Air forced into stomach

[SailorJerry]

Strange sensations last night. I am fairly certain that air was being forced into my stomach.
About 4 or 5 times I became aware that I needed to burp. A very small burp each time but the pressure was there so I forced it out.
These instances all seemed quite close together, drifting in an out between.
Is this a common event using xPAP? I'm not aware of this happening before on my month of use.

Sleepy head shows ZERO OA events last night which is a first, but AHI was 7 due to all the CA and 5 H events.

FYI I took some advice from my last post and tried turning off EPR. This was an attempt to lower the CA events which account for 95% of my events.
CA events did reduce but too early to tell.

[Pugsy]

When you turned EPR off you effectively increased the exhale pressure since there was no longer any reduction during exhale.
So with that little bit of increase it likely put you across the threshold for air getting into your stomach.

Depending on your pressure needs..you might be better off with a small reduction in IPAP if the aerophagia (air in the belly) becomes a constant annoyance if you want to keep EPR turned off.

Anything that disturbs our sleep is unwanted and that includes needing to burp often during the night.

Some of CAs last night could be maybe awake/semi awake/post arousal centrals associated with the need to burp
but having a central index of 7 (averaging 7 per hour) could also mean Complex Sleep Apnea so that has to be kept an eye on.

What pressure did you use last night? And how much EPR had you been using?

[SailorJerry]

EPR was set at 2 before I turned it off.
Pressure is in range 7.6 - 14

[Pugsy]

Would you mind posting last night's daily detailed report image?
Don't zoom in on anything and only include these items.

On the left side the AHI bar graphs and the Statistics.
On the right side graphs...these graphs...Events, Flow Rate, Pressure, Leak (I don't need AHI graph on the right or mask pressure).
Doing just the 4 graphs lets the size of the graphs be better suited for my eyes.
Also maybe the Flow limitation graph.

Also...approx how many times do you remember waking last night...and even without the burping do you find yourself waking a lot during the night.

[SailorJerry]

I think I woke 4 times. Twice I took off the mask and/or switched off the machine.
I believe the burping was probably about 6:20 - 6:40

I rarely sleep longer than 90 minutes at a time.

Yes, not even 4 hours sleep. Big project due this afternoon so working very late.

[Pugsy]

You know it's possible that the air in the belly is related to when the machine wants to hit that upper pressure limit.

Is the fragmented sleep something new since beginning CPAP therapy or is it something you have had to deal with for a long time?

Your pressures are pretty much all over the place and the changing of the pressures themselves could be making the sleep fragmentation worse.

At least on this report the Centrals don't appear to be pressure related and appear to be more arousal related since the clustering appears close to known awake times....but we can't rule it out completely.

I think it if were me I would limit the maximum in an effort to lessen not only the potential to inflate the belly but also to lessen the potential impact that the ranging pressures might have on sleep quality in general.
The machine is obviously wanting to go up there but maybe the reason it wants to go there wouldn't be a huge problem if we let it slide a bit just to see if not letting it go up there would reduce the air in the belly and reduce the chance of the centrals being pressure related and also reduce the potential impact that the changes in pressure themselves is disrupting sleep.

Of course this last night isn't the best the be basing changes on since it is short and atypical.
And it was the first night with EPR change....

[chunkyfrog]

Use of the term "gastric insufflation" instead of "aerophagia" kind of takes the blame away from the subject.
I like the logic, nobody does this voluntarily!

[Greg Riddle]

I have been sleeping with my upper body angles at 20° and the aerophagia issues I was having stopped

[SailorJerry]

I have been sleeping with my upper body angles at 20° and the aerophagia issues I was having stopped

I suppose that's a special bed. And it would have to be a split bed so my wife does not need to sleep on an incline.
Although she reads in bed and would probably love a power operated incline thing.
Geez, our bedroom would start to resemble a hospital room.
Good tip though, thanks.

[Pugsy]

I suppose that's a special bed. And it would have to be a split bed so my wife does not need to sleep on an incline.

If you find that the aerophagia is annoying enough and you can't get relief with modest pressure adjustments you might want to look at one of those wedge pillow things to help you stay elevated a little. They make all sorts of wedge pillows to help with this sort of issue. I think marketed towards people with GERD issues but the idea is still the same.

[cathyf]

I'm intrigued by how many of those centrals seem to be lined right up with leak spikes. Should we be suspicious about which ones are real? If you zoom in on each of those, are they really synchronized, or just close?

[Greg Riddle]

I have been sleeping with my upper body angles at 20° and the aerophagia issues I was having stopped

I suppose that's a special bed. And it would have to be a split bed so my wife does not need to sleep on an incline.
Although she reads in bed and would probably love a power operated incline thing.
Geez, our bedroom would start to resemble a hospital room.
Good tip though, thanks.

I'm actually in the middle designing my own adjustable bed made out of wood. I can't afford 2k for the adjustable bed frame. I started by guessing at some dimensions and making a junk wood fixed platform. I've made a few adjustments and will be incorporating those into my final design. Here is the platform

[archangle]

In the useful links in my signature line below, there's a youtube video about one possible solution to aerophagia (gas).

[OkyDoky]

I have been sleeping with my upper body angles at 20° and the aerophagia issues I was having stopped

I suppose that's a special bed. And it would have to be a split bed so my wife does not need to sleep on an incline.
Although she reads in bed and would probably love a power operated incline thing.
Geez, our bedroom would start to resemble a hospital room.
Good tip though, thanks.

It doesn't have to be a special bed. You can raise the head of the bed 5-6" with bed rizers. Do a search and there are lots of different ones.

[chunkyfrog]

How adorable! Sometimes I take a picture of my finger, too.
(I hope that was a finger!).