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suffocation in the night
#11
RE: suffocation in the night
Exactly .. i would also tear it off in the night...

But surprising thing is that i used the same machine and head gear sucessfully for some 15 days when i got my machine ... suddenly this started ...

May be in india it is winter now, this might be the reason. But i tried with humidifiere still i see the result same.

(12-28-2013, 11:06 PM)Sharon D Wrote: I had a similar problem with my old head gear, but it was claustrophobia. I would tear it off my head in the night and the gear would no longer fit.

I finally have new headgear and mask, and no longer feel claustrophobic while sleeping. It is amazing the difference in head gear.


(12-24-2013, 08:55 AM)ImaSurvivor Wrote: It could be a ramp issue. Ramp is set to gradually increase pressure to your prescribed pressure by the time you are asleep. Many like the ramp and there are others that turn it off. When I had my titration sleep study I told the technician 'I thought CPAP was supposed to give me air and yet I feel like it is very restricted'. In sleep studies they start out low and adjust up looking for your pressure. She turned up the pressure to start me out at and the air improved. When I got my ResMed S9 AutoSet home and began using it, I had that same suffocating feeling. I was familiar with the ramp having read about it in posts on this forum. I checked and my ramp had been set at minimum pressure of 4 (the pressure I couldn't tolerate in the sleep study) increasing over 45 min. to my prescribed pressure of 10. I adjusted my ramp time down to five minutes but still hated it. One second on pressure 4 seemed an eternity to me. On the second night I turned the ramp completely off.

Maybe a different mask would be more comfortable for you. Everyone has individualized likes and dislikes with their masks. I use nasal pillows and they work well for me. But sometimes if I don't have them on and lined up with my nose just right, I feel suffocated. I have been doing CPAP for a month. It gets better as you go and you learn things that work for you. This forum has members full of experiences, advice and tips that work for them. It helps to read and learn what has worked for those in the trenches of CPAP. I am getting great results and most of my nights are comfortable. I do still have occasional nights when I struggle with getting the mask on and comfortable. Last night was one of them. When I finally got it right I settled in for a long winter's night.

It gets better. It really does!

(12-24-2013, 09:39 AM)DeepBreathing Wrote: Hi Santosh. What you describe is very common - apparently a lot of people take off the mask during the night. I still do it sometimes for no apparent reason - luckily my wife is a light sleeper and she reminds me to put it back on.

The suffocation feeling may be due to the ramp pressure set too low or for too long, as ImaSurvivor described. Or it may be that your therapy pressure is set too low or too high. Else it might be that you're getting nasal congestion and need to adjust the humidity control.

To help us be more specific, can you let us know your pressure settings, and what the ramp pressure and time are set to?

I used the same head gear and unit succesfully for more than few weeks.
Suddenly it started one day.

If i download the data and see i will be using it for around 45 minutes and when the pressure reaches around 8-10 i remove it.

I tried using it when iam not sleeping while watching TV ... When the pressure increased i felt suffocated when i am awake also

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#12
RE: suffocation in the night
I mean i cannot breate(suffocated)

But its not the problem with the ramp setting. because i will be using the machine comfortable for the first 45 - 60 minutes. I remove it suddenly after that in sleep.

I tried using the cpap machine when iam awake for an hour. I felt that when the pressure increased to say 8 an above i felt suffocated.


(12-24-2013, 01:09 PM)robysue Wrote:
(12-24-2013, 06:19 AM)santhosh443 Wrote: But iam facing suffocation problem these days.
After using if for an hour or so i will remove it in the night unknowingly sometimes. So times i feel suffocatied and remove it.
Can you clarify what you mean by feeling suffocated?

People use the phrase, "I feel suffocated" to mean one of two very different things, and which thing you mean by "I feel suffocated" is extremely important in figuring out what to do about the problem.

So when you say you feel suffocated, which do you mean:

You can't seem to inhale enough air through the mask to be comfortable---i.e it feels like there's just not enough air coming through the mask to breath comfortably.

OR

You can't seem to exhale enough air to feel comfortable enough to take a good, full inhalation---i.e. it feels as though there is too much air coming through the mask for you to breathe comfortably.

If the problem is "I can't inhale comfortably" then it's probably being caused by a ramp that starts out at too low of a pressure and lasts for too long of a time OR it could just be that your (minimum) pressure setting is simply too low. Eliminating the ramp, or increasing the ramp's beginning pressure, or increasing the (minimum) pressure setting are all things that might help.

If the problem is "I can't exhale comfortably" then eliminating the ramp, or increasing the ramp's beginning pressure, or increasing the (minimum) pressure setting are probably NOT going to fix the problem. If the problem is "I can't exhale comfortably", you need to look at the exhalation relief settings. While you would think that increasing the EPR or Flex setting would help the most, for a few people, a lower EPR or Flex setting provides more comfortable exhalation relief than the highest setting does. If the problem "I can't exhale comfortably" is severe enough and playing with the EPR/Flex setting doesn't fix the problem, it's worth asking the sleep doc if a very modest decrease in pressure could be used at least temporarily.


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#13
RE: suffocation in the night
(01-21-2014, 06:00 AM)santhosh443 Wrote: I mean i cannot breate(suffocated)

But its not the problem with the ramp setting. because i will be using the machine comfortable for the first 45 - 60 minutes. I remove it suddenly after that in sleep.

I tried using the cpap machine when iam awake for an hour. I felt that when the pressure increased to say 8 an above i felt suffocated.
Is the problem that you can't exhale enough to properly inhale?

I'm asking that because you say that you're comfortable during the ramp up period and the problem only happens once the pressure is above 8cm. For a few people (including me) the higher the pressure is, the harder it is to exhale fully, and when you haven't fully exhaled, it's difficult to inhale properly, which can lead to a feeling of suffocation in some people.

Do you have the EPR turned on? If not, you may find turning on EPR will help with the problem. If you do have EPR turned on, you may find that you are more comfortable with a different setting or even with the EPR turned all the way to off. As a starting point, I'd suggest seeing if setting EPR to 3 for the full night helps with the problem.
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#14
RE: suffocation in the night
Reasons I would feel suffocated:
* Nasal Mask, with huge mouth leaks, which is the #1 reason why I will always use a FF mask. The FF mask lets me breathe through my mouth so I can suck as much air as I want/need if I wake during an apnea event (ie: panic).
* Too much humidity (hot damp air feeling in the mask)
* Too little humidity (seriously dry throat, unable to swallow)
* Heated air. My vendor did not set me up with the ClimateLine hose, which I probably would end up turning off if they did. I suspect a ClimateLine hose is more useful for nasal pillows / nasal masks. I prefer cool air.
* no EPR -- I have to use EPR-3 which makes breathing effortless (exhale pressure is 3 settings less than inhalf pressure).
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#15
RE: suffocation in the night
I tried with EPR ON. But still i still remove it after an hour into sleep.. Still not able to figure out why Sad Sad

(01-23-2014, 05:58 PM)robysue Wrote:
(01-21-2014, 06:00 AM)santhosh443 Wrote: I mean i cannot breate(suffocated)

But its not the problem with the ramp setting. because i will be using the machine comfortable for the first 45 - 60 minutes. I remove it suddenly after that in sleep.

I tried using the cpap machine when iam awake for an hour. I felt that when the pressure increased to say 8 an above i felt suffocated.
Is the problem that you can't exhale enough to properly inhale?

I'm asking that because you say that you're comfortable during the ramp up period and the problem only happens once the pressure is above 8cm. For a few people (including me) the higher the pressure is, the harder it is to exhale fully, and when you haven't fully exhaled, it's difficult to inhale properly, which can lead to a feeling of suffocation in some people.

Do you have the EPR turned on? If not, you may find turning on EPR will help with the problem. If you do have EPR turned on, you may find that you are more comfortable with a different setting or even with the EPR turned all the way to off. As a starting point, I'd suggest seeing if setting EPR to 3 for the full night helps with the problem.

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#16
RE: suffocation in the night
(01-29-2014, 09:07 AM)santhosh443 Wrote: I tried with EPR ON. But still i still remove it after an hour into sleep.. Still not able to figure out why Sad Sad
I understand that you can't stand it either way for very long, but:

Is the mask even marginally better when EPR is on? If EPR makes it marginally easier to tolerate the mask, but you are still finding it very uncomfortable and very difficult to get to sleep, you might want to call the sleep doc's office. It could be that you might tolerate a bi-level better. The advantage of a bilevel is that the drop in pressure when you start to exhale can be set to be greater than 3cm.

At this point I think your goal needs to be to learn how to fall asleep with the mask on your nose. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you find that you took the mask off in your sleep, just calmly put the mask back on and try to get back to sleep, and don't try to troubleshoot the issue in the middle of the night. If you need to turn the machine off and on to start over with the ramp once you've put the mask back on, the do that.

You can't control what your sleeping brain does, but you can control what you do when you are awake enough to know you are awake. So start there: See if you can learn to tolerate the mask long enough to get to sleep and if so, then train yourself to not allow yourself to (consciously) go to sleep without the mask on: When you go to bed at night, the mask is on. If you wake up in the middle of the night and the mask is off, put the mask back on before going back to sleep.

It takes the unconscious brain awhile to learn to trust the mask as a friend and not think of it as "This alien thing that's on my face, get it off of me now." And during the time the unconscious brain is learning to trust the mask, it's not uncommon for folks to take the mask of in their sleep. One suggestion is to lightly tape the mask on your face so that the pain of ripping the tape off when you are taking the mask off in your sleep can wake you up. But that technique is only going to work once you are extremely comfortable with getting to sleep with the mask on. And it doesn't sound like you are there yet.
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