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The first report showing minimal leak was with a makeshift chin strap? That leak line looks pretty darn good.
I would put it back on.

With facial hair taping is a little tricky. I had good luck with the Blue Painters tape (the delicate one that won't remove paint). After about 3 months of taping I got lazy and quit and seemed to have learned to keep my mouth shut.
I never had good luck with chin straps but some people do.

Lots of users here use the Papcap chin strap rig to keep their mouth shut. Others do very well with their home made gear.

http://www.pur-sleep.com/content/?id=44

360 wrote:I do have a beard an mustache, so I'm wondering about tape being an option. The only difference between the chart from last night and the night before is the lack of a makeshift chin strap last night.

I have a mustache and beard and can tell you the tape is out. If using a chin strap or trying the PapCap don't help, you'll need to try a full face mask, probably with a PapCap. The most popular full face masks are the Ultra Mirage Full Face and the Quattro. Two other masks that are excellent are the PMI Probasics ZZZ full face and the ResMed Hybrid. The Hybrid has nasal pillows, if that makes you more comfortable. The ZZZ and the Hybrid have no forehead brace, making them a little less claustrophobic if that's problematic.

It's less about mouth breathing and more about mouth leaking. Any of these masks will allow the column of air shared between your nose and your mouth to remain at equal pressure, reducing mouth leaks. Personally, I find the ZZZ the most comfortable with the least leaks. I frankly can't understand why it's not more popular. It's almost entirely silicone with just the right amount of flexibility, so it easily molds to the face. You'll need to research for yourself what might work best for you.

Thanks for the posts. I'll try going back to my makeshift strap tonight and see if the numbers come back in line. I actually used my old Adam Circuit headgear and just went from under my chin to over the top of my head. Wasn't the most comfortable thing, but it was handy that I had a velcro adjustment. Not something I'd want to use every night but at least it will let me make sure that's my problem.

Looks like fixadent may be another option. Actually poligrip makes some strips that might work really well if all i need is something to keep my lips together like a small piece of tape vs. trying to completely seal them together.

Numbers with polygrip to help with leak.

Most recent report with polygrip isn't too bad. Not as good as the first one but much improved over the second one.
Some leak still to be improved upon but all in all, considerable improvement.

I'm going to try the chin strap again tonight and then it looks like a papcap may be in order.

Chin strap worked well for about 2 hours. It was funny I woke up at 2am and felt great and then when I got up this morning I didn't feel as good as I did then. Looked at the report and sure enough after that the chin strap must have not been doing the job. I decided to give a papcap a try, so I'll post those numbers as soon as I try it. I still can't believe I went so many years without being able to track how I'm sleeping.

Things were going along really good with my papcap for mouth breathing/leaking and then get a load of these charts. I see I had a big leak in the middle of the night but I can't figure out all of the events. I've been averaging one or two per night for weeks. I know just enough about this to be dangerous. I was thinking maybe my low pressure number is too low? Need some experienced chart readers to give me some advice.

There we go.

I would narrow the pressure range for a night and see what you get. I'd go 6-9, but it's hard to see what your minimum is now. See what you get and adjust from there. What was your titration pressure?

Lizistired wrote:I would narrow the pressure range for a night and see what you get. I'd go 6-9, but it's hard to see what your minimum is now. See what you get and adjust from there. What was your titration pressure?

Minimum pressure is set at 4 and max is set at 15.

Minimum pressure still 4 cm?
I would raise minimum to 5 or probably 6 depending on what you want to try.
Do the pressure variations bug your sleep? If so maybe a slight reduction in maximum but the machine wants to go up a bit for some reason and it wasn't a leak. The machine won't raise the pressure without thinking it has a reason to. I prefer to let the machine try to fight what it thinks it might need to fight and leave my max nearly wide open. Pressure changes never bothered me though.
If you choose to lower the maximum I would watch that pressure line closely to see if it gets maxed out often because if it does it can't fight the events effectively if it needs to. I would think more along the lines of around 12 as maximum. Tighter doesn't always mean better. Minimum is more critical. Now if the pressure variations seem to disturb sleep, by all means lower till you get a happy medium with less disruptions and event control. Sometimes an occasional event slipping past the defenses is less disrupting than the pressure changes for some people.

That large leak last night? Toss it out the window. It was brief and hasn't happened often and overall your leak is so much improved. We all have little blips or big blips from time to time.

[quote="360"]From what I've gathered here I think my numbers look pretty good. Biggest thing I'm looking at is the leak. I knew the number was huge so I made a makeshift chin strap last night and there was no mouth breathing. I don't quite understand how how the numbers can be that high when I know the mask isn't leaking either. Any help addressing this would be greatly appreciated and I'm open to any tweaks to my settings that could be made to further enhance my treatment.




Why use a CPAP with hardly any events?

avi123 wrote: Why use a CPAP with hardly any events?

Maybe because the events appear minimal because of effective treatment???? Duh.. The fact that minimal pressure is used to get optimal numbers doesn't mean a thing. Some need a lot of pressure, some are lucky and get good therapy with minimal pressure.

I had AHI of 0.8 the other night. Should I quit and go back to having 50 plus events an hour?

avi123 wrote:

360 wrote:From what I've gathered here I think my numbers look pretty good. Biggest thing I'm looking at is the leak. I knew the number was huge so I made a makeshift chin strap last night and there was no mouth breathing. I don't quite understand how how the numbers can be that high when I know the mask isn't leaking either. Any help addressing this would be greatly appreciated and I'm open to any tweaks to my settings that could be made to further enhance my treatment.



Why use a CPAP with hardly any events?

I have what I would call severe apnea....I think my number was 52 when my study was done over 10 years ago.