Empty humidifer every day?

unclebob wrote:Not sure what you meant by "THE END". The end of what?

Is this a trick or something? neversleeps usually takes at least 4 or 5 posts before she finally gives up thinking it was the end of something.

Hey!!! I resemble that remark!!!!!!!!!

Rock & Roll wrote:

I don't recall anyone directing any attacks at WS

R & R, you are quite right; no one has directed any attacks at me regarding this topic and I don't feel attacked. However, Oh 2 Breathe has not, in my opinion, suggested that I have been attacked, she is simply offering her perspective that Social Work is not Psychiatry and that the SW perspective will ALWAYS push to ensure that the client/patient/whoever will gets as much information as possible so that he/she can make her own mind up and do what is best for him/her.
I suspect that Oh 2 Breathe was uncomfortable with SW being linked to Psychiatry as the training and clinical perspective/intervention between the two professions is very different. Psychiatry will often TELL the client/patient/whoever what to do whereas the SW will encourage the person to take action relative to what the person wants to do based on all the information that is available.

I've noticed that some on this forum can get pretty rigid regarding 'what is best' and that this is often driven by cognitive dissonance. I've talked about this before and got slapped upside the head for it so I'm not going to make a big point of it now. The bottom line is that all of us tend to like others to do as we do simply because it makes us feel better/more secure about what we are doing. This is just human nature but, unfortunately, it can get in the way of us thinking broadly.

So, when I read about folk NOT dumping/emptying their humidifier tank, I DO think about the convenience that this offers and I wonder if this would be of value to me but, I make the decision that I feel more comfortable about dumping the tank. Dumping the tank reduces my anxiety about the possibility of getting a bug and lets me feel better about how I manage my treatment. I FULLY accept that each of us can and should do whatever is best for each individual and all I want to do is make sure that each of us gets all the info possible. I think that our vigor when talking about how we each manage the humidifier, or whatever topic we are talking about, speaks to how strongly we feel and, is a good thing. The important thing would be to not bash each other personally in any way (this includes choice of language and remaining respectful) and to have a thick enough skin to not feel wounded by the strength that others put into their words. I have to confess that I have not always been respectful as I've made liberal use of sarcasm in some of my posts.

So, I don't feel attacked during THIS thread and do continue to welcome healthy debate/information-sharing regarding this, and any other topic.

Amen!

I agree with you in priciple WS, I thought it was a good and healthy debate all along. And hearing how others do and handle things is very important and I want the forum to encourage this and I hope many more posters get active and give their opinions. Information and knowledge is everything and if we all agreed everytime and always did things the same way, it would get very boring in this world. And we don't have to agree on everything. It is much like a religion debate, divine creation or evolution. It is up to us all to decide what's right for us. And then understand that not everybody else agrees with our choice. The real challenge here is coexisting without the need to convert the others to our side. Give our point of view and then step back.

All mammals get REM sleep?

I wish I could get some REM..

Ditto with what others have said. I top mine off and then every 3-5 days or so I wash it out. Mine did accidentally go dry one night but I didn't notice any adverse affects, thank goodness.

Kimberly

How interesting to see old threads again. And this one was a good one, with a good cross-section of opinions.

I'm still doing the same as I was a year ago back on page 1. Still healthy.

But what I really want to know is... why not spiny anteaters?

Respironics says the bacterial filter can be used with my Auto BiPAP and will not effect its pressures. Hmmmm. I guess so, they built it. I use the bacterial filter all the time. My wife tried it, did not like it. I suspect she is a walking time bomb of baterial infestations...but I keep it to myself. Egad, I am sounding like that guy on TV...uh...Monk. I have never watched the show, but I am sounding more like him every day. That hurts.

We use distilled water and wash our HH tanks about once a week or so. She does it...vinegar and listerine or something like that.

I wanted a HEPA filter for my unit, but they don't build one. We have two air filters where the air comes in, I run a large Honeywell HEPA air cleaner 24.7 in our bedroom and we still get dust. Our central heat/air uses HEPA filters and we still get dust. I run our HEPA filter in the bedroom 24/7 because I was told it would create a positive air pressure in the bedroom and stop dust from coming in. We STILL get dust. My only solution is to clean the dust up weekly.

Speaking of "off the subject" ...during my recent Bronchoscopy, the doctor could see damage in my lungs from my parent's smoking. I have never smoked one cigarette in my life, but my lungs look like I have. It is NOT a myth...if you smoke, you are hurting people around you. I cannot wear a FF mask because of it. Be careful who you associate with. It has been 36 years since I lived with my parents (while in college) and it is still with me.
How about you?

More about our cousin, the echidna (spiny anteater):

http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/art ... issueId=61

What I want to know is, have scientists really studied the sleeping patterns of every mammal?

puskar49 wrote:What I want to know is, have scientists really studied the sleeping patterns of every mammal?

You took the the other words that occurred to me right out of my mouth/mind. Really? They looked at that with EVERY species of mammal?

And...just how many spiny anteaters did they check before concluding, these guys just don't have any REM at all...ever.

Thanks for the link.

excerpt:
A final oddity about these very odd creatures: The echidna's neocortex, associated with reasoning and personality in humans, accounts for nearly half its brain's volume, compared to about 30 percent in so-called higher mammals. "What are they doing with it, that's the question," says Rismiller.

I only top the container every night with an amount that will last for the night and seldom clean it.

An interesting fact with my CPAP, an F&P 604 (humidifier and heated hose are included) is that although the manufacturer recommends daily emptying and drying, the design of the water container is such that it's impossible to get it completely empty, there is always some water left inside, it just doesn't come out.

Doodeedoo

You already have a problem or you would not be using a CPAP machine.
Does it make any sense to increase the problem by breeding bacteria for your air passages and lungs?? WASH and AIR DRY your humidifier.

Distilled water is 57 cents per gallon at Walmart in Dallas.
That works for about a quarter a week.

If one is dead set against changing the water and washing the container then put a few drops of your favorite "Germkilling" mouthwash in your humidifier water.

I love this debate actually. I've done this several ways. I emptied every morning for a while. Went through a LOT of distilled water, but as has been said, it's cheap! I was filling it to the fill line every night and dumping what remained in the morning. Many nights it only used about a quarter inch of water so I was dumping MOST of what I put in there. I also noticed that it just plain didn't use the same amount of water every night. One night it used only about a quarter inch. Another night it used almost half the water in the tank. My guess is that it was reacting to the environment. Was my house a lot dryer on the nights it used more water? Or was the house warmer? I don't know.

What I *DO* know is that I found a "happy medium" and I don't fill it up to the full line any more. I never run dry and I dump a lot less. I went all summer with no water in the tank but still left it connected. Just didn't turn the heat on. It was fine. It's getting colder now and the heat has come on so I'll be starting the humidifier again. I'll dump it every morning. I just won't fill it every night.

Here's what else I know... I left the water in and just topped it up for 5 nights. In the morning after that 5th night I poured the water into a clear beaker. There was all KINDS of junk in it. I didn't filter it and test to see what it was. It was just.... junk. Floatie things. Things that you didn't even see until you agitated the water and then had another look.

I'm a firm believer in everyone kinda doing what they want and what makes them comfortable. And honestly.... is the environment here at my house the same as at someone else's? I doubt it. Is the "degree of junk" somehow correlated to the environment the machine is in? That seems quite possible to me.

Y'all do what your comfortable with. Do whatever keeps you on CPAP. If that means you don't dump your humidifier every morning, well, that's pretty much up to you. I just want all my friends here to be healthy and successful with this treatment. Whatever that entails... do it.

Same thing here.... floating stuff after a few days. BUT... even worse as far as I'm concerned is these dang Resmed i3 humidifiers are impossible to get into to wipe out! Very small openings and many nooks and crannies that are nigh near impossible to reach. Even after sitting with 50/50 vinegar does not remove that film that developes. I finally have figured out a VERY tedious way to stuff a clean Handi-Wipe in the main portal and using an old toothbrush handle to literally stuff the wipe into all the crevices that I can reach. Even so, I cannot reach every bit of filminess. The thing is only 7 months old and looks gross after it's dried out! ACK!

have had cpap 18 mo. never used the humidifier /live in iowa have gas furnace
nose gets a little dry in winter /why do you need to bother with the dumb thing?