I just did 3 nights with mine and conclusion: it's all about the type of mask + settings.
First 2 nights was terrible (and painful on the face) due to wrong masks and wrong settings. 3rd night was best I've slept in a longgggg time.
I can't tell you which masks or settings (it will be completely different per person), but reddit is pretty great at providing hints.
My case: disaster with nasal mask and full face mask size L and high pressure settings (lots of central apnea). Almost perfect with 4 to 10 pressure setting and face mask size M (which should be too small for me according to the manufacturer).
I use a Resmed Airsense 11, soon getting a heated tube so I can crank up the moisture setting without getting condensation and noises in the tube. Will try more different full face masks as well.
It took me a few weeks to truly get comfortable but now I can't imagine life without it. Never thought there would be a time when I could get 6-7 hours sleep and I would be fully rested.
1. When getting a new CPAP I had to reduce the pressure from 15 to 14 or 13 to mitigate the suffocating feeling. I still get my normal 0.5 events per hour while I’m use. I also got a different type of mouth and nose mask which may have contributed to needing to adjust the pressure.
2. I was trying to mitigate the colder air being distracting by enabling the humidifier and tube heater. With the humidifier level too high at 5 I got a suffocating feeling, reduced it down to 2 or 3 and the air was warmer while not feeling suffocating. 3. I also turned off the dynamic pressure on breathe out as the timing felt off and would cause a hitch in breathing, so I have just plain constant pressure.
The name of the game is tweaking and experimenting.
Best thing to do is install Oscar [1], take screenshots of your data, and post it to Apnea Board [2]. The folks there will likely be able to offer some solid advice.
Without knowing anything about you or your data, all of this speculation, but: APAP sucks, it is always too slow to respond, it won't know to increase the pressure until after you needed more pressure. This is especially true for wide ranges which are often the default (like 5-20cm). If you need 15cm, it will take forever to get there, because you'll start at 5, start to drift off, get an apnea, the machine will increase the pressure, you'll wake up ever so slightly from the apnea, the machine will decrease the pressure because now you're breathing fine, and the cycle will continue.
[1] https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/ [2] https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/
You may need your pressure adjusted. You are awake so whatever pressure the machine is using is fine. Then you start falling asleep and that's when your apnea kicks in.
If you are using the standard autoset 4-20 setting it may not be enough. Ideally this would be done by a medical professional and yada yada - insert standard disclaimer here. I would suggest increasing the lower pressure (say, to 7) to see if it helps you. I was using the default for years and, while it did help me, apparently it wasn't enough. After increasing, it's been night and day.
It _could_ be an issue with your mask but given what you described, probably not.
- nose mask rather than full face mask
- nasal spray if my nose feels congested
- upping the pressure. In theory a professional is supposed to set your pressure but I do tweak mine. If the setting is not visible it's probably in a hidden menu - Google for how to enable it for your machine.
- sleeping pills
I hope you find a solution. Sleep apnea is terrible.
I wish at-home sleep tests didn’t require a physician to prescribe and review results. It would allow people to experiment with sleeping positions, snore guards and other methods to get their AHI down.
GP needs to find out how to set up the pressure in their CPAP device. YouTube has tons of videos on that subject.
- #1 - switch to Nasal pillows.
- I had to learn to breathe through my nose
- I had to learn to sleep on my back with a pillow that cradled my head without raising it
- I had to make sure the level of distilled water in the humidifier was not too high.
- make sure the tubes are not higher than your nose (otherwise condensation water drips into your nose)
My plan is to get a prescription I can use to buy a bunch of different masks (I don't care about the cost), and get a few days of sleep aids. That should sort it out.
The few hours I did sleep with a CPAP were crazy. I forgot that I stopped having dreams. I had so many dreams while I could breathe at night.
The most notable exceptions I find are Japan and Singapore, where it can be purchased without an Rx.
As for other developed countries, they typically have universal healthcare and the patient does not need to pay for CPAP devices. Regardless, insurance and prescriptions are orthogonal.
From the website you linked:
> All CPAP machines require a prescription for shipment. Details of submitting a prescription are provided below. If you have any questions or concerns, please call us toll-free at 1-855-542-2727.
Here is an example of what I found:
> Do I need a prescription to buy a CPAP mask?
> You do need to provide written confirmation of CPAP suitability when ordering a machine, but this is not required for a CPAP mask.
one big thing is that you really should only breathe through your nose if you're using nasal pillows.
Also, the nasal pillow "masks" are vastly superior.
Set the minimum pressure to something higher, like at least 10, possibly more. If it’s an auto machine then it will adapt to you anyway. At the minute it’s probably set to something like 4 which isn’t any air at all.
The real trick is to fix your mouth leak. Getting on the right pressure helps with that. Fixing your sleeping position can help. Mouth tape can help. A cervical collar can help. Anything that will help you keep your mouth shut at night.
After the surgery, he was finally able to get quality sleep, and his personality changed. Before the surgery he was super-intense, slightly ADHD, not doing great in school. All this went away after the surgery, he is just a regular bright kid now. We noticed changes in the first week, took about 2 years to find new normal. Before the surgery, we tried CPAP for a while, and it helped a bit.
My wife also had the same surgery. It helped, but did not completely cure her apnea.
Your sleep doc/clinic may be able to help.
It's low pressures that feel suffocating (because there isn't sufficient airflow). High pressure feels great... as a life long asthmatic it's the best I ever breathe.
Now I'm on a bipap and tolerate it through the night.
I felt the same way when I was prescribed a CPAP about 20 years ago. I'd be set to go, get panicky, take the mask off and not feel like trying again for longer periods of time until I gave up. Then about 2 years ago I decided to get a doctor again, talk about my sleep apnea, get a new set of sleep studies done, try to get a machine (it took forever!). I got prescribed a similar machine called an ASV.
For me, the thing that works is a breathing technique the technician at the sleep study told me, which was breath in manually, but then just relax to breathe out rather than forcefully breathing out. Currently I do that by breathing in manually, and then relaxing while counting to three as I let it out. I don't know if it's just a mental way to relax or what, but it works for me. Also, when I was taking the sleep study, I was determined to complete the test, so taking it off wasn't an option, even if I got anxious. So I did the breathing thing, and they were able to get enough data to proceed.
I go to sleep when I'm very tired; that might help. As far as I remember, I fall asleep very quickly. If I wake up in the morning, I can't really get back to sleep since I just notice the mask too much while not falling asleep; I guess I'm not tired enough any more at that point. 7 hours is good for me, but often I'll get 5-6 hours.
Edit: oh yeah, my number of sleep events (when you stop breathing) went from 120 to ~1 per hour. For comparison, >5 is mild, >15 is moderate, >30 is severe.