Does CPap improve asthma and copd?

[Solar Rays]

Ive read that C Pap improves not only sleep apnea but also insomnia hypertension and reflux.  A friend has asthma and said it helps her. Do you have any experiences of it helping asthma or any other lung issues like COPD?

[Sheepish]

As someone who has both asthma and reflux, I would venture the purely layman's subjective observation that properly treated apnea generates a generalized easing of the exacerbation of the symptoms of those other conditions, but from there to leap to the conclusion that you should take it upon yourself to alter or reduce your current prescribed treatment for those conditions would be unwise and ill-advised. Hopefully, you might indeed feel somewhat better, yet consult your respirologist and your gastroenterologist before making any unilateral modifications to your course of treatment.

[ardenum]

My cpap made my reflux worse. Cpap is also on the other hand a treatment option if youve got an asthma attack and drive to the ER ,they might hook you up to cpap besides giving you IV

[E.W.]

Yes it's sometimes used for copd.  I even picked
up a used bipap that had been used just for copd.



https://www.healthline.com/health/copd/cpap-for-copd

[SarcasticDave94]

I have a moderate level of COPD currently, along with Mixed sleep apnea. FWIW the mixed apnea is why I'm on an ASV instead of a standard CPAP or BPAP.

About the GERD/reflux, mine was somewhat worse when first starting on ASV, but with time and use of a medication, it diminished to being an infrequent event.

As for COPD and any xPAP, mine has not been made worse by the treatment, but I cannot say it made it better either, with one exception. That is rather obvious I suppose, it's easier to breathe under xPAP pressure for me than when otherwise not on the ASV.

[Sleeprider]

For restrictive lung disease and conditions like COPD or asthma, a bilevel therapy may be preferable to CPAP. With bilevel, the inspiratory support pressure is higher than a lower expiratory pressure and this can make the effort of respiration much less. In addition, the ability to lower expiratory pressure, means that it may be less likely to make GERD or aerophagia worse than maintaining higher CPAP pressure throughout the respiratory cycle.

Most insurance, sleep clinics and doctors tend to see CPAP as a means to treat sleep apnea, but there are definitely other reasons to use positive air pressure to relieve respiration in people, with respiratory insufficiency, upper airway resistance and restrictive pulmonary conditions. These more advanced applications nearly always respond better to bilevel than CPAP. In the absence of apnea, a lot of these people end up on oxygen therapy, when bilevel PAP would probably do as well or better.

[johndee]

Hi folks,
I applaud Sheepish's post as being concise and to the point.

There are uses of xpap actually unrelated to sleep apnea as Crowtor suggested.

People with advanced copd or severe asthma can use up lots of energy just breathing.  And sometimes in dire circumstances, a high end BiPap will be used to support breathng effort.  At that point and that usage...it's referred to as non-invasive ventilation.  So that use of xpap can confuse the issue because it's not specific to OSA.
Hope I stated that correctly.
Cheers,
JD

[Judie25]

Ive read that C Pap improves not only sleep apnea but also insomnia hypertension and reflux.  A friend has asthma and said it helps her. Do you have any experiences of it helping asthma or any other lung issues like COPD?

My asthma is exercise induced, not allergic.  I personally have found relief for both my asthma and my GERD, right from the start.  I have been using the CPAP for about 3 years now, with no recurring problems with either of those condidions.

Judie

[PoolQ]

lots of things going on here. using PAP therapy is providing filtered and humidity controlled air (both are good things)
COPD if undiagnosed can complicate the Sleep Apnea testing and make it difficult to find the best settings (personal experience with this)
my personal COPD/SA solution is BiLevel/inhaler/0.5 LPM of O2. with the addition of the O2 my morning headaches are gone and I sleep through the night most nights. Very happy camper here that was getting (lab verified) ZERO sleep at night. The outlook back then was not very good and quite dark.

[PaulaO2]

I have found the heated humidified air in the winter has greatly reduced my cold-air asthma symptoms. I have not had to use the albuterol inhaler in forever (thank god!).