Newbie with aerophagea

Help! I just got my CPAP machine two weeks ago - Christmas eve! I was so excited to begin to sleep better. (I only slept 2 hours during my sleep study, but those two hours revealed 27 "arousals" an hour, most of them hypopneas.) Long story short - I feel adjusted to my mask (nasal pillows) but I keep waking with aerophagea. My PA turned down my settings from 5-10 to 4-8, which has helped a bit, and still seems to control my hypopnea just fine. (I average less than 1 incident an hour.) 2 nights ago was the first time I slept all night with the mask on (hooray!) but I felt tired all day, and a bit bloated, and then last night a few hours in I woke up with pain from the gas in my intestines and I had to take the mask off. I feel bloated and not hungry all morning, then sometime in the afternoon I clear enough air that I become ravenously hungry, and on top of it all I'm getting diarrhea. This is not an improvement. I won't be able to use the CPAP if this happens to me every day. Has anyone had success resolving this issue? I would like to switch from the Resmed Autoset 10 to the Autoset 10 For Her - would that help? Also, I saw on some other sites that the aerophagea can be related to GERD and can be treated with baclofen, atropine, or scopolamine. Has anyone had success with these medications? I did try elevating my bed for a night and that didn't seem to help. Any thoughts? This is driving me crazy!

Are you using the EPR exhale relief available on your machine? If so, at what setting?
If not, turn it on and use it and see if that reduction will help the aerophagia issues.
It won't kick in when you are at 4 cm (that's as low as the machine will go) but when your pressure increases from 4 cm during the night it will reduce the pressure when you exhale. I would set it to 3 to get maximum relief and see if that helps.

I am using the exhale relief. I had to take a break for a few weeks because of a bad head cold, and I'm back trying to use it in earnest. Once again, 3 hours in last night I woke up with a painful stomach full of air. I took off the mask and had a hard time falling back asleep because of the discomfort, even after a belch that would wake an elephant. And that was with ambien helping me out! I honestly don't know what do do. I really want to make this work.

Pugsy wrote:I would set it to 3 to get maximum relief and see if that helps.

I'm new to all this, bear with me. Set what to 3? I haven't messed with the settings a lot because they're by prescription and either my doctor sets them or the durable devices guy does - but I am not above "hacking" into this thing to set settings myself. Also, how can I read the full reports myself? The report that MyAir gives me has a ridiculously low amount of information. It seems like its only goal is to keep me unquestioningly using the thing.

Set EPR exhale relief to 3 which will give you up to 3 cm reduction during exhale.
Starting out the night at 4 cm it won't do anything but as the night goes on and apnea events drive the pressure up it will kick in. The lowest it can go is to 4 cm though because the machine won't go below 4 cm.

The manual explains how to do it along with other features of your machine.
https://sleep.tnet.com/home/files/resme ... -guide.pdf

Information the software available so you can see more details
https://sleep.tnet.com/equipment

Also get some ginger candies. They help ease the icky stomach feeling.

Emmers wrote:I am using the exhale relief. I had to take a break for a few weeks because of a bad head cold,

I never get this... I treasure my cpap MORE when I've got a bad head/chest cold.

moist air to loosen up the gunk, a bit of pressure to help open up the passageways...

cpap, for me, is a huge *PLUS* with a cold.

palerider wrote:

Emmers wrote:I am using the exhale relief. I had to take a break for a few weeks because of a bad head cold,

I never get this... I treasure my cpap MORE when I've got a bad head/chest cold.

moist air to loosen up the gunk, a bit of pressure to help open up the passageways...

cpap, for me, is a huge *PLUS* with a cold.

Maybe they get the kind of cold I used to get, with horrid sore throat. The last thing I'd want with a sore throat is air blowing forcefully over those raw tissues. And if they're already having difficulty getting comfortable with the machine, a cold wouldn't help.
But everyone's different.

Check the Useful Links in my signature line at the bottom of this post. There's a youtube link for a suggestion for aerophagia. It might or might not work for you, but it's free to try.

oncomingspork wrote:

palerider wrote:cpap, for me, is a huge *PLUS* with a cold.

Maybe they get the kind of cold I used to get, with horrid sore throat. The last thing I'd want with a sore throat is air blowing forcefully over those raw tissues. And if they're already having difficulty getting comfortable with the machine, a cold wouldn't help.

except, air doesn't "blow forcefully" over your raw tissues in your throat.

air doesn't blow forcefully ANYWHERE with cpap, except out the vent on the mask.

the cpap pressurizes the air in your airway, and lungs, but the only MOVEMENT of air, in and out of your nose, through your throat, in your lungs is caused by your NORMAL BREATHING.

for it to 'blow forcefully' over your throat, it'd have to be going somewhere, and unless you're very unusual and have gill slits in your chest wall, that air ain't going nowhere, in fact, it reverses and goes back out when you exhale....

not much force there, is it?

anyway, when I've got a horrid sore throat, that bothers my swallowing... which I'm not doing on cpap. my breathing passages like the extra moisture that cpap can offer them, when I'm sick.

archangle wrote:Check the Useful Links in my signature line at the bottom of this post. There's a youtube link for a suggestion for aerophagia. It might or might not work for you, but it's free to try.

That was a useful link, thanks! The guy actually did a second aerophagea video and both were helpful. I will give that technique a try!

palerider wrote:

Emmers wrote:I am using the exhale relief. I had to take a break for a few weeks because of a bad head cold,

I never get this... I treasure my cpap MORE when I've got a bad head/chest cold.

moist air to loosen up the gunk, a bit of pressure to help open up the passageways...

cpap, for me, is a huge *PLUS* with a cold.

Probably depends on the kind of cold. A super runny nose was difficult to manage on top of wearing a new contraption on/in my nose. I was afraid I would open my mouth in the middle of the night and turn myself into a water fountain.

Seriously though, I think my instinct when I have a stuffy nose is to revert to mouth-breathing, so that was tough.

Emmers wrote:Seriously though, I think my instinct when I have a stuffy nose is to revert to mouth-breathing, so that was tough.

I quite understand. while I'm a dedicated nose breather, when my nose is stuffed up, it's either mouth breath, or die

for me, the moister pressurized air, along with either real pseudofed and/or a shot of afrin, opens up my nose and lets me use the cpap, and I dont get as clogged up throughout the night as I did before I used the cpap.

and before the anti-afrin brigade chimes in, if you only use it once a day, you won't get instantly addicted like if you use it twice a day. tip from a wise ENT a few years ago.

Emmers,
We are almost on the same start schedule and had the same issue. I started with the nose pillow, Airsense 10, and static 10 pressure, and just before Christmas as well. It was waking at 3am with gas and burping that was very unpleasant. The freeCPAPadvice guy had a good video on helping with it that was some relief with tucking your chin and propping up some. I also tried a chin strap as I was opening my mouth.

I had to move to a full face mask, the Resmed F10, and found a much reduced ingestion of air. I still have some occasions of it. Also, I have found that because of the Areophagea, I am having to take Pepcid before dinner or before bed. With these things I am managing much better on the CPAP.

I now run pressures of 8 to 10 on autoset and typically a lower humidity setting of 1 or 2.

Bill

Emmers wrote:

archangle wrote:Check the Useful Links in my signature line at the bottom of this post. There's a youtube link for a suggestion for aerophagia. It might or might not work for you, but it's free to try.

That was a useful link, thanks! The guy actually did a second aerophagea video and both were helpful. I will give that technique a try!

Thanks. Let us know if it works.

I'll have to look for that second video, too.