Blue water sailing with sleep apnea?

[Auspicious]

On board there are gadgets, tools, and devices. More and more draw power.


If you want to fill your own boat with gadgets that is your business. Keurigs and Instant Pots and anything else. I reserve the right to react accordingly.






Tools are a different matter. Electric screwdriver, stick blender, anything with a clear purpose (that I agree with *grin*) is fine.



A CPAP machine is a medical device. As far as I'm concerned we can consider as part of the person. Would you ask someone to leave a pacemaker at home? On delivery it's up to me to manage energy to support that needed device. If crew says they can do without the humidifier that's lovely. I'm buying a gallon of distilled water anyway and if it looks like they aren't resting well we'll have a chat.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

My oxygen levels never went too low, to 84% saturation if I recall it right, which doesn't tell me much but if it's comparabel to O2 partial presure so not too bad (diver.. ) Yes, I'm now feeling much better during day time. Never had any problem waking up but got so tired in the afternoons couldn't think straight.. Had some difficulties to accustom to the device but after the first week been a lot better.

Your O2 level if your healthily and don’t have COPD etc should stay high 90’s, real high 90’s.
Sea level of course.
Mid 80’s is low, very low.
This link says people with severe COPD is 88% to 92%, so I’d say 84 is scary low.

Emphysema / COPD is what killed my Mother, so I have a passing familiarity with it, no expert by any means.

First Google hit by the way
https://www.healthline.com/health/no...#oxygen-levels

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Your O2 level if your healthily and don’t have COPD etc should stay high 90’s, real high 90’s.
Sea level of course.
Mid 80’s is low, very low.
This link says people with severe COPD is 88% to 92%, so I’d say 84 is scary low.

Emphysema / COPD is what killed my Mother, so I have a passing familiarity with it, no expert by any means.

First Google hit by the way
https://www.healthline.com/health/no...#oxygen-levels

That's true for continous levels. For sleep apnea and free diving those levels don't comply..

[swordds]

I am a man, 5’-8” tall and I weigh 118 lbs and I have sleep apnea. You don’t have to be overweight or out of shape to be afflicted.

[Adelie]

I checked my CPAP the last 2 nights for AC power consumption:
8hr: 150w-hr
6.5hr: 130w-hr

Idles at 2.2w
Blows at 15-16w
Blow w/ heater 50-60w

[Troylance]

I have severe OSA and have sailed extensively in the Caribbean with many many nights underway. I’ve tried multiple ways including connecting directly to the house batteries as my Cpap as most are can run directly from the DC batteries. I stopped doing that one night when I was asleep and my cpap suddenly stopped working as it had completely drained the house batteries which of course created more problems as well as me waking up horribly. The night watchmen forgot to check the DC volts but with new batteries they will keep the voltage up until the amps are completely gone. I purchased a lithium high capacity battery that will run my cpap for three consecutive nights. It will fully charge with running the motor only one hour. Note these are the kind of batteries that could potentially cook off so I try to be really careful with it. It has a gauge with four lights. Basically I use one light per night.

[dstraton]

Check out Oventus as an alternative to CPAP. Check out Nuvigil tablets for alertness when there is a risk you might fall asleep when on watch.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

That's true for continous levels. For sleep apnea and free diving those levels don't comply..

Maybe not for free diving, or any other activity that has you holding your breath, but if your healthily otherwise and your Apnea is being treated they do.

If your O2 saturation is crashing during your sleep, you need to see a Doctor ASAP.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Adelie

I checked my CPAP the last 2 nights for AC power consumption:
8hr: 150w-hr
6.5hr: 130w-hr

Idles at 2.2w
Blows at 15-16w
Blow w/ heater 50-60w

Now unless I’m incorrect the conversion from watt/hr to amp/hr is simple, it’s simply divide watt/hr by battery voltage. So if we assume it’s 12V, which it’s not but that’s conservative, then 150 watt/hr equals 12.5 AH for a 12V battery system.

Now that’s for you, others may vary somewhat just as some divers can stay down longer than others, but it ought to be a good planning number.
So for us, that 130 AH average we use, likely 25 or so of it is from our CPAP’s.

[a64pilot]

I’ve had my CPAP quit a few times on me, a couple of times it was living in the house and the power goes out.
It didn’t wake me up. A CPAP has a rather large vent and often a one way air valve ( a silicone flap) so when it quits, you just lose your air pressure, you can still breathe fine

[Andy_Rs600]

Wow - interesting thread. I've not been a member here for very long and this may be my first post. Just thought I should pitch in with some public information that's a slight tangent but might be useful...

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

That's true for continous levels. For sleep apnea and free diving those levels don't comply..

TeddyDiver has it absolutely correct. Having SpO2 of 84% for a minute or two will not do you any immediate harm. This happen to free-divers on most dives.

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Maybe not for free diving, or any other activity that has you holding your breath, but if your healthily otherwise and your Apnea is being treated they do.

If your O2 saturation is crashing during your sleep, you need to see a Doctor ASAP.

How you end up with SpO2 in the low 80s isn't really important. What is significant is how low and for how long. To cause you any immediate damage you'd know about you probably need to get down into the 60s for a few minutes. Even then if you did that in your sleep it's unlikely you'd know about it or have any effects you'd be aware of.

Having said that, we do know that even a single significant desaturation during an anaesthetic is associated with measurably worse post-anaesthesia cognitive impairment (which is normally extremely subtle and hard to detect) after anaesthesia. It's likely that if you have sleep apnea and you have frequent significant desaturations then that will directly affect your daytime cognitive performance, in addition to how affected you are by having poor sleep quality.

The reason all the public health warnings about sleep apnea being important and causing deaths are not because people die in their sleep from the apnea event, it's because untreated OSA causes a significant increase in your chance of developing cardiac disease and several other life threatening chronic health problems.

Disclaimer - Currently practising intensive care physician, not a sleep expert. Reference for all the above available if anyone is super-keen!

[a64pilot]

The thing that is different between sleep apnea and say being anesthetized for an operation is that you sleep every single night, and may have several desaturation events, every single night, it’s a cumulative damage and apparently to the heart, not just the brain.
Now I’m no Dr and didn’t even sleep in a holiday inn last night, but I’d bet there is a link to dementia and Alzheimer’s, and who wants that?
It is a lot like one cigarette isn’t going to hurt you, but 20 a day for 20 years may well kill you.

Funny coincidence, my Wife was talking to a lady in the Marina today, apparently her and her husband used to have an IP38 like ours.
Seems he died of a sleep apnea induced heart attack when they were cruising, I have no idea how that was determined, apparently he wasn’t on a CPAP, and according to my Wife, she did CPR for 45 minutes, but he was gone.

This really will, honestly kill you. It’s not to be taken lightly, if your older and overweight and especially if you occasionally snore, see a Dr. it may be nothing.
But I’m going to tell you, if you need a CPAP and you get one, it’s an honest to God life changing experience, not waking up dead tired with headaches like I was and falling asleep when flying because your so exhausted is amazing.
Get tested, get a clean bill of health, be happy you don’t have it, and if you do a CPAP may honestly save your life, and increase the quality of life too, being exhausted all the time sux.

[treborniv]

As a dentist I have made many sleep appliances to replace cpaps. Most of the time they are effective in positioning the jaw forward allowing for an open airway. This of course needs to be tested in a sleep lab. Also it is only effective for obstructive apnea and not for central apnea. Not everyone needs a cpap machine. Just an option that doesn’t require energy.

[Andy_Rs600]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

The thing that is different between sleep apnea and say being anesthetized for an operation is that you sleep every single night, and may have several desaturation events, every single night, it’s a cumulative damage and apparently to the heart, not just the brain.
Now I’m no Dr and didn’t even sleep in a holiday inn last night, but I’d bet there is a link to dementia and Alzheimer’s, and who wants that?
It is a lot like one cigarette isn’t going to hurt you, but 20 a day for 20 years may well kill you.

Yep, exactly the point put very well. It's not an event of sleep apnea that damages you, its the cumulative effect. Skipping a few nights when you can't use you CPAP if (for example) you can't power it on a particular passage, will be unlikely to do any measurable damage. Not using it at all for years is a different story though...

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Now unless I’m incorrect the conversion from watt/hr to amp/hr is simple, it’s simply divide watt/hr by battery voltage. So if we assume it’s 12V, which it’s not but that’s conservative, then 150 watt/hr equals 12.5 AH for a 12V battery system.

There have been discussion on this elsewhere so I'll admit to be pedantic.


Units are important. If you can't do the math with units and get the right answer there is a problem.


Watt/hr and amp/hr are meaningless. You can use watt·hr, watt x hr, watt * hr, watt-hr, or Wh. Amp·hr, amp x hr, amp * hr, amp-hr, or Ah. Using '-' is a cheat and not entirely proper either but common usage. '/' is simply wrong.



"150 watt·hr is equivalent to 12.5 Ah for a 12V battery system."


Extra credit to you for citing the voltage for Ah as a unit of energy.



So lets look at the units. Watts = volts · amps. 150 watt·hr = 150 volt·amp·hr. 150 volt·amp·hr / 12 volt = 12.5 amp·hr. Watch the units: volt/volt = 1 so the units cancel out. If you reflect the units properly and they don't come out properly there is a mistake. Aside from communication THIS is why scientists and engineers make such a fuss over getting the units correct. There is no credibility without units. This is also why truly non-dimensional numbers are so helpful.



Constants in many equations are simply there for unit conversion. They are "baked in" if you will. Unit conversion includes things like 12 inches/ft, 3.28 feet/meter. And THAT makes real physical constants like pi, e, Avogardro's number so important.



It isn't even Algebra - just arithmetic. *grin*


Thanks for being the poster boy on this