Pressure in ears from CPAP

I have been on CPAP for about 4 years and it has worked fairly well. In the past two months air pressure in my ears from my CPAP has been waking me up. I never had this issue before. I have to take off my mask,"suck" the air from my ears, put the mask on and try to go back to sleep. The pressure goes right back into my ears. If I clear the pressure and swallow it comes right back. I often have to get out of bed about two hours early (4:00 am) because of the pressure. I tried lowering the pressure to 10 and then 7 another night and still got pressure in my ears. I have tried raising and lowering the humidity. I have tried raising and lowering the EPR. I have tried using Afrin before bed. Nothing has helped to lower the pressure in my ears at night. Last week I decided to try a Neilmed sinus rinse before bed to make sure my sinuses were clear. I have done this many, many times in the past with no issues. This time, however, I could feel the water go up into my eustachian tubes and my ears plugged up. It happened on both nostrils/ears. I sucked in and turned my head and could feel the water slowly come out,. It's very strange. I have an appointment with my ENT this Friday. Something has changed that allows air pressure (and saline rinse) to get into my ears. Has anyone had this issue or have any suggestions?

In my other life I'm a scuba instructor, so I know a bit about ear pressure. Your Eustachian tubes are what equalizes the pressure in your middle ear to that in your sinuses. There are muscles that are supposed to keep the tubes barely closed so that it takes a fair amount of pressure to open them to equalize. It's not uncommon for xPAP machines to cause them to open and allow higher pressure in the middle ear. It's usually not painful but is certainly noticeable, causing your eardrum to bulge out and making thing sound funny. If you ignore it usually the pressure slow diminishes on its own.

It sounds like you might have Eustachian Tube Dysfunction. That's a generalized term for lots of things that could be wrong with your tubes. Mostly it has to deal with the tubes not equalizing pressure because of blockage of some kind, but it's also about the weakening of the muscles that are supposed to keep the tubes closed. You should probably see an ENT who is familiar with CPAP and get it looked at.

Son of a gun, Miss E posted a link to a great study in the other current ear pressure thread. It explains it in much better detail.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lary.26752

Nice!

Thanks Loggerhead. I read the link and similar articles. It seems that this air pressure issue (I think) maybe causing ringing in my ears as well as sinus headaches since those symptoms only started with the pressure. I also have ear pain in my right ear (different than the pain from swimmer's ear). It doesn't seems like the pressure reduces as the night goes on, it seems like stays, wakes me up early and I have to get out of bed. Now my hourly events are up and my hours of sleep are down.