Leaks and Mouth Breathing

[milesleroy]

I use a nasal mask. Lately I have been waking up with a very dry mouth. But I don't see any indicator of large leaks.
Can you have mouth breathing without leaks showing up?

[Jeff241]

I assume you've checked your data and can't see any large leaks. If your data is showing no leak then I'm not sure what is going on.

You can have mouth leaks that aren't large enough to cause a problem. You may just have your mouth open enough for some air to leak and cause a dry mouth. Your machine can handle some leakage, it's when it gets into the large range that the machine can't compensate.

[Julie]

Yes you can, especially if they're particularly large and register as clear airway events... but I would also check your humidity levels as climate and heating can use more (or less) water. If you are losing air from mouth breathing, your therapy won't be as effective and could explain your higher AHIs.

[milesleroy]

I posted in another thread about how my AHI numbers have been going up recently. I assumed it wasn't mouth breathing b/c the leaks are not large on my reports.

Could mouth breathing artificially increase my AHI?

[Julie]

Not artificially... if you mouth breathe, you lose therapy air and so your machine records lowered effectiveness and the AHI goes up. Lots of people purposely raise their pressure hoping for better results, but they just make things worse because more pressure pushes more air out instead of down their airway.

[Wulfman...]

I use a nasal mask. Lately I have been waking up with a very dry mouth. But I don't see any indicator of large leaks.
Can you have mouth breathing without leaks showing up?

"Dry mouth" is pretty much an indicator of mouth-breathing or mouth-leaking......and your therapy is being compromised.
You can still have dry mouth with a full face mask by mouth-breathing, but your therapy isn't compromised.

The "leak numbers" don't have to be significant to indicate that you're losing your therapy air.


Den

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[Pugsy]

Any leak..no matter what the cause... will show up on the reports.
The machine can compensate for a good bit of leak...no matter what the cause.

[Noctuary]

I don't mouth-breathe but several times a week I wake up with a dry mouth, and sometimes I hear a hissing that wakes me up.

I'm willing to try a full face mask, but the more mask you have the more leaks you fight.

[Julie]

That's just not true. If your FFM fits well there's no reason to get more leaks, though some would have you believe it.

And how do you know you don't mouth breathe at 4 a.m. or 1 am, etc?

[Sheriff Buford]

I may be wrong... but mouth-breathing will not show up as a leak. The issue is air escaping thru the mouth instead if entering your body for needed therapy. Once the air enters your body (in your case thru the nose) the machine not detect a leak rate. If your ahi is in line then you will have time to work on resolving the dry mouth. The machine will monitor the ahi rate which is a result of improper therapy.

Sheriff

[Pugsy]

I may be wrong... but mouth-breathing will not show up as a leak.

Sorry...you are wrong. Mouth breathing will show up as a leak if air is exiting the mouth in an amount to alter the pressure the machine thinks you should have.
There's no way to have massive air leaks to the point of compromising therapy without them showing up on the leak graphs.
Now not all mouth breathing causes massive exodus of air out the mouth...I proved that experiment myself and have documented proof.

If someone is mouth breathing to the point that there's a massive amount of air exiting the mouth and not going down the airway....it's going to show up on the leak reports.
Even ResMed documents what it looks like in their ResScan interpretation guide.

[palerider]

I may be wrong... but mouth-breathing will not show up as a leak. The issue is air escaping thru the mouth instead if entering your body for needed therapy. Once the air enters your body (in your case thru the nose) the machine not detect a leak rate. If your ahi is in line then you will have time to work on resolving the dry mouth. The machine will monitor the ahi rate which is a result of improper therapy.

Sheriff

if you're using a nasal mask, then air leaking out your mouth is the same as air leaking out anywhere else.

it reduces the pressure available to keep your throat open, so the machine has to work harder to compensate, and if too much is leaking, then it can't keep the pressure up.

[Sheriff Buford]

sorry...you are wrong.

I kinda knew I was, but my logic told me when wearing pillows, and the air has left the machine, it doesn't know what happens.... gotta go.. I hear the dog barkin' in the back yard... gotta' go check...

Sheriff

[Starlette]

So OA's are the same as leaks?
141030 SH

Starlette

[palerider]

So OA's are the same as leaks?

not in the least.

completely different, what made you think that?

leaks are a loss of air, oa's are a blockage in your airway.

enough leaks can cause more oa's because you don't have enough pressure to prevent them.