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I plan to get back to cpap tonight. Feeling much better today......... I think pillow masks are what I want to try and settle on as I seem to have fewer leaks with my P10 and its not as claustrophobic and uncomfortable as the hybrid full face masks. Do any of you have any experience with the Respironics Nuance gel pillow mask? It sounds good, but that doesnt mean it is. Or is there another pillow mask any of you would recommend to try. The P10 is moderately comfortable but I'm not crazy about the stretchy head gear. Its easy to knock the mask off my face in the night. Would like to find something a bit more stable. Any recommendations appreciated. cheers
Pokey
I restarted Cpap last night after being ill for 3 days I just couldn’t tolerate it while being nauseous.
I forgot to put my SD card in the machine last night so no Oscar to share. I’m currently using the P 10 mask. Last night I kept waking up feeling air starved. I don’t know why for sure. My pressure is set at 9-12 EPR 3. Three questions. 1) when I exhale shouldn’t I feel a reduction in pressure due to EPR and 2) shouldn’t the reduction in pressure due to EPR show on the machines screen as well? It shows a constant 9 when I exhale. It will show a higher number when the pressure goes up however but is not showing a decrease to account for EPR I’m just wondering if the EPR is working as intended??
3) would being in CPAP mode offer any advantage in helping with not feeling air starved.
I’m into cpap almost 2 months now and still struggling to find my “sweet spot”
I had to set a reminder for every night to check if my SD card was in the machine.
How were you feeling when you woke up?
You body might need a few days to get reset to normal after that illness.
You could increase your minimum pressure if still feeling air staved.
You should see a red line for inhalation and a lower green line for exhalation. It can be difficult to see the green line if it is flat and next to the bottom of the chart. Look back at your April 1st chart to see the 2 lines on your pressure chart.
CPAP mode may give you a more restful sleep with no pressure swings.
Is ramp turned on and what is the ramp time and pressure? I use a 5 minute ramp with the ramp pressure set at 0.2cm less than my minimum pressure. This gives me time to fall asleep without the machine flagging wake sleep junk events.
My ramp is off. I went back to bed for a while. I tried taping my mouth to see if I could tolerate that. I think I can. I tried different pressures to see how comfortable each setting was. 7-15, 8-15, 9-20. EPR 2 & 3. Normal response , soft response. It seemed with all of them, it didn’t matter, I needed to take a deeper breath about every 6th or 7th breath. I don’t know if this is because I normally breathe through mouth & nose. Maybe I have an anatomical issue in my airway I don’t know about. But I recall with my trials with full face mask hybrids I’d feel air starved with them too and I could breathe through my mouth. I feel if I can solve this issue I’ll be good to go. But having to take a deep breaths is a sleep disruption.
My sleep doc last week looked at my data and changed settings to 9-20, EPR 3. She explained why which I don’t recall. Didn’t fix it for me.
If set it to Cpap mode what pressure should I set it at? 9, 10. What about EPR. Again how do I know EPR is working? Only by looking at OSCAR??? As I noted I don’t see any indication of EPR decrease on my AS11
04-06-2025, 10:52 AM (This post was last modified: 04-06-2025, 11:09 AM by super7pilot. Edited 1 time in total.)
RE: Pokey49 - Therapy Thread
Pokey, You need to look back at the good treatment nights and look at what your median pressure was over the course of those good treatment nights. Then use that as a starting point on cpap. With the caveat that with the resmed EPR you "MIGHT" have to go a bit higher on min pressure. This video explains it. Uncle Nicko on ResMed EPR
April 1st wasn't a bad night for you, if you toss the CAs at the beginning and end of sleep session. Go with 9-11 and see how you feel. Hopefully no big pressure swings. Not sure what EPR was set to, but since your flow limits were so low then at least 2. So use 2 EPR.
Curiously, you feel starved for air even though air is being pushed into your nose. Is the presence of the mask on your nose giving you the feeling of being starved for air? Does it happen while awake or something that wakes you? Does breathing deeply with the mask on not relieve the feeling of being starved for air? Is it due to breathing against the air pressure upon exhaling?
I feel it is easier to breathe through a CPAP mask. The pressure helps me to breathe. EPR is there to help relieve the pressure a bit during exhales. A Bilevel machine offers a much wider range of pressure relief on exhales. The inability to tolerate CPAP/APAP due to exhaling against pressure may be enough for a doctor to prescribe a BiLevel machine. Perhaps a Bi-level could relieve you of feeling starved for air.
I only give suggestions from experience as a fellow CPAP user, not professional advice.
Feeling starved for air both wakes me up, and I feel starved for air while awake with the mask on, about every 6-7th breath I feel the need to take a deep breath. I played with various pressure settings today 9-20, 8-20 EPR 2, EPR 3 all with the same result. Still had to take a deep breath on all settings.
I attached one of my better nights below. The pressure it appears that night was 8-12, EPR 2. I had other good nights with the same settings. I think a couple nights were 8-20 but I dont know why 8-12 would be any better than 8-20 if I'm not getting any increase in pressure demands, which I dont think has been happening. Im getting pretty damned frustrated. Its hard to adapt to cpap in general if one feels air starved much of the time. I started out great the first 10 or so nights, but its been downhill since.
