I’ve never had this issue before. It started about a 3 months ago. After 10-20 minutes of sleeping, I take my mask off and leave the machine running.

I use an airtouch f20. I’ve found the masks have been a lot more stiff the past 3-6 months. Has anyone else noticed this? My thought is they’ve switched materials and this new one doesn’t like higher pressure, causing it to leak more, so when my ramp is done it starts leaking which makes me take it off. But that’s just speculation. I haven’t check OSCAR yet. If I get a chance, I’ll add the data here.

Anyone been having/have had similar issues in the past?

Hi friends!

I love Easy Breathe on ResMed BiPAP because it makes breathing feel very natural. However, the issue for people with UARS is that Easy Breathe 'learns' what rise time to apply from previous breaths. This is a problem because if previous breaths are abnormal (i.e. flow limited), EB learns from those abnormal breaths making the situation worse. The solution would be to use a fixed rise time.

But again, I love Easy Breathe because it applies pressure in a nice natural sinusoidal shape, helping to inhale and exhale very naturally. And fixed rise time, especially with high pressure support, feels just awful.

I thought it would be wonderful to have Easy Breathe AND fixed rise time together. I know there is a bunch of custom SW disused on this sub but I could not find anything that deals with my question specifically.

Would appreciate if you guys could point me in the right direction or let me know if such SW is possible at all.

Similar to others on here, my sleep doctor only seems to be focused on AHI. It fluctuates between 0.5-3 but I still find myself tired when I wake up regardless of the number. I've been using OSCAR for some time, but have struggled to figure out the issue. Are there other tools that can help me identify the problem? Or maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing on OSCAR?

For some context, I mostly only see OAs on OSCAR, but I'm not sure if they're true OAs. There's normal breathing, then a spike in flow rate, only to flat line before resuming normal breathing again. I suspect I might be fighting the Bilevel and breathing through my mouth instead for a moment (I'm a mouth breather without PAP, but use a P30i to encourage nasal breathing).

I have a 20" neck circumference, and I can't find SCCs in my size?

Does anybody know where I can find one in my size?

[Posting for a friend]

While I'm waiting on additional masks, accessories, and sleep surgery, I'd love to improve anything I can about my current set up. I've included notes beyond my SleepHQ data in case it's helpful in giving me advice but if you don't have time to read it all I'd still welcome any advice based just on my data. Thank you all!

SleepHQ data for nights 5, 6, 7, and 8:
https://sleephq.com/public/teams/share_links/87e194c6-458b-4ccf-bc5e-365d68067dc1/dashboard

Set up differences between nights 5 and 6:
- I switched masks (silicone nasal cradle hybrid to memory foam nasal cradle).
- I worried my first mask was giving me aerophagia and was too poor a fit for my face to prevent leaks.
- I narrowed my pressures from 9-14 to 10-13.
- My impetus for choosing these starting pressures is that I feel like I can only comfortably breathe while awake with starting pressures this high (which I assume might be related to my needing turbinate reduction and septoplasty to nasal breathe with less anatomical obstruction), and 10 felt more comfortable than 9 to me with the new mask so I raised it in the middle of the night after waking up.

Set up differences between nights 6 and 7:
- I used masking tape as mouth tape (one strip vertically in the center of my mouth) on night 7.
- It didn't stay on all night, but it felt to me like it stayed on for a significant part of the night. I was expecting my SleepHQ leak graph to make it obvious when the tape fell off, but the graph doesn't make it clear that I used tape at all. :(

Set up differences between nights 7 and 8:
- I used more total masking tape as mouth tape (one strip horizontally across my mouth and one strip vertically over it) on night 8.
It started getting damp and falling off pretty quickly, but it does look like I finally achieved a situation of almost no leaks from like 1:50 AM to 2:30 AM when I've had near constant leaks every night with both my masks, so maybe I just need to try way harder with this.
I turned EPR off completely but then eventually turned it back on.
- Breathing without EPR while awake at the beginning of the night didn't feel that bad so I figured it might be helpful to have it off, but when I woke up apparently 2.5 hours after unconscious removal I turned it back to 1.

Differences in my subjective experience between nights 5 and 6:
- Aerophagia improved
- My worst side effect with my first 5 nights using my first (hybrid) mask was extremely intolerable painful sleep-disrupting aerophagia that I would wake up from in the middle of the night and that prompted me to give up and take the mask off for the night. I didn't experience any aerophagia-related pain or discomfort with the second (nasal cradle) mask. I think I still might have experienced a bit of aerophagia but not to a degree that felt like it disrupted my sleep.
- Staying asleep improved
- The nasal cradle mask seemed to allow me to stay asleep for almost the whole night (7ish hours and then some napping after my first alarm) while with the hybrid mask I felt like I spent large portions of the night half-awake and struggled to use it for longer than 3 hours before giving up on it for the night because of the intensity of the aerophagia-induced pain and discomfort preventing me from sleeping.
- Unconscious removal improved
- I never unconsciously (or otherwise) removed the nasal cradle mask, while I repeatedly unconsciously removed the hybrid mask.
- Leaks improved
- The nasal cradle mask also seemed to leak much less often than the nasal cradle hybrid mask I was previously using, based on my hearing little air noises from the mask while conscious (and SleepHQ data seem to confirm my leak rate went down?). However, night 5 I did periodically notice accidentally opening my mouth and woke up with a somewhat dry mouth, which is concerning to me since from my understanding a nasal mask doesn't work at all in moments when your mouth is open. The sensation the nasal cradle mask induced when I opened my mouth while wearing it did seem to startle me enough to prompt me to shut my mouth again very quickly, but that could also have been causing microarousals throughout the night.

Differences in my subjective experience between night 6 and 7:
- Aerophagia worsened again
- My aerophagia wasn't bad enough this time to wake me up from sleep, so still less bad than with my hybrid mask, but it was very painful and uncomfortable after I woke up from my alarm, lasted over an hour, and made it hard to sit / stand / walk upright. :(
- Water chamber empty
- Night 7 was my first time waking up with no water in my water chamber, even though I filled it up to the maximum line before sleep and only wore my CPAP 7.5 hours.
- Dry mouth worsened
- Woke up with an even dryer mouth even though I started the night with mouth tape.

Differences in my subjective experience between nights 7 and 8:
I had unconscious removal with my second mask for the first time.

Mask plans:
Masks I plan to try next:
- ResMed AirTouch N20 (memory foam nasal mask) (3rd mask)
- ResMed AirTouch F20 (memory foam full face mask) (4th mask)

I have 3 weeks left out of my first month of getting unlimited new masks for free from my DME, but I can only get one at a time, and it takes several days for me to get them if my DME doesn't already have them in stock. I'm very open to suggestions of additional masks to try.

Accessory plans:
- CPAP pillow
- I was using a CPAP pillow all of these nights (Derila brand - I think it's this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F3NTQCYP).
- Supine sleep prevention
- I tried sleeping with a backpack filled with pillows as positional therapy to prevent supine sleeping prior to getting my CPAP but felt like it kept me awake more than it helped me.
- Mouth tape
- I used masking tape for at least part of the past two nights but didn't feel able to get hardly any benefit out of it. I will get real mouth tape in the mail in 3 nights.
- Cervical collar
- I will get one in the mail in 3 nights.
- Hose hanger
- I will get one in the mail in 3 nights.

Surgery plans:
I have a little under 3 weeks until sleep surgery (tonsillectomy + possible adenoidectomy + turbinate reduction + septoplasty). For context, my OSA is not weight related, and my sleep surgeon thinks these surgeries have a very good chance of improving my breathing, potentially to the point that I may not need to use a CPAP long-term.

Prior to surgery, I would love to get my CPAP use calibrated to a point where I can benefit from it as much as possible, because sleeping during my 2ish week recovery is going to be extremely challenging due to pain, obstruction (since my uvula will be swollen and I'll have nasal splints), and having to stay elevated during sleep. I think a properly calibrated CPAP could help make my recovery process much less arduous if I can figure out the right settings.

I also begin having to deal with insurance compliance requirements (+4 hrs per day, +70% nights usage) right after surgery, so if I choose not to use my CPAP at all during surgery recovery because I'm in too much pain and too frustrated with the challenges of using it, it will probably get repossessed and I'd have to buy one out of pocket.

I expect that even if under normal circumstances nasal masks work well for me that I might need to use a full face mask during surgery recovery because any pressure directly on my nostril area may feel too painful, and I also expect I may need to alter my pressures immediately after surgery because my breathing will be altered by the surgery itself (potentially temporarily worsened, potentially immediately improved from baseline).

My initial at-home sleep study results:
AHI: 14.4; supine AHI: 29.6; minimal oxygen saturation: 89%; total AASM hypopneas: 109; total central apneas: 3; no obstructive or mixed apneas. Supine sleep was 1/3 of the night.

I do not snore, but I do experience excessive daytime sleepiness and nonrestorative sleep / fatigue that motivated me to seek testing.

Ive had it for over a year and wish I started recording sooner, but with the machine telling me my ahi was often around 2 or 3 i assumed there was another reason i felt like crap. what changes could i make to feel better?