Choice of Mask

[Julie]

Lots of humidity may avoid a dry mouth, but it won't avoid loss of therapy air... the DME is all wet!

[Wulfman...]

I think I made a great discovery, at least for me.

The RT doesn't like me taping my mouth and she said that I should try increasing the humidifier to max, and try to sleep without the tape.

In the end, I found that for the first two nights, I had absolutely NO dry mouth at all, and my AHI was < 1, and maybe 1 short large leak in one of the two nights. I was amazed and somewhat confused.

I've been struggling with these C-Pap issues for over a year trying to figure things out. My latest challenge was Dry Mouth, which was obviously the result of me allowing air to escape through my mouth during the night.

Last night, the 3rd night, I kind of (almost) woke up, but I was very aware of my mouth opening and air passing out, but I was in a real dead sleep and although I tried to wake up, I couldn't fully wake up. I managed to turn over on one side, and it was then that I realized that whenever I wake up from mouth breathing, I'm always, always, on my back.

I hadn't previously put all that that together, but now I'm pretty sure that if I can stay on my side all night, as I did during the first two no-dry-mouth nights, I can stop chasing my tail on this stuff. So maybe the fun is over! I hope so.

We'll see how things go in the week ahead.

Phil

Of course the RT would say that......it's very predictable. Most of them don't have to sleep with these things, don't read these forums and are basically clueless with solving the REAL problems of the users. They just have their standard/pat answers and don't "think out of the box".

If you have problems with congestion, increasing the humidity may be going the wrong way. Try doing nasal cleansing before bedtime and turning the humidity setting down or off. Cool, "passover" humidity can keep the nasal passages open.
Over they years, many users on the forum have found that higher humidity can also lead to higher AHI numbers, too.


Den

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[palerider]

or.... just try to stay off your back

[pdeli]

Maybe I wasn't clear.

The Respiratory Therapist only suggested that I try sleeping without the tape and at the same time raise the humidity, that I had lowered to 2 in order to avoid a distilled water crisis while in Italy. I had previously set the humidity at 4 and sometimes 5 in an attempt to determine if there was any impact by changing. I have not had any congestion problems in the 1.5 years that I've been horsing around with this stuff, but I'm sure that's coming.

Two separate unconnected issues here. Tape and humidity.

As it turns out, sleeping on my side is the real big "ah ha". I had previously wondered why sometimes my mouth was very dry and other times normal, even with tape. It turns out that maybe the tape was just a red herring here because it seems that if air wanted to leave my mouth, the tape didn't usually prevent that. It had nothing to do with my mouth being open because air could easily escape through my teeth. I would often wake up with air leaking out of the corners of my mouth/tape (with my mouth closed.) Even when the tape didn't leak, I would sometimes wake up with my mouth full of pressurized air.

Of course as previously mentioned, all this nonsense happens while you are sleeping or almost sleeping, so how accurate are our conclusions as to what's really going on? As I said, I tried to wake up last night, but apparently since there was no fireman standing over me yelling for me to get up, I just moved into my next sleep phase.

I never tied together the fact that all of these problems seem to occur whenever I occasionally rolled over on my back.

Is this hypothesis conclusive? Of course not, but that's why it's called a hypothesis. Would this make any difference to others? I have no idea.

Phil

[palerider]

I never tied together the fact that all of these problems seem to occur whenever I occasionally rolled over on my back.

Is this hypothesis conclusive? Of course not, but that's why it's called a hypothesis. Would this make any difference to others? I have no idea.

higher incidence of AH events while back sleeping is common. that's why they always want you on your back at a study, because it's typically worst case

[pdeli]

A very delayed response.

That's interesting as I have an "in Lab" sleep test coming up in about a month, and while there was no mention of me sleeping on my back, the Doc did say that although he has no problem with me taping my mouth at home, it would be better if I did not during the test. I wonder if they will want me to sleep on my back as well.

Phil

[chunkyfrog]

My lips and jaw work independently, so my jaw could be wired shut, and I would still mouth-breathe.
Has the OP heard of Chin-up strips? When applied properly, they hold the lower lip up like a bulldog,
so mouth-breathing is awkward, but still possible.
My DIY version is here: