what if you bend your neck?

During my 2nd PSG when asked to demonstrate supine sleep I took a small bath towel (hand towel), rolled it up and put a rubber band at each end. Placed the rolled towel on the mattress, removing all pillows, and positioned the towel so it supported the nape of my neck and hyper-extended my airway.

The results of that study indicated, contrary to what they expected, I had fewer events when supine than when on my side.

With those results in mind I experimented with some other things.

kopoloff wrote:it might be worth experimenting on this. I have a soft collar device that I used when i had a neck injury from sport. It's not a rigid brace, rather a contoured foam collar that provides support to the head when upright, and keeps the chin up.

Such as using a cervical collar, like any you can buy at most pharmacies, to keep my chin from moving towards my chest when in on my side or fetal position. When curling up, I think we ALL tend to move our chins towards our chest, possibly making a easy place for the airway to kink or collapse?

While I am sure it helped, I found it just to hot for my liking.

Then tried some other things also. Like holding a small pillow up under my chin when falling off to sleep. Or making a brandy keg type thing from a rolled up towel, tied up under the chin also. Kira described this in one of her posts. I still use this, when I remember but also find I wake up too hot.

You may have to have someone help to visually check your spinal alignment when on your side to insure your spine is straight when on your side. You want just enuff pillow to fill the space from the edge of your shoulder to your ear. If you have a void under your ribs you may want some padding such as a folded blanket or a small pillow to help.

I find that the memory foam pillows which have one side thinner than the other. If I turn the pillow opposite to what one would think, with the thicker part under my neck, it helps to hyper-extends my airway when on my back. The other way contributes to kinking the neck.

JMMO (Just My Meaningless Opinion)

Ok I noticed that it's a bit hard to bend my neck back when the mask is on because of the straps being tightened on my neck. If I loosen them I still end up with my chin going downward and I wake up with mask leaking. I guess I would need a brace of some sort.

Head tilted forward compromised your airway. For those of you who have taken a CPR class think back they tell you to tilt someones head back or lift the chin. That is to open the airway.
I use a memory foam pillow to sleep on and I found that when I sleep on my back that my pillow needs to be reversed. I normally have the pillow with the bigger hump towards the top but if I am on my back that actually tilts my chin down compromising my airway.

So I try not to sleep on my back. Yeah right, I am sure as soon as I fall asleep I am on my back with my airway compromised.

Gerryk wrote: So I try not to sleep on my back. Yeah right, I am sure as soon as I fall asleep I am on my back with my airway compromised.

I have the same problem. I think I've finally trained myself to sleep on my side more, but I still wake up sometimes on my back. The sleep lab here said put a tennis ball in a sock then pin it to the back of a shirt, that will keep you from staying on your back if you roll over. I've tried it a couple times, it does seem to work.