I Almost Passed Out Last Night

[robz]

Okay guys....So last night woke up...Had to Pee....as I sat up, I felt the pain in my stomach....I knew that was due to air being trapped.....Not sure the tech name for that....I have had this happen 3 or 4 other times, so I knew what it was.....This always seems to occur if I happen to roll over on my back, not sure why air traps that way but not on my side.....Anyways, as i'm walking to the bathroom, feeling a bit queezy, a little light headed......As i'm peeing, that feeling is getting stronger.....I then notice that my vision is getting fuzzy......I thought to myself, I think i'm going to pass out.....I sat on the floor, at this point, I took off head gear, took off chin strap and tape on my mouth.....tried to take some short breaths thru nose and mouth.....after about 5 minutes things started to calm down......

So, why did I have this problem....was it due to lack of oxygen getting in due to the air trapped in my stomach.....was it a carbon monoxide thing.....on the mask, where the air is ventilated out, if that gets covered up, can that cause some of these issues......

Just looking for some thoughts from others who may have experienced something like this....

In looking at my sleepyhead, nothing was out of the normal....most of the data looked pretty good......

[ChicagoGranny]

tried to take some short breaths

Take slow, deep breaths.


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[Julie]

The name of it is aerophagia (a forum search will give you lots of history).

The lightheadedness may be that your BP was low - Cpap does lower BP in many people, and getting up more slowly can help, though what you had may have been related to the aerophagia - can't say. If you otherwise don't have the feeling when you get up each a.m. then I wouldn't be too concerned and count it as part of that one time experience, but if it happens a lot with or without the aerophagia, you might want to experiment with a slightly lower min. pressure which would not only possibly help the AP, but also stabilize your BP.

[nicholasjh1]

This is even more true if you had treated high blood pressure... meaning you had a BP problem before CPAP, got medicine, lowered it to normal.. got CPAP, healed, but never lowered the medicine. If that's the case at all you should definitely see about lowering (or possibly even eliminating) the BP medicine with your doctor (if you indeed take BP medicine).

Not sure what your set up is, but there are other ways to lower aerophagia outside of lowering the pressure... when I was taping without any way to release the air I got quite a bit of aerophagia. poking holes in the tape mostly eliminated that problem. Now I use a wide cloth head band over my mouth and it seems to be the perfect solution (for me, I've heard that for some people this still lets too much air escape from the mouth).... obviously though we don't even know if you use a FFM or nasal interface.

[nicholasjh1]

Also, the symptoms of bad aerophagia include shortness of breath... so if the aerophagia is bad enough it could restrict lung usage apparently. So let us know your set up... maybe there's a way to help lower your aerophagia.


Symptoms:
Bloating.
Chest tightness.
Nausea.
Shortness of breath.
Belching.
Heartburn.
Abdominal pain.
Satiety.

[Rob K]

I used to have the same thing happen to me quite often. If I ever got up fast I was asking for trouble. It was real scary. Getting out of bed to use the toilet was probably when it happened the most. After the forum members helped me get my xpap pressure dialed in I eventually stopped having the episodes altogether. My AHI was in the 3-5 range and we got it down to around 1 AHI. This helped resolve many health problems for me. I never really figured out what it was that caused the episodes, but figured it was blood pressure related. Maybe low blood pressure when your laying down and a sudden increase when you stand. My blood pressure is lower overall, now that my xpap therapy is going well. Wish I could help in some way other than just saying, yes that has happened to me many times.

I'm not certain, but I suspect the aerophagia is a separate issue.