Getting air in belly?

My brother is new to cpap, using a mouth mask with an Air Sense. He's getting air in his belly... I use a CPAP too and have never had that happen to me. He says he wakes up burping and feels bloated in the morning.

Has anyone heard of that?

Any advice?

It's never happened to me so I don't know what to recommend.

wrybread wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 01, 2023 3:13 pm

My brother is new to cpap, using a mouth mask with an Air Sense. He's getting air in his belly... I use a CPAP too and have never had that happen to me. He says he wakes up burping and feels bloated in the morning.

It's called aerophagia and if you do a search for that term you should get lots of hits here on the forum.

The most likely reason your brother is getting air in his belly is that he is swallowing air that gets trapped in his mouth.

Or his esophageal sphincter is weak and it's not staying closed. Does your brother deal with acid reflux issues? If so, then this may be the reason he's getting aerophagia.

Things to try in order to alleviate the problem include a lot of the same self-help advice for acid reflux: Sleeping on the left side can help. Sleeping with the head slightly elevated can help. Not eating anywhere close to bedtime can help.

Also, figuring out a way of keeping air out of the oral cavity can help, but that can be difficult for a dedicated mouth breather. But if your brother is only an intermittent mouth breather learning how to keep the tongue parked up on top of the roof of the mouth with the tip right behind the top teeth can help: When the tongue is in that position it effectively blocks off the connection between the nasal cavity & upper airway from the oral cavity. When the oral cavity is properly blocked off, air can't get into the mouth and that in turn reduces the inclination to swallow the excess air when you are asleep.

Good information. Also I've noticed with me, that if my pressure is too high it causes Aerophagia. When I keep it under 8.6 I'm totally fine. 8.8-10 is when I start having issues so Oscar would be good program to use to monitor how much pressure he is getting.