chest pain & back-ache

[OptimisticChap]

Hello everybody.
I have been reading these forums since Sept. 2008 when I first started with my cpap therapy. I thank everyone for the useful information that I obtained from these forums.
When I started out with therapy my pressure was a 7.0 and I was having a continuous back-ache but the thought never crossed my mind that it is related with cpap therapy. After 2 weeks of my trial period I had a follow up appointment with the R.R.T (registered respiratory therapist) and I told her that I expected greater results and I feel dizzy & lightheaded in the mornings. So she decided to increase my pressure to 8.0. Which helped a great deal in feeling more rested in the mornings.
BUT! My back pain sky rocketed. So I got aware that the cpap is obviously in connection with it.
I searched these forums for back-ache and sure enough endless amounts of posts popped up.
So I printed a few of these forums and took them to my R.R.T. and apparently I was bringing her some unknown news. She never was aware that cpap can cause back and chest pain plus she didn't know these forums exist. So we decided to reduce my pressure back to 7.0 again and sure enough my back & chest pain were gone in 2 days.
My massage therapist told me that my muscles in the diaphragm area are very tight and they are linked up to the spine and with thus causing my back pain. The diaphragm muscles are tight because my lungs are expanding further with each inhale while using the cpap. And OH does the massage therapist ever torture me with working on my diaphragm muscles!!!
But anyways I got my pressure increased to 7.5 yesterday and today I feel my chest pain again.
Has anybody here had similar experiences?
If so do you have a method to reduce the chest pain or to relieve the tightening diaphragm muscles?

[GuyK]

Similar experiences? Sure, lots of us.

I talked to an R/T about it, and he too said that he had never heard of the problem. When I talked to my sleep doctor about it, he didn't seem surprised (and he didn't say he had never heard about it).

For me, I thought I found a handle on it, but then it has reappeared the last two nights, but it isn't quite as bad.

The first time I read a thread on it in this forum, there seemed to be three possible causes (nobody knows for sure):

Back pain due to:
1. sleep position - you aren't moving around as much, and probably sleeping supine (on your back), so your back feels it
2. rib cage expansion - from breathing more deeply
3. aerophagia - ingesting air, causing bloating and back pain

When I talked to my sleep doctor, he told me it probably wasn't due to rib cage expansion because I would feel that in my chest, not my back (and I only feel it in my upper back).

He said he thought sleep position could be likley, but he didn't ask me if I slept in only one position (and I didn't have the opportunity to tell him). In fact, I move quite a bit, from one side, to my back, to the other side, to flipped over halfway onto my stomach.

He did, however, think that it might be aerophagia, and I do have some minor aerophagia symptoms, and used to have problems with reflux. I do feel a little bloated in the morning, but I don't have abdominal cramps or any other pain (other than my back). After getting up, I do expel a little bit, and the back pain subsides in about twenty minutes to a half hour. I would think that if it were a muscle problem, like my lower back pain, it wouldn't go away as easily.

The doctor suggested I take omerprazole (Prilosec OTC). That's a 14-day course of over-the-counter pills, mainly used to treat reflux symptoms. Right now, I'm on my ninth day, and the first seven days were fine -- no back pain. But the last two I've had back pain. We'll see how it shakes out over time.