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+--- Thread: "Fullness"/Pressure in ears, ears popping. How can I stop this? (/Thread-Fullness-Pressure-in-ears-ears-popping-How-can-I-stop-this)
"Fullness"/Pressure in ears, ears popping. How can I stop this? - JustAUser - 10-13-2022
I got my CPAP machine about a month ago or so. It's a ResMed Autoset 10. The first few weeks I used it without this problem, but lately for some reason it's starting to 'pop' my ears. Similar to when you go up in high altitude. It's especially problematic if I swallow at all. I've had problems like this with my ears a long time, and the only way I know how to fix it is to hold my nose and "pop" them, and then the pressure resets. But since the CPAP machine is blowing pressure into my nose/mouth it won't work unless I take the mask off, so I'm basically stuck there detaching the hose to pop my ears dozens, if not hundreds of times per night.
I talked to my sleep specialist and she described this as "fullness" in my ears. She said there was a pressure relief setting on the device that she enabled, but it's not helped. Meanwhile, the clinic is very bad at calling me back, and I'm dangerously close to not meeting compliance because I can't sit there all night with my ears full of pressure as it leaves them very sore the next day--not to mention it's pretty hard to sleep with the discomfort in general. She also says the insurance company (Medicare) is pretty ruthless about compliance, so I don't feel like there's a lot of time to sort it out even though she's documenting the issues with it.
I don't really know what else to do. I thought maybe by using nose-plugs, I could keep my mouth closed and pop my ears and keep the pressure from entering my mouth/nose that way, but that didn't really seem to work for some reason either, and I'm all out of ideas.