Dry mouth with heated humidifier?

sleepy_knitter · Post by **sleepy_knitter** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 7:31 am

Hi all - second night with my brand new CPAP. The first night, I didn't even get to sleep. The second night, I slept till about 3:30, but I woke up because my mouth & sinuses were painfully dry. My humidifier is on max I think. When I called CPAP.com, they said that sounded strange & I really shouldn't be getting a dry mouth. Anyone else with this problem?

WAFlowers · Post by **WAFlowers** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 7:38 am

If your mouth is opening, allowing air to flow in your nose and out your mouth, you'll get a sore throat and/or dry mouth even with a heated humidifier. You'll also get no benefit from a CPAP until that problem is solved.

However, maybe some other mechanism is at work here. Anyone else care to take a guess?

sleepy_knitter · Post by **sleepy_knitter** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 7:55 am

Thanks WAFlowers... I would think it was my mouth hanging open, except that I got the dry mouth on the first night when I only had the mask on for 30 minutes & I know my mouth was closed because i was awake the whole time

I don't think I could handle a chinstrap - I'm just barely ok with the mask & I think the chinstrap would put me over the edge...

ozij · Post by **ozij** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 8:25 am

Which kind of equipment?
Are you sure the humidifier is functioning?
Can you put in on max for an hour or so during the day for test purposes, and see if there's humidity in the mask or hose?

O.

sleepy_knitter · Post by **sleepy_knitter** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 9:11 am

Hi Ozij - I fixed my profile so you can see my equipment. About half the water was gone & there were little droplets in the face mask so I'm pretty sure it's working

tater pie · Post by **tater pie** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 9:28 am

This is most probably classic mouth-breathing. You probably slept a little more th first night than you thought. It can happen when you only go into stage 2 sleep. I used to do it all of the time. I would think I was wide awake all of the time but actually I was semiconcious some of the time. In that state you may be awake but not fully aware of everything that is going or in control of all of your faculties like dropping your mouth open. Sounds like the humidifier is working o.k. If mouth breathing is the case then your options would be to either see if a chin strap would work (in most cases they don't but for some they do and you can get used to it. Believe me, you will be surprised in a few months what you can get used to!) get a full faced mask or make a DIY mouthpiece or get one of the new mouthpieces from Dr. Sue like several people on this message board have done or do something really extreme like a lot of us do and tape your mouth shut. Medical professionals will strongly discourage you from taping your mouth shut but hey, you got to do what you got to do to get a good nights sleep. I'm not a medical professional in any way so take that in mind when reading my post. Hope you get the problem fixed soon. Hang in there, it will get better.