Suggestions for breaking three hour barrier

Hi Everyone,

I am having trouble sleeping with the CPAP more than three hours. I try to leave it on longer even if I am awake but then I start feeling like I am breathing stale air. I think I need to let the mask ride a little lower on the face. I already take medication to help me sleep as well as control depression at night so I do not want to have to take sleep medicine on top of it which I know can worsen the sleep apnea. I am also using the pursleep peace and calm scents. I usually alternate between the scents every other night. Helps me fall asleep initially but still wake up after three hours. I did wash all the equipment on Sunday and that helped some. How do you know when the filter needs to be changed on your cpap? Does it turn more yellow, black etc? I would like to take Melatonin but the last time I did that it interacted with the medication I take at night and my heart pounded all night. Not a fun experience. The mask itself is very comfortable I just wake up and cannot get back to sleep. Any suggestions would be appreciated including your own experiences of how you got past the three hour barrier.

Thank you so much,

Maria

If you have not been on cpap for more than a few weeks, this is nothing unusual. I woke up many times a night at first, and gradually woke up less and less, until I finally after several weeks, made it all the way through a night. Now after a few months I only wake up occasionally. I just camped out for 2 nights on the ground, and slept straight through both nights on cpap, 6 and 7 hours! The Pursleep is a good idea, I believe it takes your mind off the therapy some. Exercise is one of the best aids to sleep. You should be able to inspect your filter and clean or change it when it looks dirty. The time will vary depending of conditions. Some say theirs suck up "dust bunnies" quickly. Others like mine sit up on a shelf and the filter is just starting to look a little off color after 3 months.

The biggest thing that made cpap easier for me was purhasing an auto cpap from cpap.com. It made breathing so much more natural it was easier to sleep. This experience was the same with my mother. In addition, it has full data capability so I can monitor that my therapy is working properly. You need data. It is possible that you do not require your present pressure all night, and an auto machine will adjust for you making your therapy more comfortable. It was a large bullet to bite, purchasing my machine out of pocket, however I have no regrets as it has changed my life and I'm able to do many things I no longer could.

I hope you are beginning to experience the benefits of your therapy, you will do fine.

Georgio

Wish I knew the answer to this one too !
I bet I could set my clocks to that 3 hour barrier and it'd be accurate !



Bill

It's worse than the glass ceiling. Ha Ha! Maybe I should turn over my gum ball back to Willy Wonka. (Reference to the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) LOL. Just being silly. Helps to laugh.

swcompassionate wrote:Hi Everyone,The mask itself is very comfortable I just wake up and cannot get back to sleep. Any suggestions would be appreciated including your own experiences of how you got past the three hour barrier.

You didn't say if you have a humidifier or not, but I found that if I have mine turned up too high, the air is warmer and as such "feels stale". I use it at 1, and actually find passover more comfortable on most nights.

Hey Debjax, I do have a humidifier with my CPAP and usually I have it at either 1 1/2 or 2. I can try turning it down and see what happens. Thanks for the suggestions. Will keep working at it. I am not going to give up until I get it to work for me. Can't wait until I can break the three hour barrier. I am going to try it for six weeks straight with my straight CPAP machine and if I am not having any better luck I am thinking about asking my sleep doctor for a script for an auto. If anyone has an Auto can you tell me what prompted you to ask for an auto and what machine you went with and why?

Thanks,

Maria

P.S. You are all so wonderful. Glad again I found this site.

does your machine have a ramp button, when i was waking at night (same 3 hour barrier), i started hitting the ramp button and telling myself, i was not taking the mask off, after 4 or 5 days of that, i didnt have anymore problems. i am now getting a full nights rest.

Hey Boston,

I do have a 5, 10, and 20 minute ramps on my machine but because I use the Swift LT mask, if I use the ramp, I feel like I cannot breathe at that pressure even for five minutes. I prefer to start with full pressure because of the pillows. I could use the ramp with the nasal mask but then I could not sleep on my side or stomach. My prefer way of sleeping. Maybe when I am half asleep if I use the ramp for five minutes it will reset my system to try and go back to sleep. Usually even if I wake up I do try to leave it on and just try to go back to sleep but if I cannot after like another hour sometimes I will either take it off and try to sleep or get out of bed for several hours. I will keep trying. I think for me it is going to come gradually. Thank you for your suggestion. I will try the ramp if I wake up after three hours of sleeping and then waking up to see if that helps. I am going to keep trying suggestions until something works. I have only been consistently using the machine every night for about a week. I have more time to go.

Maria

It took me a couple of years to sleep as long 6 hrs even then it wasn't every night. After maybe 2 1/2 yrs or so it's around 7 more often & I have occasionally slept for 8 hrs! BUT only if I had a really bad previous night. I am, on the whole, sleeping better and longer in general, so just hang in there and don't worry about it, (or about anything else) as that will only make it worse. The "sleep experts" tell us to get up and read a chapter in a book or drink some warm milk and then try again to sleep.
Hang in there.

For the first couple of weeks, I had an OptiLife mask....and I was having trouble with this 3 hour barrier....(though I did 6 hours the first couple of nights).

Since switching to a Nasal mask (currently ProfileLite), I have had periods of 6 hours of sleep....

Now if only things didn't hurt or I would stop feeling tired....I was gonna say that at least I haven't fallen asleep during the day, except I did that on a bus trip last Saturday.

The Dreamer.

TheDreamer wrote:For the first couple of weeks, I had an OptiLife mask....and I was having trouble with this 3 hour barrier....(though I did 6 hours the first couple of nights).

Since switching to a Nasal mask (currently ProfileLite), I have had periods of 6 hours of sleep....

Now if only things didn't hurt or I would stop feeling tired....I was gonna say that at least I haven't fallen asleep during the day, except I did that on a bus trip last Saturday.

The Dreamer.

could be time to try a new mask too.