If you have sleep apnea then it’s likely that your medical practitioner has advised you to buy a sleep apnea machine. This is a crucial way to help treat the issues that you experience every time you try to go to sleep at night. However, this excellent device sometimes causes small issues with people and some common problems experienced are a mask that doesn’t fit as snugly as you would like, sometimes people find it really difficult to fall asleep and they also suffer from a blocked nose and mouth that is very dry.
If you want the buy the best sleep apnea machine that is currently available you would probably be advised to go for the Resmed autoset Airsense 10, but before you invest your hard-earned cash, you should probably see if you can try it first. The following are just some of the problems that you may come across along with some helpful solutions.
- The wrong size mask – Everyone has a different face shape and so sometimes the style of mask that you choose may not fit as tightly as you would like. Some obvious solutions would be to try different sizes of masks and some of these masks come with straps that help to make them fit better. The masks come in many different sizes, so talk to your medical practitioner or your supplier about getting the best fit for your face.
- Wearing the mask itself – This is something that you have never had to wear before so it’s normal that it takes a little while to get used to wearing it on your face. The solution to this is to wear the CPAP mask during the daytime for short periods when you are awake just to get used to it being on your face. Maybe you take a nap during the day and so you could put it on then for the 15 to 30 minutes that you nod off.
- Some difficulty with forced air – The solution for this is to get a machine that offers you what is known as a ramp feature and so this allows you to set a low air pressure setting and then to increase it over time. If you set it quite low then it automatically increases the overall air pressure to the setting that was prescribed for you by your medical practitioner.
- A stuffy nose – This is a common issue and so you should do all that you can to make sure that your mask fits onto your face snugly. If there are even the smallest of leaks, it can really dry out your nose and so maybe try to make the straps a little bit tighter to make the mask fit properly. Some machines have a humidifier that is heated and this can help as well.
The thing that you should always keep in the back of your mind is that these are only issues that can be resolved quite easily and so you should always continue using your CPAP machine for your ongoing sleep apnea.