aerophagia, arg. lower and slowly increase pressure?

[johnspartanII]

So I've now been fighting with the last in the series of xpap machines I've had over the last couple years, and have yet to successfully sleep much at all with the machine on, even trying for several weeks at a shot. Just typically cannot fall asleep with the mask on - until recently.

I finally managed to get my machine adjusted to where it seems I can tolerate breathing with the mask on and with the range of pressure on my apap machine, and I can lie still without feeling like i'm suffocating or want to take off the mask. The big problem is the aerophagia, which seems to be the last? biggest block I have to getting this to work.

The whopping 3 or 4 times I came close to falling asleep with the mask on - or perhaps did for a very brief time - I experienced the bloating and pressure that people describe. I'm amazing it can kick in even after what seems like a relatively short period of time... once I didn't even sleep at all wearing the the mask after an hour, and I swear I already started having gas and pressure in my lower gi!

I have searched most of the threads as best I can for info on this... I know there's things like your sleep position (I can't sleep any way but my sides for now, my stomach already has another problem causing it to be bloated 24/7 that nobody can diagnose, and can't sleep on my stomach or back at all because it makes it worse and painful), chin straps, the tongue position, different masks (I'm using the full Quattro now), simply 'adjusting' to it. Clearly I'm not simply doing anything. ; )

So I was wondering: is it possible that, despite having a fairly low pressure range on my apap (I think it's set to 8 to 12 now) - assuming I felt like I could still get enough air at an even lower range, do you think it would be worth it lowering it even further - assuming I could sleep comfortably that way - and then slowly raise the pressure back to where it is now? I mean, even if a lower pressure isn't helping the apneas as much (or even at all), perhaps it would be worth seeing if I could just get to sleep consistently with it on to some degree? I understand that having a lower-than-ideally-therapeutic-pressure might not help a whole lot, but maybe that way if I was used to it, it would be easier to increase it over time and have less of a problem?