Allergy Season - Benefits to CPAP?

[MDALE]

As a new CPAP user, I've read that I should experience less problems with pollen due to breathing filtered air at night.

Does CPAP help reduce problems with pollen? What has your experience been?

[soundersfootballclub]

In my case this has been true. I suffered from congestion in general at night and now thanks to CPAP I rarely feel stuffed up. I would make sure to use good filters and replace them often since you have allergies.

[fiberfan]

As a new CPAP user, I've read that I should experience less problems with pollen due to breathing filtered air at night.

Does CPAP help reduce problems with pollen? What has your experience been?

During the spring allergy season I frequently start noticing symptoms 1/2 hour after I get up - this was a distinct change from the pre-cpap behavior when I would wake up with symptoms and have to wait for allergy meds to kick in before I could go back to sleep.

[-tim]

Get the hypoallergenic filters. They filters better but need replaced more often.

[robysue]

Last spring during tree pollen I noticed the following things concerning my seasonal allergies and CPAP:

1) The filtered air helped some with night time congestion----particularly if I wasn't badly congested in the first place. (And I use the extra fine filters to try to filter out the pollen)

2) I woke up with significantly less congestion in the morning, but the allergy symptoms would start during breakfast and they seemed to be worse simply because I was going from "almost no congestion" to "standard congestion for spring."

3) Trying to get to sleep when I was congested was a serious problem. The CPAP seemed to aggravate my typical pre-cpap pattern of turning over every few minutes while trying to get to sleep. This pattern of repeatedly turning over is caused by my lower nostril getting clogged to the point of discomfort. Then I turn on my other side, the clogged nostril clears, but the new bottom nostril gets clogged up. And I turn over and the cycle repeats ad infinitum .... With CPAP, this familiar cycle went from mere annoying to intolerable. And in order to tolerate being in bed trying to get to sleep with the CPAP on, I found that I had to break this cycle of repeatedly turning over. Fortunately, once I learned how to be much more serious about my daytime congestion than I'd ever been in the past, the worst of the "repeatedly need to turn over in bed" problem went away and I was able to get to sleep with the CPAP without to much problem again.

4) My median and 90% pressure levels noticeably increased during the worst of of my allergy season. And so did my snoring. I'm not sure if the allergies simply caused more snoring, which then caused the pressure increases. Or if the congestion triggered more events in general (including snoring and flow limitations) and that triggered the additional pressure. (On some of nights with phenomenally high pollen levels, I also had AHIs > 4, which is very, very unusual for me.) The result, however, was more aerophagia. And in order to keep the snoring and pressure level as low as possible, I found that I had to be much more serious about my daytime congestion that I'd ever been in the past.

5) Once I finally got on top of really managing the daytime allergy symptoms, I virtually eliminated the daytime congestion with the use of a daily zyrtec, ample use of saline sprays, daily use of a neti pot, and (finally) the use of Flonase right before bedtime. And once my daytime congestion was substantially reduced, the need to repeatedly turn over in bed problem was substantially reduced and no longer intolerable AND my median and 90% pressure levels went back down almost to where they had been in the coldest part of winter. And so by treating my allergies more aggressively than I had pre-CPAP, I found that not only was I sleeping much better with the CPAP, but I was also feeling better in the daytime since I was no longer sniffing my way through spring, summer, and fall. All in all, a win-win.

[MKA]

I've been doing same thing with regard to congestion maintenance. The pollen count around here right now is 11 out of 12....Zyrtec daily, lot of saline, neti pot, and I have Nasonex, but still am finding congested so I've resorted to Afrin (one spray) to assist before going to bed. I think it all kicked in yesterday evening bc I really didn't need to do the Afrin so things are really improving. Takes about a week or so for the Zyrtec to kick in, but if you religiously take these steps, easy breathing! Had to flip AC on yesterday though...might have contributed to the improvement also.

[Lee Lee]

I'm having a terrible time with the tree pollen this year. I went to bed congested last night, one nostril completed closed. The result was that the other nostril took the full force of the pressure. I woke up at 3 PM in screaming pain due to a dried out, overblown nostril. Really feeling awful today..so, no, no benefit for me!