Poll: Falling asleep with CPAP

JCWarrior wrote:I'm 16 nights into CPAP. Having mixed results getting to sleep. Saturday night was wonderful: fell asleep quickly and slep 9.2 hours. Last night was terrible falling to sleep. I started falling asleep and was awoken during transition to sleep. Made me anxious and I got in and out of bed several times. Finally took half an Ambien, sat up watching TV (very low volume) with my CPAP on. After about 20 minutes I turned it off, layed down and fell asleep.

After I'm asleep I'm fine. I have noticed this has happend 2 nights where I had desert later in the evening. Maybe the sugar is contributing?

Your struggle to get used to falling asleep with the machine is normal. I struggled for several weeks to be able to get to sleep easily, eventually it came. Even now (6 months in) some nights I feel awkward breathing through the mask, but with 5min or so I am out. Keep doing what you are. Relax your breathing as much as possible and do not focus on the mask. Sleep will come... Or get out of bed for a but and read and then try again.

It's not XPAP that affects me going to sleep. I am unable to shutout the problems of the world and health problems, and day to day problems of others.

Our country is getting weaker and our government is getting more corrept daily, more and more mentally defective people are plying their defects on the population, the media is making heros out of their mis-actions, creating even more morons to deal with in the future.

Watching our once great country, going to hell, driven there by it's own elected non-patriots, bent on creating the demise of the U.S.A, many have sacrificed to build.

Welcome to the "New World Order", where right is wrong, and wrong is right!

At least when I do get to sleep, by wearing my Xpap, I have never failed to wake up alive. Jim

bavinck wrote:

JCWarrior wrote:I'm 16 nights into CPAP. Having mixed results getting to sleep. Saturday night was wonderful: fell asleep quickly and slep 9.2 hours. Last night was terrible falling to sleep. I started falling asleep and was awoken during transition to sleep. Made me anxious and I got in and out of bed several times. Finally took half an Ambien, sat up watching TV (very low volume) with my CPAP on. After about 20 minutes I turned it off, layed down and fell asleep.

After I'm asleep I'm fine. I have noticed this has happend 2 nights where I had desert later in the evening. Maybe the sugar is contributing?

Your struggle to get used to falling asleep with the machine is normal. I struggled for several weeks to be able to get to sleep easily, eventually it came. Even now (6 months in) some nights I feel awkward breathing through the mask, but with 5min or so I am out. Keep doing what you are. Relax your breathing as much as possible and do not focus on the mask. Sleep will come... Or get out of bed for a but and read and then try again.

Appreciate the support!

I adapted my mask quickly only two days .
The first days and evenings wearing the mask and now i can´t sleep if i don´t have the mask on !

I was started on APAP and even though it wasn't changing pressure much and not reaching very high of a pressure (typical max of 9), that plus the EPR was enough to majorly disturb my sleep. As soon as I switched it to straight CPAP without EPR (after about a week), I was back to falling asleep easily and sleeping through the night, plus even seeing some benefits to the therapy. I too was getting a lot of variability that first week...a couple times I thought I was starting to turn the corner, only to have the next night be worse than ever.

My doctor seemed to dismiss my theory that the pressure changes were what was disturbing my sleep, not so much the CPAP itself. And I also figured out the noise from the EPR was disturbing both me and my husband. So much quieter without it, and with my pressure there was little benefit, plus I prefer without it, as it seemed to start too early.

Thought I'd chime in that sometimes its something very specific about the therapy that is causing or at least strongly contributing to difficulties with CPAP. For example, folks saying they feel suffocated at a pressure of 4. I actually seem to be the odd one out here as I feel I get plenty of air at 4, and my ideal therapy pressure so far is under 5. Above that and I get more central than obstructive events, so my AHI has decreased as I've decreased the pressure (at worst it was above my untreated AHI). Best wishes.

I adapted to falling asleep quickly-just a day or so. However back in the infancy of CPAP when I began treatment in 1988 my first mask was a disaster-I got blisters, sores, etc. from the friction of the mask, and then the masks had to be put on rather tightly to work. as a result I always ad strap marks on my face. And then there were no full face masks, or so my doctor told me.

TheDuke