Waking up extremely bloated and full of air

[go2sleep]

Update: I tried sleeping with the Resmed Nasal mask tonight. constant 6 cm pressure. 
I woke up and had to take it off because too much humidity. I woke up feeling tired and according to sleepyhead I had 52 seconds in apnea. 

However I don't feel as bloated and full of air as I did before. So the 6cm is clearly helping! I am thinking of raising the pressure a bit to get rid of the apnea events, what are your thoughts on that?

[Walla Walla]

No need to raise the pressure. Your numbers are good. The only thing I'd change is to reduce the humidifier temp for comfort.

[go2sleep]

Just an update.  Unfortunately I am still bloated and full of air, but nowhere near how bad it was at the beginning. So thanks for the advice! I experimented a bit with the settings, and now I went to an autoset setting where minimum is 6 and max is 7. I hoover around 1.5 AHI and 0.52

I will speak to my doctor about the air, and hopefully get some more advice there. I heard sleeping in an incline position also helps, have anyone tried that? 

Attaching my SH data

[OpalRose]

Hi go2sleep,
The condition you suffer with is called Aerophagia (swallowing of air.)

Here is a wiki article explaining the condition and some things you could try.

http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...Aerophagia

I wouldn’t worry so much over your AHI right now as it is low, but concentrate on improving your sleep quality.  I do believe though with this condition, you should try to use the lowest possible pressure setting that treats your apnea.  Then eventually if need be, you could raise the pressure in small increments and note the effects.  I would keep the EPR setting at 2.

As far as your humidity setting, it may be too high.  Keep in mind that if you live in a high humidity area, you will need to keep your humidity setting lower.

I don’t see a leak problem on your graph, but you may want to be sure you are not mouth breathing, as this can cause dry mouth and mabye that’s why you also feel the need for humidity. Correct mouth breathing by using a soft cervical collar and practicing the Tongue Suck Technique.

I suffered with Aerophagia for a short while and know it is uncomfortable and sometimes painful.  
Once I started to change my sleep position by sleeping on an incline, this improved for me....not all at once, but it did eventually go away.

Aerophagia is a fairly common problem amoung Cpap users. Go to top of page and use the Search feature, type in Aerophagia, and a whole bunch of threads will pop up on this topic.

[Sleeprider]

I think we did pretty well with pressure at 6, EPR 2. You have very good results at that pressure, and it minimizes your discomfort. Using a pressure of 7 with EPR at 3 will not change your therapy results. It is the EPAP (exhale pressure) that maintains the airway to prevent obstructive apnea, so allowing IPAP to increase only increases your risk of aerophagia. If you want to try a pressure of 5 and EPR 1 that may work out even better.

Please discuss your Aerophagia problem with your doctor. The best solution will be to treat that as a separate problem. There are specialists that can help you find out why your LES is weakened and can help you to treat that problem.

[go2sleep]

Thank you OpalRose and Sleeprider. Your advice are greatly appreciated. I will take it to heart and adjust accordingly. I am a beginner and am still learning, and the advice I have received in this thread is gold.

[OpalRose]

Good luck, hope you find relief from the Aerophagia. The pressures you are using seem to be working ok, and as long as you don’t raise it, you should be able to find relief.

Keep us posted and read some of the other threads concerning Aerophagia. You may find some suggestions that will help.

[go2sleep]

I changed the pressure to 5-1 as advised, and I got to say that it is hard to even notice that it's on. Here's the rundown of last night, it looks good right? Except that time I slept on my back and stopped breathing for a long time. 

I have also attached a the statistics, and it looks like APAP categorically deliver lower AHI's but that can be because I get too comfy with CPAP and flop over on my back when CPAPing.

[Sleeprider]

Other than one short segment of positional apnea, you did very well, and the apnea events in that segment are quite short. We are using a compromise in settings between full efficacy and not aggravating the aerophagia so you remain comfortable. Until you can tolerate higher pressure without ingesting air, low fixed pressures are the best solution. The objective of this therapy is to treat your obstructive sleep apnea in order to prevent arousals and provide you with restful sleep.

Read that objective one more time and ask yourself, what makes you sleep better? Is it an ultra-low AHI or a good AHI while avoiding aerophagia? This is your choice to make.

Now read what you wrote above: "I get too comfy with CPAP and flop over on my back when CPAPing." That sounds like success to me!

[OpalRose]

go2sleep,
Looks like success.  

It might be a good idea to keep a log of what pressure combos work best for you and how you felt with that pressure.  As long as you are treating your Apnea with the lower pressure and at the same time avoiding Aerophagia, then you are doing well.