Chin-Up Strips, mouth leak and overall restedness

I've ditched the full mask for good. Even with my history of nasal issues, pillows work well if I use a neti pot when congested and/or a steroid nasal spray.
I've mentioned before that chinstraps make me anxious, due to the pressure that they put on my neck.

I'm in my fourth week of using Chin-Up strips with my P10 pillows, and the results have been positive.
They did not instantly take away my mouth leak, but over time they seem to be more effective.
I don't use sleepyhead like many of you guys, but based on "MyAir," my AHI's are going down and my leak rates look like this:

Weeks 1 and 2 of Chinup Strips:

Average w/o strips (based on two nights with the P10 only): 8 L/min
Average leak w/white horseshoes: 10.5 L/min
Average leak w/tan horseshoes: 10.8 L/min
Average leak w/tan boomerangs: 7 L/min

Weeks 2 and 3 of Chinup Strips:

Average w/o strips (based on two nights with the P10 only): 9 L/min
Average leak w/white horseshoes: 7 L/min
Average leak w/tan horseshoes: 6.8 L/min
Average leak w/tan boomerangs: 4.6 L/min

While I have only gotten the "zero leak" star one night since abandoning the full mask,
my nasal breathing is much improved and I feel better during the day.
So, I have decided that a little leak is ok.
My AHI's are consistently lower when I use pillows instead of the FFM, even though my leak is higher.

Your leaks even without the chin up strips were well within the machines ability to compensate for them.
I have let worse leaks slide as long as they didn't wake me up.

I learned a long time ago that extra ordinary measures used to fix leaks (mouth or mask movement) cause me more problems with my sleep quality than the leaks were causing with the therapy side of things so it didn't take me long to accept some leaks as not enough of a problem to warrant doing anything about.

"Zero leak" scores don't guarantee much except bragging rights. I don't feel any different on those nights as I might feel when leaks are less than perfect. But if I try too hard to get zero leak bragging rights my sleep quality suffers and that will for sure impact how I feel during the day.
My sleep is fragile enough without adding something I simply don't like for whatever reason.

FWIW...your "worst" leak numbers are probably what I see as my "best" leak numbers.

Do whatever you are comfortable with that lets you sleep the best and feel the best during the day....let how you feel be the primary goal and not getting "perfect numbers" if getting perfect numbers ends up causing more problems than it fixes.

Oh...you do understand what those leak numbers seen on the machine or MyAir mean???

They are what we call 95% numbers and it only means you were at OR BELOW that number for 95% of the time. It does NOT mean that is where you were at for 95% of the night. People often don't know or they forget the "OR BELOW" part of the definition.
I am betting that if you were to use SleepyHead and look at the leak graph line that those nights where your 95% number was more elevated that you would see much more time down close to the 0 leak line than you might think you would see.

Here's a rather good example...the 95% leak number was 16 and max was 20...but if you look at the graph the time spent in the higher leak really wasn't all that long compared to the rest of the night. Maybe roughly 45 minutes out of the entire night.
For this reason I don't get all upset when 95% numbers are elevated a bit...they are easily skewed upwards by a relatively short period of time at the higher numbers. They don't always give us an accurate picture of what happened during the night.

The 45 minutes of leak here...I don't care what it was from because I slept right through it and it was well within the machine's ability to compensate for it.

Thank you, Pugsy.

I sort of had an idea about what the 95% meant, but it made more sense after looking at the example you provided.

I agree, quality of sleep is more important than striving for "perfect" numbers.
I had completely quit worrying about mouth leak for a while, but I noticed that it seemed to be getting worse.
I also noticed that I was feeling less and less rested, but the thing that made me want to do something about it is that my wife wakes up with the slightest noise.
Before I tried the Chin-Up strips, I had never had a night where I was wearing nasal pillows and she was able to sleep all night.

Several months ago, I bought an F20 full face mask, which she was excited about because it was extremely quiet.
However, I was feeling more run down all the time, so I went back to the P10.

Keeping the wife happy is very important and if her sleep is better with the chin up strips on you then so be it.
Especially if you are okay with them in general and they aren't making your sleep any worse and might be making it better.
You know that old saying "happy wife equals happy life"
We don't want to sacrifice our spouses sleep for our own. We need two happy people here.

My wife was not happy when I told our doctor that she would stop breathing while sleeping. Now that she has been on the machine for almost 9 months, she is glad I did, but I was really in the dog house for a few days at first.