Does mouth breathing use more water from the humidifier?

[bhoffman57]

I have a goodnight 420G wy/ heated humidifier. I was having mmouthbreathing issues and on a typical night, I would just about empty the hhumdifierswater tank. I am now using a chin strap (wy/ great success) and noticed that the water usage is less than half of what it was. Is this normal? I thought at first that the humidifier may not be working as well.

[GoofyUT]

Mouth-breathing takes lots of that nice, pressurized air that your PB420 is blowing up your nose, and sends it right out of your mouth. So, when you mouth breathe, you are moving LOTS of air, and that means LOTS of air is moving over the water in your humidifier which means that it'll pick up LOTS of water, which then goes up your nose, out your mouth and then does a nice job of humidifying your room.

So YES! It IS normal to use lots of water when you mouth-breathe, and LOTS less when you correct the mouth-breathing.It is SO characteristic of mouth breathing that lots of folks will use sharply increased water usage as a tell-tale for mouth-breathing.

Hope this helps.

Chuck

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[tomjax]

I wonder if we all breathe the same?

I can breath in either my mouth or nose or both.
I can breath in mouth and breathe out nose and the other way around.

When I breathe in and out through my mouth, I effectively bypass the PAP and there is therefore no air coming from the PAP and the loss of water would be directly that at the constant pressure that exits only the port.

I cannot breathe from both my nose and mouth with PAP on(nasal Pillows) because the air shunts under pressure and out my mouth.
This is why I think mouth breathers have such dry mouth. TRhere is no humidified air and it only comes from the ambient air.
It would seem that apneas occur because there is no pressure being delivered to the airway.
Anyone differ from this?

[Rastaman]

On this subject, I'm a mouth breather using a Swift with a chinstrap. My new machine holds more and uses less water than my Remstar Plus M Series. That M series had a smaller water chamber and it wouldn't empty out or anything. It would just use 1/2 to 2/3rds of the water.

Then with the s8 there is more water and even less gets used. Less than 1/2 per night. I could easily use it two nights in a row without changing it out. Should I do this?

[rested gal]

Then with the s8 there is more water and even less gets used. Less than 1/2 per night. I could easily use it two nights in a row without changing it out. Should I do this?

Sure.

So sez the person who just adds more anyway.

I rarely ever dump it out...I just keep adding more. Distilled water, of course.

[GoofyUT]

Me too. I just add more distilled water every day, up to the fill line.

Chuck

P.S. NICE PICTURE, RG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rastaman]

Then with the s8 there is more water and even less gets used. Less than 1/2 per night. I could easily use it two nights in a row without changing it out. Should I do this?

Sure.

So sez the person who just adds more anyway.

I rarely ever dump it out...I just keep adding more. Distilled water, of course.

Good to know. I'll also sometimes go two days before I do the cleaning of the nasal pillow and associate plastic tube. Once a week I wash out the big hose. Woohoo! This stuff is easy. I'm pretty methodical though. I like to do a very similar routine each morning and evening because that way I don't usually skip a step. I have everything in a certain order. Heaven forbid anyone ask me a question during the process. I always forget ONE thing on those days. LOL!

[bhoffman57]

Is distilled water really necessary? Isn't that just to prevent water scaling on the humidifier? My 420G's humidifier tank is dishwasher safe and says to use tap water.

[rested gal]

Is distilled water really necessary? Isn't that just to prevent water scaling on the humidifier? My 420G's humidifier tank is dishwasher safe and says to use tap water.

You're right. Distilled isn't really necessary. I use only distilled water in the humidifier chamber for the reason you mentioned -- to prevent the buildup of scale.

[ladytonya]

I've never used anything but distilled so I don't know, but my husband says that if he doesn't use distilled he has trouble with excess stuffiness. It's always a paid making sure you have that jug of distilled with you, especially when you're lugging it through the line at the cruise terminal. We haven't flown since he's been on bi-pap. I'm wondering how they'll handle us at the airport when we fly to Connecticut later this year. I'm not looking forward to lugging the machines plus whatever carry-ons plus my pocketbook through the airport. I'm really hoping that we don't have any trouble. There is no way I can add the jug of distilled to that mess! We'll just have to go to a grocery store and get one when we get there.