Chest pain/weird anxiety in the daytime?

I'm new to CPAP, about 2 weeks in. It's not working yet unfortunately, and i'm still really tired during the day. My AHI is down to 4.5 from 7.5 during sleep study. I'm on various other medications for bipolar disorder too, so it could be some interaction with those, but I've been having odd sensations in my chest the past few days that haven't gone away. I went to the ER two days ago, they found nothing, no heart issue. It's almost like a tightness, pressure, an anxious uneasyness, nasuea, seems associated with shortness of breath and yet i exercised fine yesterday, so i dont know....it seems like a hybrid physical/mental. Can this be from the CPAP treatment? I've had severe depression and i know that pain, this is not like that, its closer to anxiety or panic, but not quite that either, and its not really physical pain. Anyway, was just wondering if this is a potential side effect, and if it goes away, or if its a bad sign. it could just be too much stimulation from antidepressants maybe i dont know. Thanks for help.

I'm three weeks into treatment and I do experience a very similar thing with the nausea and chest discomfort and attendant anxiety. I'm still swallowing a lot of air (we do this unconsciously), and just last night I was aware while trying to go to sleep of a pressure pushing up in my chest that was both physically uncomfortable and caused an immediate sensation of anxiety. We have a lot of receptors in our gut and our airway that are connected to emotional states (one reason why antidepressants can help relieve symptoms of irritable bowel). So I think it's not a matter of either mental or physical, I think you're spot on with calling it a 'hybrid' reaction. It is both. I'm working on telling myself when I feel the sensations that I'm ok, and trying to not tense up my body or ramp up my anxious thoughts about it in response to the discomfort.

If you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, it's adaptive for us to have an immediate fight-or-flight response to the sensation of something unnatural in our airway, so we can take action to deal with whatever the threat is. In this case there's not a real threat, but there is an unnatural process we're trying to deal with that can produce odd and unsettling sensations. My hope is that I'll get desensitized over time to this feeling and it won't interfere with my sleep as much and won't cause as much anxiety and frustration. I hope the same for you!

One more thought about this: Only three weeks in, I'm still very tired and run down all the time just as you are. I'm learning that just eliminating/decreasing apneas does not guarantee healthy sleep patterns, at least not right away. This means we do not yet have all our internal and physical resources to deal with the anxiety and discomfort, we're still rather compromised in this regard. So keep working on getting the AHI down, consciously relaxing as much as possible, practicing awareness of the discomfort but without emotional reactivity (I need to get back to some meditation practice to help with this), and know you're not alone in what you're going through.

As soon as I saw "anxiety" in the topic I thought I'd chime in.
While I do not experience what you're stating, ever since I started CPAP therapy about a month ago I'm seeing direct correlation between lack/quality of sleep and anxiety/restlessness/agitation.
I was actually surprised to see that. I have had for a long time now a constant state/feeling of agitation/restlessness. It is not visible on the outside but I feel it constantly in the background.
I noticed that after sleeping well with CPAP, I woke up in what I describe as a deep state of sleep and the usual state of restlessness that I have throughout the day was minimized/eliminated.
I know it is a direct correlation because over the last couple of weeks I stopped sleeping well as I did at first with the CPAP and I immediately felt restlessness coming back.

There's always the risk of heart problems, so keep checking with the doctor.

Sometimes, you can trigger acid reflux with CPAP. Chest soreness can also happen from your chest muscles working against the pressure. The air can dry out tissues in your nose, throat, and lungs. You can get gas pains from swallowing air. Air in the ears can affect your balance.

I had the same problems. Chest pains and more than one night in the ER. Had all kinds of heart tests, also almost all other organs. Had an upper endoscopy done. Omeprazole is my friend now.

I too experienced, chest pain and back pain, it got increasingly better during a 3 week period. It was explained to me as the lungs were getting more air than they are use to so the muscles are adjusting to the expansion. It resoved itself, and was not a problem again. I did notice a bit of soreness when I tried a nasal type mask as oppose to the pillow type I am use to, which made sense to me becasue with the nasal mask I was taking deeper breaths to compensate for the direct air I was getting with the pillows. I use pillows exclusively now. Good Luck!

The sad and shocking truth about heart conditions is that your basic ER is not very well equipped to get good sample of your heart's activity. You need to go to a cardiologist and get a 'cardio stress test' also sometimes called 'nuclear imaging' (there are no nuclear materials used in this misnamed procedure). They'll put you on a treadmill, wired up, and watch your heart and see how you perform while exercising (basically just walking fast). They can also give you meds to get your heart rate up, if you can't exercise. This is the only way to be reasonably sure you are not a candidate for a heart attack. Even the most cheap-assed HMO's will gladly fork over for this procedure, cuz it's a lot less expensive than a $75,000 post heart attack stent insertion. Double or triple that for a bypass procedure.