Swollen Eyes

All,

I'm hoping for some advice on dealing with swollen eyes. I've tried just about every type of mask out there with little to no success. I have finally settled on Nasal Pillows. They do a great job until I eventually open my mouth; and of course this causes a mouth leak which ruins the effectiveness of the treatment. My solution to this was use a chin strap with the nasal pillows.

I've gotten the best sleep I've had in a long time with the combination of the nasal pillows and chin strap. However, there is a pretty severe side effect I've had to deal with since starting use of the chin strap, and that is that my eyes are very swollen every morning. The first thing I tried was loosening the chin strap and nasal pillows but it hasn't helped at all. I've always worn the nasal pillows as loose as possible, and never had issues with my eyes swelling before ,so I know the chin strap is the culprit.

The problem is that I have tried loosening the chin strap a number of times. It definitely does not feel tight at all when I go to sleep, and when I've tried to go any looser, I immediately started dealing with the mouth leak again.

Has anyone dealt with this before? Any suggestions as to how I can address this?

If you do a forum search for 'taping' you'll get lots of info on mouth taping overnight, and it might be worth a try so you could ditch the chinstrap.

Thank you!

I have had lots trouble with dry eyes. I have tried taping [ dont like ]

ended up at dry eye shop and bought goggles made of silicon-- seal around egde of eye socket

seems to be the thing so far. kind of a big deal for me as eyes were
getting very sore over night.

the strange thing is the late onset of this-- using cpap for 6 + years before problems begab

I assume you are talking about swelling around your eyes. Maybe a different one that fit farther back on the head or you could try a soft cervical color instead of the chin strap. Some finds it gives enough support to the jaw and reduces the mouth leaks.

Hi Sam,

I can give you some recommendations based on my own experience.

If you haven't already, you might want to go see a good eye doctor. (One who really, really knows what he or she is doing.) I used to wake up every morning with really swollen and puffy eyes, for the first few years I was on cpap.

I have a cornea dystrophy called map.dot syndrome. There are many similar dystrophies. Some are serious, some aren't so serious (like mine). But they can all cause pain and problems. I also have a certain eye shape that causes me to (gross) sleep with my eyes partly open. (Creepy, I know.)

My eyes used to swell overnight (called corneal edema) because of this dystrophy and the open-eye thing. They'd also get extremely dry, and this lead to a few corneal abrasions, which is something no one wants to have, ever. They're extremely painful.

We were able to come up with a great solution. My eye doctor recommended a sodium chloride 5 ophthalmic ointment to use at night. Bausch & Lomb makes one, or I use one from a company called Akorn, which is less than half the price and I think, better. You can easily order it online. The ointment contains a small amount of saline in it, which brushes any accumulated skin cells off your eyes and reduces the swelling that occurs overnight. (They also make a solution to use during the day.) This really helped resolve my problem a lot. I used to wake up, and my vision was so blurry I couldn't read at all until about noon, when the swelling would finally go down. I'm a musician, and I had to give up playing because I couldn't see the music.

THEN I saw silicone goggles listed on the cpap.com site. You can't buy them there, not sure the picture is even there any more -- but, together with the ointment, they totally changed my life! You can get them at eyeeco.com They're made especially for cpap use. You can get them in black (which I did) to block out light, or clear.

The combination of the ointment and the eye mask has totally solved my problem. I never have any problems any more ... except this past week, when I ran out of the saline ointment and have been using regular nighttime ointment. It keeps my eyes moist, but doesn't help with the swelling at all. To me, that's proof positive that the saline ointment works.

I'm very lucky to have an outstanding eye doctor who's very intelligent and expert. When I asked him a few years ago, he said that yes, cpap machines can dry out your eyes. We discuss apnea at every visit.

Hope that helps! It might not all apply to you, but I think the ointment and sleep mask will help a lot. I don't think a lot of doctors know about the connection. I have a really great sleep doctor, too, but I don't think he's aware of the eye connection.

Good luck!

PS - I can tell you one thing NOT to do, and that is to use eye cream on your eyelids, etc. at night. I recently tried a few different eye creams to try to firm up my eyelids, and it was instant disaster. It actually made them much worse. So use firming cream if you like - but only during the day.