Could new nasal pillows be stiff and causing leaks?

Hi!

I had an abnormally high leak level the past two nights.

I just switched to new nasal pillows in the same size (Resmed P10 mask, size medium).

The new pillows are much stiffer than the old ones.

This may mean they move around less when I move around, and break the seal.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this reasonable? Have you heard of 'break in' time for new pillows to adjust to your nose and get a little softer before giving a good seal?

Thank you so much : )

P.S. Here are my SleepyHead stats:

Your low pressure is very low, raise it by a couple of cms e.g. to 6 or 7 and see if that helps. Your leaks are only slightly higher than previously so wait and see if the pressure setting change helps.

Pressure settings are unlikely to be related...they are minimum of 9 and maximum of 10.
The fact that the minimum shows lower just likely reflects that ramp was used. No big deal.

Your leak numbers are a bit high though but they have been high all along in terms of time over red line.
Last night 31% of the time vs 26% and lower long term previously.
90% numbers are up around 30 ish. This means for 90 % of the time you were at or below that number. Your median average is also way up there and it usually takes quite of bit of large leak (over 24) to get that median up.
I would be looking closely at just how much time was spent over 24 L/min.

In all my years of using nasal pillow newer and stiffer usually has meant less leak and not more leak.
Not saying it is impossible for your leak to be worse because of newness but it sure isn't the norm. Most of those that change to newer pillows because of leaks getting worse find that leaks improve with new pillows.

Do you do anything to make sure mouth is closed to eliminate mouth opening/breathing as the cause of the large leaks? Example..... if you tape your mouth then we know that mask movement is the cause of the leak.

Your nose may have gotten a wee bit more sensitive since you started,
making the difference more noticeable. Nipple cream (Lansinoh, in the baby aisle)
can help protect your nose during the first couple of nights with new pillows.
Only use the tiniest smidge.

Another really stupid, wrong comment by Julie. Thank God we have Pugsy!

As usual, Julie is wrong again. Thank heavens we have Pugsy!

appo wrote:Hi!

I had an abnormally high leak level the past two nights.

I just switched to new nasal pillows in the same size (Resmed P10 mask, size medium).

The new pillows are much stiffer than the old ones.

check your old pillows, it's very likely you've inverted the inside cone while cleaning them.

watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MylY6a6KXMY

I'm using a two year old pillow on my p10, I recently swapped in a new one, no change in leak, so I went back to the old one, just to see how long it'll last.

very good, PR thanks!!

Sounds good, thanks so much for the replies!

I've been using Lansinoh every night, taping my mouth, and using the chinstrap so it must be the mask moving during sleep. I'll try adjusting it to be tighter.

The Resmed video is good and I try to follow it. I just noticed my filter was very dirty so I replaced it - maybe that was making a difference too. Fingers xed! ^__^

What color headgear are you using?
Would it be possible to use the smaller headgear? I had some ugly leaks like that and I needed to replace the headgear as it just wouldn't stay snug enough (it was old and stretched out).
If you are using the blue regular headgear I would suggest getting the "for Her" pink/gray headgear as it is a little smaller.

I'm using the blue headgear. Just got a new mask so it's very tight, and I soak it in hot water to increase the tightness weakly.

Over the past week I tried a bunch of things:

- increasing humidity
- using a mouthguard (even followed this construction guide but messed up lol: http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/message-b ... appliance/)
- eating early (530pm for a 11pm bedtime)
- sleeping at more of an incline to avoid aerophagia
- two pieces of tape on the mouth

Two pieces of tape on the mouth did it lol!

Leak last night was 0!! (sleepyhead screenshot of last night): https://www.dropbox.com/s/hyfk8scvzkxae ... 6.png?dl=0

Starting another thread, I think I need to increase the pressure to eliminate these mouth leaks because of increased AHI in last half of night...

Thanks for all the help!
-appo

Just to follow up in case anyone else runs into this:

The above post was a fluke. I kept having leaks, and varied everything until I found the thing that got my leaks to near-zero consistently. I even bought some mouthguards and tried to boil them and bend them into this device LOL: http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/message-b ... appliance/

It turns out the night I used two pieces of tape I ALSO slept on an incline (thanks to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdzKaB-ixxM to try to eliminate aerophagia symptoms).

This should be required reading for everyone on CPAP or dealing with CPAP issues: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations / http://www.stats.org/causation-vs-correlation/

Sleeping on an incline is the only thing that worked to eliminate my mouth leaks. The incline needs to be pretty steep - I have a rolled up blanket and two pillows that I sleep on, at an angle of 20-45 degrees.

The mechanism seems to be that my tongue / palate collapses when I sleep, and this makes me choke and wakes me up (subconsciously).

Then my jaw drops because I need to mouth breathe, and voilà: leaks. I mean, how else could air get in if my tongue is blocking my throat? Pretty scary because I also have tape over my mouth every night.

-appo