Improvement for Sleep apena ~ need a reference data

As I mentioned in the previous posting, I needed to wait for more than a months for CPAP trial.  In a mean while, I was looking for some way to improve the symptom of sleep apena.

First of all, another thing the doctor suggesting is reducing the weight.  My weight was little over BMI=25 and it might be one of causes of sleep apena.  It is probably true, since my wife mentioned the symptom during sleeping was worse than recently.  Since  my weight was more than what I have now a few years ago.  So weight reduction is one of possible way to improve the symptom.  However, the paper work from the hospital indicated that I might need to reduce more than 10% of the weight to see some difference.  Also, it might not be a cause of the problem in some cases.   But I thought it worth to try it anyway.  So I decided to do weight reduction.

Also, based on the internet search a position when I am sleeping may make some difference.  A side position might improve the symptom, therefore, I also try to sleep on a side instead of on the back.

How to quantify the difference?

Before doing some experiments, I need to know a good way to see a clear difference.  One is a symptom I felt in daytime or after waking up in the morning.   I had some symptom such as strong sleepiness in daytime especially after lunch.  The other thing is that I felt I was really tired when I work up.  They might be a good indication to assess the difference.  However it might not be very clear to quantify.

Pulse oximeter (Watch style)

So the other idea came up is to measure SPO2 value with pulse oximeter.   Since I like hiking and I often went to Mt. Whitney where is above 12,000 feet.  Many people gets symptoms for high altitude sickness.   One of way to quantify the impact of elevation is SPO2.   So I have a pulse oximeter to check SPO2 duirng hiking in higher elevation.

However, the problem was one I had was not be able to capture SPO2 value periodically over night.  It can measure a real time value.  Therefore I needed to look for a one which can capture the data over night.  There are some different types of pulse oximeter on Amazon.  Finally I got a watch style pulse oximeter to measure SPO2 during sleeping.  The model name is CONTEC CMS50K.
It can capture overnight data and upload the data to their site to get a report through a smart phone (iPhone or Android phones).

It seems to be working well to capture some reference data for the comparison.

(To be continue ....)