mph143 wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 4:05 pm
If you read the post, I was wondering if anybody had similar experiences with CPAP causing these symptoms. I don’t need a diagnosis or troubleshooting although you you seem to know it’s not caused by CPAP.
Oh I am late coming back to this thread and I would like to offer some anecdotes. Nothing scientific unfortunately. You may not even see this!
I have an acquaintance who uses xpap and recently lost 60 lbs in the last 6 months or so and developed severe aerophagia. They had been loving their xpap for the previous 3 years and were confused about why they had suddenly developed this problem and also why it had come on with weight loss.
So I did a search on cpaptalk.com for weight loss and aerophagia just to see if there were others having this issue, and lo and behold there are 94 results on these forums, though some of those results reference the same post.
Anyway as I read through those results I saw that there are at least 5 other people who lost weight and then started to have some issues with aerophagia /pressure settings. Some needed more pressure with weight loss, some needed less, it didn't seem to be a clear pattern to me.
But of course, not all people who lose weight develop issues with aerophagia, which means it's not xpap, but I propose, some change that can come about from the weight loss, which will be different and specific to each person.
For example, a while back, my n=1, I unfortunately lost a lot of weight due to illness, about 25% of my body weight in a rather short time frame, and ever since then, when I'm hungry I can feel one of my esophageal sphincters relaxing, and thus making me more prone to heartburn when I'm hungry. My parent experienced the same after they lost quite a bit of weight due to cancer treatment, so my guess is that my parent and I are both prone to developing heartburn/esophageal sphincter issues, from a fairly decent amount of weight loss.
Now that I've started xpap, if I'm asleep and for some reason didn't eat enough for the day, then I find myself more prone to aerophagia.
I don't blame xpap but rather my genetics and some weird combination of hormones/physiology?
I believe palerider wrote that it's actually a fairly small minority of people who experience aerophagia at all, and I just chalk mine up to faulty esophageal sphincters.
I have read that baclofen may help some people with aerophagia, but it's not clear.
and I think it was Zonker or maybe Chicago Granny who mentioned things like Ginger. Oh and possibly low dose melatonin to help with lower esophageal sphincter relaxation? and perhaps you can find some other things on aerophagia if you search around. And last but not least, from my personal experience, the aerophagia may sometimes be a sign you need to eat more, but I will leave that up to your experimentation and customization.
losing 50 lbs in 6 months is a rate of about 2 lbs per week and losing weight at that rate unintentionally really screwed my body up. but I also understand each person is their own unique set of circumstances and will want to find a solution that works for them, and that this may be different than what worked or didn't work for me.
