r/CPAP

I have been using Resmed airfit f-40 face mask for a couple of years. Cannot sleep on my side without major air leaks. Mouth breather most of the time. What would be the nasal pillow you would recommend trying? Think maybe using a chin strap might allow me to switch to nasal pillow and then sleep on my side which I really prefer.

Understanding that there are chains as well as online stores what are the best places to purchase (in Canada)

CPAP machine?

Mask?

Supplies?

Any benefit to buying everything from one place?

Hello fellow CPAP warriors!

I just got my Resmed 10 upgraded to the 11…(it’s been six years)

Should I move the SD card from the 10 to the 11? They didn’t say anything about that…lol

What are you all doing to power your CPAP if the power goes out?

I will be visiting Porto soon, any advice for buying distilled water? Is it easy to find? Alternately, could I just use tap water temporarily?

Today was my first day I’ve slept a full night with my cpap on. No slips or anything it was fully on the entire night.

Oh my god.

First off all, I don’t feel the normal exhaustion I feel when I wake up. I still feel a bit tired but it’s a lot more manageable. Second of all, I usually wake up with my blood pressure ranging from 145/90-165/105 which I’ve been managing with BP medication, and today I woke up 133/85! Still slightly elevated but man, I’m incredibly proud of myself for sticking with the cpap therapy.

My symptoms during the day before the cpap was anxiety/depression, high blood pressure, exhaustion beyond normal, and racing heart. I just got my cpap two weeks ago, I only kept it on for 2 hours because it was hard to breathe in it. Eventually I said fuck this and used a bigger size mask (I was wearing a small then switched to a medium) using the resmed air p30i and it made a WORLD of a difference. I went from 2 hours to my full 8 hours in just 2 nights.

Just felt a difference today, and I only really used it 100% last night. I’m so excited to see an even bigger change in a few weeks.

Thank you!

Hello everyone! Do y'all have any suggestions for how to cover my CPAP (airsense 11) to blend into the decor of a bedroom? I was thinking about maybe a decorative box with a lid and a hole for the tube, but that still leaves the hose out and would probably make it hard to remove the tank and I'm not sure if that's even safe to do. (Tbh I don't know how the CPAP works I just put it on my face and trust in doctors/technology). Obviously if it's a safety hazard I won't do it, but I'd like it to look nicer and bonus points if it keeps my cat from sitting on top of it! Any ideas or has anyone done this? Thanks!

I have all kinds of odd skin sensitivities, and I think I'm developing a sensitivity to silicone. Are there any other full face masks that don't have silicone touching your face? It's especially problematic around the nose area--I have everything else covered in fabric, but can't figure out how to cover that part. Unicorn type, please, I don't do well with the elephant variety. Thanks in advance!

Hi fellow sufferers of the worst disease ever invented. I tolerate CPAP fine if I can fall to sleep. However, I experience transitional sleep apnea when wearing CPAP that lowers my oxygen to 87% and wakes me up. looking for some kind of hack that gives me a bit more air as my O2 drops when I am falling asleep.

I’m a 22-year-old male, healthy, lean, active, and I’m trying to figure out what’s changed.
I started CPAP (nasal mask) in April 2025 at a fixed pressure of 5 cm H₂O. For the first 7 months, it was honestly life-changing. I woke up feeling rested every day, had vivid dreams almost every night, and woke up with morning wood basically every morning. Libido was great.

Then I moved to Utah (around 7,000 ft elevation). Within a couple of weeks, everything changed. Morning wood almost completely disappeared (maybe 10–12 times over six months), dreams became much less vivid, and I felt noticeably more tired. I also gained 10-15 lbs so that also had something to do with it I’m sure. I asked my sleep doctor about increasing my pressure, but my settings stayed the same.
Three months ago I moved back to my home in the Midwest( Normal elevation) .

For the first few days I actually felt better and got morning wood again, but then the symptoms slowly came back. Now I’m almost back to how I felt in Utah.
Here’s what’s confusing me:
Same CPAP settings (5 cm H₂O)
Same nasal mask
Dropped to around the weight I was last summer (currently ~176 lb)
Blood work looks normal:

Total testosterone: 721 ng/dL
Free testosterone: 122 pg/mL
LH, FSH, prolactin, estradiol, thyroid, glucose, etc. all normal.
CPAP reports “good” scores.
A couple of things I’ve noticed:
I recently caught myself snoring while wearing the CPAP.
I can now breathe through my mouth with the nasal mask much more easily than I could when I first got it.
The supply store gave me a chin strap to try because they thought mouth leaking could be an issue.
The biggest thing bothering me isn’t even libido—it’s that I went from waking up with morning wood almost every day to maybe once every 10 days. Since this all happened, I also don’t feel as rested and my dreams aren’t nearly as vivid. Those changes all seemed to happen together.
Has anyone had something similar happen where CPAP initially worked great but gradually seemed less effective even though the machine looked “fine”? Did it end up being pressure, mouth leaks, sleeping position, needing another sleep study, or something else?
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s gone through something similar.

I'm totally new to CPAP and I just got my Airsense 11 with the Nova Micro Pillows mask a week ago, so many of my issues may be just starting difficulties. I think I still need to dial in all my other settings as well, but something I can't do easily is change my pillows size. I can't hardly wear the mask more than 2 hours or so per night, and a lot of it is feeling lots of discomfort and irritation around my nose. I need to work the pillows in around my septum, and from what I have read the holes should just line up with my nostrils and not pinch down on my septum.

Based on what I'm seeing in the packaging, I should have received a "fit kit" from F&P, but I just got handed the opened product packaging with the manual, and the assembled medium pillows and hose from the tech. The tech frankly didn't do a whole lot in terms of fitment, but I trust they knew what they're looking at. I only get 3 mask changes for free, and now they're telling me sizing up is considered a change when my packaging says I should have all 3 sizes.

Are they scamming me for the small and large pillows? should I just bite the bullet and burn a mask change? what if this happens again if I need another type of mask and I'm up to 4 changes?

I’ve been kicking around an idea and wanted to get some input from the people who have actually lived this. Working with CPAP patients, I’ve noticed I end up troubleshooting many of the same questions and concerns over and over again:
“I feel like I’m suffocating.”
“Why is my stomach full of air?”
“Why am I still exhausted?”
“My mask leaks no matter what I do.”
“Nobody told me this could happen.”

It got me thinking about putting together a practical guide for new CPAP users and my own patients—something that’s easy to read and explains not only what can happen during those first few weeks and months, but why it happens, what you can try, and when it’s time to reach out for help. Basically, the resource I wish every new CPAP user had when they brought home their new bedside roommate that blows air at them all night. I’ve worked with a lot of CPAP patients, spent a lot of time helping people troubleshoot therapy, and I’ve also used CPAP myself for a couple of years. Even with that background, I know there are lessons that only come from actually living with this therapy night after night.

So I’d love to hear from you. If you could go back to when you first started CPAP:
What do you wish someone had told you?
What almost made you quit?
What made the biggest difference in helping you succeed?

For anyone who takes the time to respond, thank you. I genuinely appreciate you sharing your experiences, and I hope to turn those lessons into something that helps future CPAP users.

I am revisiting my CPAP sleep therapy after a few years off. My spouse had concerns about me stopping breathing in the middle of the night. I previously used a full face mask which caused issues with irritation on the bridge of my nose.

I switched to the AirFit P10 nasal pillow and slept with it for 7 hours 50 minutes last night. Overall it was not bad, but this morning there is irritation at the base of my left nostril. I tried to adjust the headgear so it was snug and not too tight. Maybe I still need to loosen it a bit? Anyone have any tips on how to prevent skin irritation?

Hi all, my CPAP is telling me that I’m having perfect scores every night. My Oura ring was telling me my average oxygen level was starting to decline between 92-94% every night so I decided to test wearing an o2 sensor for the last two nights. I’m spending roughly 45 minutes every night between 90-94% and I feel like absolute garbage every day. Is this time enough to impact sleep? My pressure is set from 7-15, temp at 80, and humidity at 2. I can’t seem to figure it why I feel so awful. It’s mainly brain fog, memory issues, and neck tension. Help. :(

So, every evening I put a dose of distilled water, I'm putting it to the level just in the middle between MIN and MAX indicators on the box.

How can I know it actually does anything? When I was on the measurement in the hospital, they used a machine without humidifier and from what I remember, the "taste" (I can't think of a better word) of this pressured air was exactly the same. The liquid level in the morning is lower than on the evening, yes, but not too much lower. I was actually expecting almost all of the water being used and now I'm worried I'm "wasting" it (the distilled water itself is cheap, but it's kinda troublesome to remember to buy a fresh 5L container every once a while, especially when I have to ask my wife to go to the gas station for it, since I don't drive myself).

Am I overthinking and should just pour-and-forget?

So, I'm after first 3 (and a half) weeks of the therapy. Polysomnography results showed AHI 47.6, so I decided to start.

The first night, the measurement in the hospital, was terrible - but mostly because the technician was (in my totally unprofessional opinion!) simply bad, she just put the mask on my face and left the room and it was actually me lying there and watching videos how to adjust it to my face ;-)
The second night, on my own equipment, at home - sure, a bit harder, but mostly because the whole thing and the experience was new to me.

And since then... no problems. I'm just adding water to the humidifier, putting the cushion back on the harness, click a button and I'm sleeping, like a child, 5-10 minutes later. Data in the myAir app shows the AHI between 0.0 and 1.1 (with the later very rarely). Actually if not the air going out through the exhaustion holes in the mask, I don't feel anything. Note: I never had problems with actually going to sleep. What I mean is: the mask on my face, the machine humming - nothing causes any problems.

And yet, I watched a ton of videos and read a lot of blog posts or thread here and everyone "promises" the long adjustment time, measured in weeks.
Maybe I'm overthinking, but it gets me a bit worried ;-) Shall it be that easy? I know, people are different, YMMV in every case, but isn't it... too easy?