 

 
Do you blog about sleep?  If so, we want you as our next Zeo Featured Blogger!  Tell us your story today! 

Why Booze Really Trashes Your Sleep

 

This post from the Hypnagogia blog is part of our Featured Blogger initiative.  In this entry, they discuss how alcohol consumption lead to an increase of their sleep apnea index (AHI) and a decrease in sleep quality.

 

A nightcap helps you sleep, right?

Well, yes...but not in the way you think it does.  In fact, it often makes things worse.

During my initial explorations with the flow-meter, I thought that I'd test my set-up by trying to INCREASE my AHI using a well known substance that makes sleep apnea worse:  Alcohol.

A sleep experiment where I get to have a drink or three... it's tough, but I'll do it for science. 


Alcohol Increases Your Risk of Sleep Apnea

Pretty much as it does with people, alcohol relaxes the muscles in the airways making them more prone to flopping around all over the place and causing an obstruction.
 
When it comes to the rest of the practices, gadgets, fads and ideas that I'll be exploring I'll be testing them for 5 days in a row each. To be honest I'm not going to do that with alcohol as I can't afford a week of waking up sluggish and groggy. 

So, what I did was to take 5 non-consecutive days instead. I consumed alcohol and recorded my AHI on those nights along with my 5 day no-alcohol mean AHI for comparison.

Pretty conclusive.

Alcohol increased the number of times that I either stopped breathing or breathed so little that it was ineffective.  Not only that, but it did it in quite a startling way.

It took my 5 day mean AHI from 6.95 to 12.2.(max 15.3) To get that into perspective, that's nearly double the number of times PER HOUR that I had breathing problems. As discussed in this post, I went from just scraping in with a diagnosis of "Mild Obstructive Sleep Apnea" to being firmly in the category!
 
Surely there was something positive to salvage from this bad news?

Yes.

In my mind alcohol helped me to get to sleep and I found that the Zeo data backed that up.

Again, using a 5 day mean value, my time to sleep onset (or Zeo's "Time to Z") went from 28 minutes without alcohol down to 9 with alcohol. That seemed to be the only significant difference in the data, so I haven't bothered to clutter the page with other measurements.


It may help you to get to sleep, but the chances are that the sleep will not be good sleep. The chances are that it will be disturbed sleep, the chances of having to go to the bathroom will increase, as will the likelihood of dehydration-related headaches and fragmented sleep towards the morning.

Not only would I wake up feeling slow and mildly hungover, but I'd be tired from being woken up up to 15 times an hour through apneas.

Don't misunderstand me, this isn't one of those damning posts about alcohol, but it is something to bear in mind if you already suffer with sleep apnea, and it may even cause mild apnoea in people who don't have it. 

Will I continue to drink alcohol? Of course, and that's the dilemma. So I guess the answer is "everything in moderation."


Do you blog about sleep?  If so, we want you as our next Zeo Featured Blogger!  Tell us your story today!

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