gurp13 wrote:
As to moving the hose itself, what makes it conduct the sound? How should I move it? Honestly, it's not really noisy at all. It's just that I hear it so I pay attention to it and then get anxious about my breathing so I start really thinking about how I am breathing. When I listen to music, I can ignore the machine and pay attention to the music.
All solids are capable of transmitting sound waves. It's just that we're usually not attached to a solid that is carrying sound waves in an environment that allows the conducted noise to be particularly noticeable to us. The sound waves the hose are carrying, by the way, include the sound of your breathing as well as the sounds the machine itself is making. And every inhale/exhale you make affects the flow of the air in the hose, which affects the sound of the flow of the air ....
In general, conducted noise that we notice is from sound waves that are transmitted through solid substances (the hose, your pillows, covers, body) to your head and skull, and directly into your inner ear; thus conducted noise completely avoids the usual transmission route for sound through the outer ear through the ear drum, into the middle ear, through the three small bones in the middle ear and into the inner ear. Because conducted noise gets to your inner ear without going through the outer ear at all, using earplugs to dampen or block noise can actually intensify annoying and irritating conducted noise because the earplugs fit into your outer ear and only block the NON-conducted noise.
As to how to move the hose if the sound of your breathing is bugging you: If it's lying on your pillow or actually touching your head---particularly the area around the back of your ears, try to move your head and the hose to minimize the contact between the hose and the pillow and your head. The hose touching the pillow is the usual number one suspect in conducted noise from the hose. (That's also part of why the special CPAP pillows with the cutouts for the mask not only help stabilize the mask and reduce leaks, but also may help with conducted noise issues.)
But since listening to music lets you ignore the conducted noise, that's the simpler solution: In general irritating noises (be they real or nasty tinnitus) are often easy to ignore in the presence of a more pleasant auditory stimulus. And note: You do NOT need to have the volume of the music on high enough to drown the conducted noise out---no it's actually more effective in the long run if the music is at a comfortable (quiet) level for sleeping that's just barely loud enough to give the conducted noise competition for your attention. That's all it takes to get your mind off the conducted noise--competition from a more pleasant auditory stimulus that you'd rather listen to. Then the conducted noise fades into the background and you don't notice it. Same trick works for my tinnitus by the way.
Because my husband doesn't object to it (in fact he tells me he enjoys it), I've dealt with the conducted noise issue myself by leaving my iHome on all night repeatedly looping through a Gregorian chant playlist playing at a reasonable volume. I can't stand headphones or earplugs and I was noticing that I kept waking up when the iHome was turning itself OFF when I was using it's Sleep feature. So it's better for my sleep to just leave the Gregorian chants playing all night long. And the Gregorian chant keeps my mind off the conducted noise from the hose unless I've got a migraine or tension headache brewing. But that's another issue all together.
