Test User's Overview of Apnicure's Winx system

[SleepingUgly]

Is your mouth staying shut?

[Xney]

Can air leak out of the mouth from this? Can you still use a CPAP with nasal pillow?

If your mouth opens, you lose the "seal" of the vacuum. Your mouth isn't really 'closed' entirely - the tube sticks out, and the mouthpiece sort of is in front of your teeth. Maybe I'll take a photo of it later to show you.

I would not try to use CPAP with it, I don't think that would go well.

I like the air supply my machine gives me due to my constant congested nose

Heh I think CPAP is still a better option for almost everybody. If it works, stick with it!

[Xney]

Is your mouth staying shut?

It "seals", there's a vacuum with the tongue. I wouldn't say the mouth is entirely shut, it kind of is a little open. There's still a vacuum because there's a plastic part in the front of the mouthpiece.

[SleepingUgly]

Is your mouth staying shut?

It "seals", there's a vacuum with the tongue. I wouldn't say the mouth is entirely shut, it kind of is a little open. There's still a vacuum because there's a plastic part in the front of the mouthpiece.

But can the jaw drop open? I've got serious jaw drop.

[chunkyfrog]

It appears to be a simpler alternative for travel (if it works)
Wonder how long it would take for TSA to not freak out over yet another piece of equipment.

[Xney]

Is your mouth staying shut?

It "seals", there's a vacuum with the tongue. I wouldn't say the mouth is entirely shut, it kind of is a little open. There's still a vacuum because there's a plastic part in the front of the mouthpiece.

But can the jaw drop open? I've got serious jaw drop.

Yeah, I haven't tried it, but I think as long as it doesn't go too far down. You can un-do the seal if you try - I imagine at some point, the jaw lowering could break the seal. I'll try it out tonight a bit and see.

[Xney]

Update on days 4-6 or whatever:

I had a very nasty sinus thing starting Friday night, getting mostly better by last night, though still not gone. I guess it gave me a bit of experience in seeing how the machine worked with a sinus problem, and comparing it to CPAP.

I've found for myself personally that with a sinus problem, sudafed generally makes things good enough to use CPAP. The primary problem with using cpap with a sinus problem is having the air flow to be good enough. As a nasal pillows user, the nose gets sore from all the tissue, and that can be a problem in making it comfortable enough to wear, and seal. If I can fall asleep with it going, then it's usually fine for the rest of the night.

Side note: coughing with a CPAP is a major problem, especially since I would tape my mouth. Bad, bad results. Usually, if there's any chance I would cough, I'm forced to go without taping and deal with mouth leaks. Sneezing has the same problem - if I could, I'd pull the nasal pillows off briefly, or it could be "bad".

Winx positives with a nasal/throat problem: for coughing, I didn't feel I needed to do anything special. I would open the mouth a bit, things would unseal, and I could cough. Sneezing of course isn't a problem. There's nothing to irritate the nose, so if I could fall asleep without anything, breathing through the nose, then I could with the Winx.

Once the throat thing (below) got better, I did find it to work okay pretty quickly. It was only the first sick night that was majorly bad on the Winx.

Winx negatives with a nasal/throat problem: The first thing I noticed is the drainage down the back of the throat. This tends to make you swallow, both to clear an irritation in the back of the throat, and to help the drainage move along. With the Winx, this was a very significant disturbance. It's not great to need to swallow with a cpap (due to it feeling like swallowing a lot of air), but it was untenable with the Winx. Maybe it's just me, but I simply couldn't sleep with the Winx on when I had to swallow every minute or two a little.

What happens is when you swallow with a vacuum in your mouth is it re-opens the back of your mouth, and it has to re-vacuum it again. This happens over and over, and it makes noise each time to achieve a vacuum. Each time also irritates the throat more, because the swallowing motion is pretty awkward. I ended up using the cpap for that first bad sick night. If I didn't have that, I'd have had to use nothing.

Overall sinus/throat winx vs. cpap: I think I rate them overall about the same, with different strengths and weaknesses. Nasal issues of any type seem magnified with CPAP (as a nose breather), whereas throat/mouth issues seem to be a lot more annoying with the winx. I could see having both systems and switching if needed for a night or two. I remember nights where I had to sneeze regularly, and the cpap seemed like it hated me all night. Due to all the movement of the tongue and the requirement to keep a seal in the mouth, I think the winx has the same type of problems with mouth/throat stuff.

I'd be interested in hearing from other users once it starts getting out there more, what their experience is with sick nights..

Other progress: I extended my trial period (thanks, Peninsula Sleep Center!) due to some days being just completely messed up with it. So I'll have it at least until Monday next week.

It's hard to gauge the effectiveness due to the sleep problems, and I woke up with it next to me this morning. It took me months to sleep with CPAP every night, and months to stop taking it off, so this isn't entirely unexpected. Despite the choppy sleep, I feel like it's probably equal to the cpap for me, or better. No real problems adjusting to it still, I feel like after an hour or two, the tongue feels pretty normal.

I'm asking about how to clean it better, especially the mouth piece. They recommend using warm water to wash it, but I feel like it would be inadequate. I think I'd have to wash some parts maybe once or twice a week in something stronger. They don't have a "safe" way to do it yet, due to it being so new to the market, but I think I'm going to come up with something - but not unless I get my own system.

In terms of hygiene, there seems to be both pluses and minuses compared to cpap. On the negative side, you're dealing with saliva, which is inherently messier or yuckier to deal with. Also with it sticking in your mouth, it has a cleaning problem similar to dealing with an oral appliance or mouth guard.

On the plus side, since it's sucking air and a bit of saliva, instead of "pushing" them, it's inherently a bit better than cpap. I am pretty careful with the cpap water tank, for example. I do miss breathing the filtered air of the cpap.

[Xney]

Also, a note on sound: CPAPs have gotten pretty quiet over the years. This is good. The Winx system is brand new, and one of the things that's really noticeable about it is the sound when it's forming the vacuum. It sounds like a pump, since it is a vacuum pump. Placing it on a folded towel reduced the vibration sound from it to almost nothing, but you still have the vacuum sounds. Once it has a vacuum, it tends to be completely silent, or very silent. How quiet it stays depends on how good the vacuum remains. Every time it has to reform, you hear some pumping sounds.

It also has to "pump" when it's pulling water or saliva through the system. When I put it first on each night, it has to clear the remaining water inside it and the saliva in the mouth through it a little bit. This makes the system seem to take maybe 2-5 minutes to really settle down.

The sounds don't bother me, and I don't know if it's just this trial system that makes the noise. Perhaps a different one would be quieter. The sounds don't bug me, but I have to wonder how people would feel about it who have a bed partner. It makes me wonder if the system could be placed somewhere to deaden the noise, or would it make it worse? Something I'd have to think about if I decide to get one.

Once things are dialed in - if it's maintaining the vacuum - it's dead quiet, though.

[SleepingUgly]

How's it going, Xney?

[Xney]

Still a bit under the weather.

I'm dealing with a problem now with it in terms of the spit tank. It's dropping pressure when it detects dampness at the top of it, and this tends to happen when it gets "foamy". It also sometimes will shut off completely when it gets even more damp. Both of these compromise or disable the treatment.

The real issue is it doesn't have an alarm when this happens! There's no doubt this is because it's a brand new machine, there's some technical wrinkles to solve. I'm not sure if it's something that can be addressed more quickly, or worked with. I'm probably going to get a machine just because the trial cost for them makes it a no-brainer. Maybe the company has some ideas on how to do better with some of the technical problems - I'm going to ask them!

So overall so far I'm liking it, but there's some problems in using it that have nothing to do with wearing it or getting used to it.

[squid13]

Nobody has asked this yet so I guess I'll ask. What is the price of this machine? I googled it and no where will anyone mention the price.

[CavemanSean]

Just did a little bit of reading on this, and Apnicure has a nice little video on the Winx system; Video Found Here looks quite useful unless your a mouth breather like myself

[Xney]

I don't know what the price is on it once the trial ends, which if you're not in the batch from last year, it already has.

[SleepingUgly]

So when the saliva accumulates in the chamber, it reduces suction and the machine shuts off? That doesn't sound good. What are you supposed to do to fix that?!

[Xney]

There's a sensor at the top of the container. This is supposed to tell the machine if it gets full. The problem is, due to saliva being foamy after being sucked down, it seems to get the sensor wet. I think it has some back-off functionality if it's starting to get a little wet (to avoid sucking down a ton of moisture, or to save the pump?) and it will actually turn off completely if it gets really wet.

The "a bit wet" feature is annoying - I think the sensor is just not working properly since it seems to trigger a reduced effort too easily.

The "completely off" feature is understandable, but it needs to have some type of alarm.

I'm going to ask about it when I'm calling them tomorrow. I think both these problems are design things which can be addressed - it's just a very new machine.