Correlation between mouth breathing & belly air?

[kteague]

Ok, after 6 years I would think I could sort through this on my own, but hey, I've come a long way since my early question of "What does AHI mean?" lol

I wear a nasal mask. There occasionally are times when I am going to sleep that it feels like I'm not getting enough air, so I periodically open my mouth and inhale deeply. Never seems to last more than a few minutes. Never wakes me up with that feeling. It's not a ramp issue. But oddly, those times seem to correlate with feeling air in the belly. So I'm wondering, can we lose enough of our treatment air into the belly to cause shortness of breath?

[akcpapguy]

So I'm wondering, can we lose enough of our treatment air into the belly to cause shortness of breath?

Short answer NO

Long answer

As you probably already know (more than likely from the well informed folks here), air in the belly is generally caused by air slowly leaking into the stomach through a damaged (mainly from GERD) or weak Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES). This leak though not really measurable in a home setting, is fairly minimal considering the volume of an average distended adult human stomach is 2-4L. Now when you throw into the equation the average PAP machine operates at flow rates of 10-60LPM it becomes clear that the leak would not be large enough to drop the flow enough so that the pressure would drop therefore making you feel short of breath. With all that said, everyone is different and I suppose there is a chance that it may make you short of breath.

My personal experience

I sometimes wakeup shortly after I fall asleep and experience a feeling of shortness of breath. I have quized my wife about my breathing (since she is often sitting up reading) prior to my awakening. She often reports that I was breathing very shallow and slowly. What I suspect is that I was experiencing some hypoventilation shortly after sleep onset, I had an arousal due to this and my feeling of shortness of breath registered. Like I said, just a personal observation and speculation about what is going on with myself.


Darin

[Janknitz]

My theory is that if you don't seal off your mouth from your nose by keeping the tongue on the roof of tour mouth, CPAP air is going into your mouth and will be swallowed into the stomach with the pressure of CPAP helping the process.

I have severe GERD and I'm sure that sphincter is pretty floppy, but no aerophagia because I can keep my tongue in place to seal off my mouth from the CPAP air flow.

I suspect you are sucking a good bit of air in that gets swallowed and causes your issues when you mouth breathe.

[jnk]

Ok, after 6 years I would think I could sort through this on my own, but hey, I've come a long way since my early question of "What does AHI mean?" lol

I wear a nasal mask. There occasionally are times when I am going to sleep that it feels like I'm not getting enough air, so I periodically open my mouth and inhale deeply. Never seems to last more than a few minutes. Never wakes me up with that feeling. It's not a ramp issue. But oddly, those times seem to correlate with feeling air in the belly. So I'm wondering, can we lose enough of our treatment air into the belly to cause shortness of breath?

If you are using nasal pillows, you may want to try a larger-size pillow. The larger openings may allow you to inhale and exhale a bit faster as you fall asleep, which may help with the feeling of shortness of breath. (Some have actually trimmed a nasal pillow in order to have a larger opening without going to a larger-size pillow, but that can be a tricky thing to do.) The reason that MAY help is that back-pressure from the resistance to your exhale, caused by the pillows, could be causing some belly air.

You may also, counter-intuitively, want to try starting out at a higher pressure, if you are using ramp or settling. Some breathe easier with more pressure, and if it evens out your breathing, that can help with belly-air too.

Just things to try.