Still having bleeping sleep issues

Thanks for the above.
- No question insomnia plays a significant role. Most anything that causes discomfort interferes with my sleep. The Bleep has been the least annoying CPAP device but it is annoying.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped more than any medication and I recommend it highly, Sleep medications all got me to fall asleep quickly but then I'd wake up as soon as they wore off. After 2 -3 weeks, they'd stop working and were a challenge to stop. And then there was the the fuzzy feeling all the next morning.
- When I started the Bupropion it did increase the insomnia but that subsided after the first two weeks of use.
- After watching the video I agree that most of the apnea events may be falsely flagged but then I don't know what to do to make this work. The graphs would suggest what I am feeling - a constant struggle to stay asleep. It's an exhausting battle.
- I raised the pressure from 12 to 13 one night last week but that was worse. If I dropped it down, how far should it be changed on any given night?
- I try sleeping on my side as much as possible because the back is where I have the most issues. Tennis balls were a nightmare. A giant maternity type pillow is what I use but somehow it too gets pushed aside during the night.

I am not so sure that you need more pressure at this time anyway. I would put that on the back burner for now anyway and concentrate more on doing whatever you can do to reduce the insomnia (especially since more pressure seems to make things worse).

From what I have read about people with chronic insomnia issues they seem to struggle at times with anything new to the routine or sometimes it just pops up worse and they can't put a finger on what caused it.
We have a forum member RobySue (not active here at this time) that was my go to person for helping people with insomnia issues.
You may or may not have tried or read some of the stuff she went through but here's a blog she did about it.
http://adventures-in-hosehead-land.blog ... er_19.html
She has had insomnia issues all her life and when she had to go on cpap that sure didn't help.

I also try to stay off my back because sleeping on my back causes me a lot of back pain...and it's easier said than done. The old tennis ball trick is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of and I refused to even try it. Just what I need is to add more pain from the tennis balls to wake me up and mess with my already fragile sleep. I have had decent luck with a heavy buckwheat hull pillow up against my back to keep me off my back. Sometimes it ends up in the floor though...and sometimes I just move over on the bed and lay on my back.
A lot depends on the fact that sometimes my hubby is home which limits how much room I have to move over. When he's home I don't have as much room to sprawl out on the bed.
The buckwheat hull weight makes it harder to slide out from under me....plus if I end up at sort of a 45 degree angle with it supporting me it actually feels good against my back.

As far as the Bleep itself goes...it's not leaking...and if it's not noisy...maybe it's just the fact that it is new and you need to just get used to it more and hope the brain decides that it's your new best friend...an annoying friend maybe but the least annoying of the various masks you may have tried in the past.

"As far as the Bleep itself goes...it's not leaking...and if it's not noisy...maybe it's just the fact that it is new and you need to just get used to it more and hope the brain decides that it's your new best friend...an annoying friend maybe but the least annoying of the various masks you may have tried in the past."

Sigh. Thanks.
I hate being the "difficult" patient.
I'll keep using the bleep. The buckwheat pillow sounds good. Do you recall where you got it?

tryingtosleep54 wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:46 pm

The buckwheat pillow sounds good. Do you recall where you got it?

Yes I do...I think

I think it was this one
https://www.amazon.com/Firm-FitMe-Pillo ... way&sr=8-4

But if you look around there others of various sizes and densities available as well as cost. This one arrived overstuffed...and I didn't need nearly as much for my head to lay on so I put the hulls in something else and that's what I use up against my back. Quite heavy and the only thing that I couldn't easily push off onto the floor. It has to go next to the edge of the bed so I can go to sleep on my left side.

I have been using a buckwheat hull pillow for years and years because of my cervical spine issues....

I have a big king size one that I got from Beans72 a while back....it's too big to use as a head/neck pillow and way too big to sleep with it against my back and darn near impossible for me to lift or move... I need a long skinny one...but never got around to ordering one.
I had the spare hulls so made my own.

Thanks. I'm going to try that pillow.

Have you made a diffuser using PaleRider’s technique for quieting the vent, in case that could be an issue?

Pugsy - you don’t think going from a full face mask to the bleep could be causing some lip popping that transfers into arousals. With enough of them it can develop into what some patients will associate as insomnia. It wouldn’t register on the leak graph that way...just a subtle popping of the lips fragmenting the sleep architecture.

Dreaming1 wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 21, 2019 4:22 pm

Pugsy - you don’t think going from a full face mask to the bleep could be causing some lip popping that transfers into arousals. With enough of them it can develop into what some patients will associate as insomnia. It wouldn’t register on the leak graph that way...just a subtle popping of the lips fragmenting the sleep architecture.

It wouldn't be impossible I suppose but I would want to do some deep detective work looking at that flow rate up close.

Lots of things can cause arousals...not all of them related to anything associated with sleep apnea or the mask.
Using a full face mask wouldn't necessarily stop any lips popping from tiny bits of air escaping though....it can happen with a full face mask as easily as with a nasal mask and be just as annoying. Chipmunk cheek syndrome isn't limited to just nasal interface mask users.

I do think that going from a full face mask where nothing is touching the end of the nose to the Bleep where it is glued to the nose could maybe cause some sensory sensations that the brain doesn't know what to do with and thus the brain wakes the human up just because something foreign is glued to the nose. People with chronic insomnia tend to have hyper vigilant brains....the brain is on hyper alert status to warn the human about anything new in the routine. The brain worries too much about the least little thing and wakes its human up in the process. Some of it may be medication side effects adding to the brain being hyper alert.
The brain is a powerful drug...sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad.