Pressure Setting

[Jake1]

I am falling asleep (with great difficulty I must say) and then shortly thereafter I awaken with air coming out of my mouth. I'm not a mouth breather generally, so I think that maybe the pressure is not high enough to keep me breathing and the air has no where to escape except through my mouth. Tell me, does that make sense? Happens every time. I have a Resmed machine set at 8. In my first week.

[englandsf]

If the pressure is not high enough to keep you breathing, wouldn't the air be going into your mouth, not out?

What kind of mask are you using?

[Sleeprider]

You could have continued this in your thread started yesterday on "Mouth Breathing"

I have a full mask, but I couldn't get a good seal, and you know what it does when the seal is broken. It worked great when I held it to my face, but I couldn't adjust it so the air didn't blow up into my eyes. I didn't mind the full mask except for the seal issue.

I really want to make this work, and this site, and your responses are life saving.

Thanks

I use a pillows mask and I'm fine until I go to sleep, which is very difficult now, and I start to open my mouth a little and the whole thing gets out of control and I awake and take off the mask. The next time I wake up for whatever reason, like a trip to the toilet, I put the mask back on and turn on the machine. This may happen four times in a night. If I can't get back to sleep, I take it off. Would I be better off leaving the mask on with the machine off during down times?

Getting back to your question, you are experiencing leaks through the mouth, presumably when you are using the pillows, but perhaps with the FF mask as well. The problem is the the tongue needs to form a seal against the roof of your mouth/back of throat to prevent air from migrating into your mouth.

Try this exercise without the CPAP; breath through your nose with your mouth shut. Now where is your tongue positioned? Open your mouth and continue to breath only through your nose. Notice you must still block air using the back of your tongue? Now let the tongue block drop and see if you can continue to breath only through your nose. If you can, you're better than me. You can seal your mouth with tape or cover it with your hand and perhaps overcome the leaks, but it's hard and uncomfortable...this is what happens when you sleep and the tongue drops, whether you are normally a mouth breather or not. If the tongue drops at night, air will leak from the mouth, and this is why chin straps alone usually don't work.

Now try the same exercise with the CPAP on. Eventually you should learn to be able to control that pressure. Many of us with experience using nasal CPAP can even talk and manage air through the mouth with the pressure on. Learning this control may assist you if you can carry it over into sleeping. Being able to speak under CPAP pressure requires you to exhale through the nose against the pressure, and speak at the same time. It is something of a learned skill to block that air, but it is essential to successfully using nasal therapy. Practicing this during waking hours can help you be conditioned to forming this air-block and it is an essential skill to successful nasal therapy and improved comfort even in full-face therapy.

BTW, make a recording of the first attempt at this, because the sound that comes out is going to be hilarious.