Stupid aerophagia

Last night, I decided to go to bed half an hour ahead of schedule. Yes, I know that is wrong and shame on me for even considering it, but I had reached the point where text would no longer remain straight on a page and the floor was looking rather inviting. So, grab a blanket, lay out the futon, and pull on a mask, it's time to sleep.

A couple hours later, I wake up with the most horrid feeling of needing to hurl. I visit an appropriate location for that, and find that all that comes out is some of the worst-tasting air that I have ever encountered. But getting rid of that air feels good, and after a few minutes of that, I head back to bed and more sleep. And sleep I did.

After I woke up to my alarm clocks, I stick my card into my computer. How long was the machine off for? Half an hour. I didn't get any extra time in bed, in spite of the early start. Stupid air. It had never done this to me before, but last night was the first time I found I could swallow comfortably with the machine on.

Yes, aerophagia can be a huge pain.
There are many tips on this forum that may help.
You need to type 'aerophagia' in the 'search' box and start reading.
Others may provide links to the most useful tips.
Good luck.

I'm bumping this thread back to the top., so others smarter than I can chime in.
Aerophagia is such a b****
I have found that not eating within 3 hours or so before bedtime helps, as does sleeping on my left side.
Some even sleep in a reclining position.
If the problem is severe and stubborn, some have needed to upgrade to a bipap to reduce the symptoms.
Your doc would have to authorize this for insurance to allow it--plus some kind of battle/hoop-jumping, etc.

I'm hoping that this severity was only a one-off event. This felt even worse than the horrors of adjusting my iron dosage (apparently it shows when you feel like your intestines have just been run through a blender). I have no idea of how my sleep doctor would react if I have this problem at my follow up in two months (my first one). He seemed ambivalent to even starting me with CPAP; his opinion was that in spite of having sleep apnea, my real problem is insomnia (and I did catch his quiet comment on how I "have no risk factors" (well, hooray for not matching any of the stereotype)).

Yeah. Stupid aerophagia. I often feel like I am heading to bed to inflate my GI tract with air. Not fun.

Ah yes, aerophagia: The remaining, residual feeder of my bedtime insomnia: I simply cannot tolerate lying in bed awake for more than 15 minutes at the beginning of the night before I start to feel like the stuffed goose of my nightmare from Night 3---way back in September 2010. And hence, I wind up putting off going to bed each night until my eyes need toothpicks to stay open. That's the only way I can seem to get to sleep before that 15 minute window closes and my tummy starts to hurt.

*sigh*

So, RobySue, are you saying that lying awake causes the aerophagia and if you go straight to sleep you don't get it, or that if you go to sleep you don't notice it?

I have noticed that lying on my back is a recipe for disaster. I can't find a position that guarantees I won't get it, but lying on my back may be close to a guarantee that I will.

In most cases, it either gets better, or we get used to it.
Sometimes the air works its way out the other way,
creating horrified glares at work the next day.

This may sound crazy but.....I put my tongue to the roof of my mouth while I'm trying to fall asleep and apparently it stays there (well trained?). Only very rarely do I wake up with a "stuffed" belly.

SleepingUgly wrote:So, RobySue, are you saying that lying awake causes the aerophagia and if you go straight to sleep you don't get it, or that if you go to sleep you don't notice it?

On most nights if I can get to sleep in that fifteen minute window the aerophagia does not tend to wake me up and in the morning I typically am dealing with merely a "full tummy" sensation rather than full fledged pain. But when I don't get to sleep fast enough, I notice the air being blown down my gut and it tends to first get uncomfortable and then get painful. On these nights it's not uncommon for the aerophagia to wake me up in the middle of the night.

I think one of my problems is that when I'm awake with the mask on, I need and want to swallow every two or three minutes. Excess saliva is a problem when I'm lying in bed awake and pre-CPAP, I'd simply swallow the excess saliva when I was awake. But now every effort to swallow leads to air getting into my stomach. And if I swallow enough times, enough air gets trapped to make it very painful. And I have a tough time burping it out---I've never burped very effectively.

I also try to sleep with my tongue up on the roof of my mouth. It's where I usually park the tongue in the daytime without giving it too much thought. But in bed the inability to yawn with the CPAP on tends to feed a sensation of my tongue getting tired of being kept up on the roof of my mouth. For the first few minutes, it's not an issue, but the longer it takes me to get to sleep, the more my tongue keeps telling the brain it wants to relax and yawn with a wide open mouth. So I think I may be more successful in keeping the tongue in place if I fall asleep quick enough.

I have noticed that lying on my back is a recipe for disaster. I can't find a position that guarantees I won't get it, but lying on my back may be close to a guarantee that I will.

I agree---lying on my back seems to virtually guarantee that I'll have air in the tummy. Fortunately, I don't tend to fall asleep on my back, but it's clear that I sometimes do flip on my back in my sleep. For me, lying on my left side seems to be better than lying on my right. And it seems important for me to keep my chin tucked down close to my chest. This is not easy to do with the hose. *sigh*

And I have also noticed that I cannot tolerate more than one pillow anymore. It's not that I usually used multiple pillows pre-CPAP---except when I was dealing significant congestion. I'm fighting a head cold right now and tossing and turning with the CPAP remains much more difficult than tossing and turning pre-CPAP.