CPAPtalk.com

You can really help me here. I use the Ultra Mirage full face mask and in the A.M I have these valleys down beside my nose. I look (almost) like the family pet. What do you do to rid yourself of these. I've tried hot compresses, massage.

Whats your secret?

I have tried the Nasal mask and after many months have come to the conclusion that the full face feels less confining and more free. I would not have believed it but when the lights go out you are not aware of the type of mask but the air available.


_________________

CPAPopedia Keywords Contained In This Post (Click For Definition): mirage, Ramp

needingu - you should really place this last question in a seperate thread to maximize your chances of getting on-topic answers.

i know what you mean. some mornings i look like you could go skiing in the tracks. i just wash my face, put on some makeup, drink a couple of cups of coffee and hope they disappear by the time i go to work. oh well, enough whining, i keep reflecting on all the people who lost their lives five years ago today and thank god i am alive to be able to whine!

dsm wrote:Just came across this thread

IIRC
Hydrogen Peroxide is the fuel that was in the torpedo that exploded & sank the 'Kursk'

HydrogenPeroxide is the fuel used in the famous 'Rocket Belt'

I know of several Helicopters designed to spin their rotors using Hydrogen Peroxide as jet tip propelland fed through tubes down the rotor blades.

Exscuse me if I smile whn someone tells me they are using it in their H/H

DSM

PS I know the HP I am talking of is generally 97%+ pure.

Who knew that ANY percentage of hydrogen peroxide could do all that? Well, actually, DSM did. Thanks for the info. I probably would have added the H2O2 to my H20 if my RT had suggested it. Not now!

Re h2o2 & rocketry - I have an aquaintance in Mexico (a genius IMHO) who builds these things. He also sells distilled h2o2 and will sell the stills for distilling it.

http://www.tecaeromex.com/ingles/peroxidoi.html (look for his h2o2 motorbike)

Re helicopters ...
http://www.peroxidepropulsion.com/ (there are quite a few that used h2o2)

Kursk & h2o2 ...
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/euro ... index.html

Wikipaedia ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide

Enjoy

DSM

Why would it be bad for you??? It is just H2o2......!
I put a couple cups in my humidifier every night to put some extra oxygen in my bedroom while I sleep and it puts me out like a light.....
the best thing since sliced bread!

Please see The Bill Munro H2O2 inhalation method on EarthClinic.com:

http://www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/hyd ... ation.html

You guys do not even have a clue. Do some research! Food grade peroxide at 1.5% spray mist inhaled 3 times a day well cure lung cancer. Pretty easy to understand if you do some research.

I would skip the addition of hydrogen peroxide. I'm a geochemist. We use the 30% solution to digest samples. Reagents often have stabilizers added to keep them from decomposing, and further, they may have traces of other chemicals that are byproducts of the process used to synthesize the chemical. Reagents for a chemistry lab are very pure and we pay a pretty penny for them. But household chemicals are dilute solutions of fairly dirty processes. I think we probably do not want either aerosols or volatiles that might be produced from using such water in your humidifier.

Bleach for example is a solution of sodium hypochlorite. But when I warmed some up to convert it to sodium chlorate (I needed a rough chlorate peak location standard) and then analyzed it by ion chromatography, I found many other peaks. I concluded its fine to bleach cloths and kill bacteria but after using it for that purpose, you need to rinse really well with tap water, then some distilled water. I suspect its possible that consumer grade hydrogen peroxide will also have some impurities that may not be desirable to have near your air stream. So, I would avoid adding them to your water. Use them to clean but then get rid of every trace by rinsing well.

Distilled water has the virtue of being not a very good host for bacteria or algae because it has no nutrients. Further, because it has no dissolved minerals there is no problem with precipitation of calcium sulfate. That is the deposit that typical mineral and organic acids cannot remove and which can then be a surface which will host bacteria. Often weak acid solutions will fizz and remove part of the precipitate but that is only the acid soluble carbonates which are dissolving or decomposing. The calcium sulfate will remain.

Calcium sulfate is the sludge you find in water heaters. It has a reverse solubility being more soluble in cold water than in hot, thus the precipitation in water heaters. Many natural waters can become close to saturation in calcium sulfate. Water that comes from aquifers with limestone have plenty of calcium and so just a little sulfate from oxidizing pyrite in limestones will get you that nasty hard water ring. Also, you can get hard water from aquifers that contain a lot of basaltic rocks. Same deal, lots of sulfides in basalts and plenty of calcium rich minerals that dissolve. Then you can add a whole variety of yellow to red to brown to black colors from dissolved iron. Ferrous (Fe+2) iron is quite soluble in oxygen poor slightly reducing carbonate rich water. When it comes out of the tap the water oxidizes when mixed with air and Ferric (Fe+3) iron is insoluble and precipitates to make that lovely iron stain we all know and love. That can be removed pretty easily with oxalic acid but if it co-precipitates with calcium sulfate, well, scrubbing is all you can do and then you have scratches and more sites to nucleate more mineral deposits.

This is probably too much information.

Thanks for the science lesson Mr Bill and Brasshopper... now my head hurts.

OK.....There's something I don't get about all these "You wouldn't want to breath that" statements. I'm new to this whole thing. In fact, I don't even have an APAP machine yet. But don't these humidifiers work by getting a plate hot and evaporating the water into the air flow? If so then you're not breathing *anything* that's is the water as it's all left behind when the water evaporates. After all, this evaporation system is how you get your distilled water. Of course you'd smell anything you put in the water but that's different.

What am I missing here?

Randy

That is what is advertized, but in actual use some of the water is caught up in the air and makes its way down the tube into the mask.

Here is a test you can run.

Pick up a PWT by Hanna.

Flush your tank, hose, and mask with distilled water.

Fill your humidifier with distilled water and use an ice bath to condense the water vapor coming out of the mask. Measure the water with the PWT.

Next, add some salt to the water in the humidifier. Run the same test and compare the results with those from using distilled water.

If the unit simply evaporates water from the humidifier, there should be no change in the PWT results.

If salt ions can make it through the system, you then have to ask what else can make it through...

Many eye drops and drugs have hydrochloric acid in them. As does your stomach.

Just because something's dangerous in high concentrations doesn't mean it's slightly dangerous at low concentrations.

However, I doubt a few drops of hydrogen peroxide will do much to kill bacteria. I don't know if any H2O2 would make it out of the water into the hose, but I wouldn't do it anyway.

archangle wrote:
Just because something's dangerous in high concentrations doesn't mean it's slightly dangerous at low concentrations.

Absolutely right. Surmises that don't consider dose/concentration have a high likelihood of being wrong.

Another example: a few pounds of nitroglycerine can demolish a building, but angina patients put nitro pills--about 0.5 mg.-- under their tongues with no danger of blowing their heads off.

Regarding H2O2, some people rinse and gargle with the 3% solution every day. Some people actually drink the stuff, thinking it will give them more O2. It's very unlikely that dilute H2O2 in a PAP tank could be dangerous.

Suppose it's true, as HoseCrusher suggests, that airflow can aerosolize some particles of water from the tank:
How many particles?
How far up the hose will they go?
How much of it will break down into water + O2 before it can get to your face, particularly considering the surface area of aerosol particles is so high?
If droplets of water with some H2O2 actually get to your face, how far down the respiratory tract will they go?
How much H2O2 would it take to overwhelm the peroxidase enzymes present in every cell; how much more would it take to cause some kind of harm?

I just don't think it serves any purpose for people to to be fearful of risks so vanishingly trivial.

The more valid question, again JMO, is why bother with H2O2?

The only hypothetical benefit I can think of is that there could be some concentration of H2O2 that is safe, yet effective enough to significantly decrease the already tiny risk of getting an infection from the tank. But, on that, I'd want to see the evidence first.

I use only distilled water in the humidi. I regularly soak the humidi chamber in hot water & white vinegar for disinfecting -- white vinegar is a mild disinfectant.

For "mask face" I massage my face when in the shower.