1 year and still tired!

[OpalRose]

Oh if anyone has good tips on re-traing your mouth to stay shut please pass it on.

Tongue Seal Technique
Place your tongue to the roof of your mouth with tip of tongue behind front teeth, then suck upwards gently. This position helps to create a seal at the back of your throat and blocks air from escaping should you open your mouth.

This can be mastered with practice. Once you master this, you should be able to open your mouth and even talk without air escaping.

[Scott C.]

Oh if anyone has good tips on re-traing your mouth to stay shut please pass it on.

Tongue Seal Technique
Place your tongue to the roof of your mouth with tip of tongue behind front teeth, then suck upwards gently.  This position helps to create a seal at the back of your throat and blocks air from escaping should you open your mouth.

This can be mastered with practice.  Once you master this, you should be able to open your mouth and even talk without air escaping.

Thanks opalrose, Are you using the tongue or the soft palate to seal off the air? If it's your tongue how would you be able to talk? do you need to be hooked up to the c-pap to practice this?

[robysue]

"ajack" what is AFAIK?

AFAIK = As Far As I Know.

"sleeprider"  I will try those exercises . Does the leak data warrant a mask change? 

Your leaks are quite acceptable even though they are not perfect. (But you don't need a perfect leak graph.)

If the leaks are waking you up, then you need to deal with them. If they're not, what ever you are doing is technically fine. Whether you should change masks is up to you: Sometimes an increase in leaking can indicate the cushion/pillows need to be replaced. So if you are due for a cushion or mask replacement, it's worth a try.

Here is last nights chart same settings 10 min. pressure and Flex 1  Plus the mouth taping. (really weird feeling with the tape, the collar and the mask) and still woke up with dry mouth several times.

It would be useful to tease out whether those "dry mouth" wakes correspond to the places where the leaking is higher. One way to do that is to turn the machine off and back on every time you wake up enough to know that you are awake.

It's worth remembering that air can get into your oral cavity even when your lips are firmly closed and you don't have any serious leaks going on. So even if you succeeded in eliminating all excess leakage, you might still find yourself waking up with a dry mouth. The trick is to try to teach your tongue to stay put on the roof of your mouth and keep the nasal cavity sealed off from the oral cavity. In the meantime, you might want to use a "dry mouth" mouthwash (like Biotene) for the time being. That can help at least a little bit.

[Scott C.]

"ajack" what is AFAIK?

AFAIK = As Far As I Know.

"sleeprider"  I will try those exercises . Does the leak data warrant a mask change? 

Your leaks are quite acceptable even though they are not perfect. (But you don't need a perfect leak graph.)

If the leaks are waking you up, then you need to deal with them.  If they're not, what ever you are doing is technically fine.  Whether you should change masks is up to you:  Sometimes an increase in leaking can indicate the cushion/pillows need to be replaced. So if you are due for a cushion or mask replacement, it's worth a try.

Here is last nights chart same settings 10 min. pressure and Flex 1  Plus the mouth taping. (really weird feeling with the tape, the collar and the mask) and still woke up with dry mouth several times.

It would be useful to tease out whether those "dry mouth" wakes correspond to the places where the leaking is higher. One way to do that is to turn the machine off and back on every time you wake up enough to know that you are awake.

It's worth remembering that air can get into your oral cavity even when your lips are firmly closed and you don't have any serious leaks going on. So even if you succeeded in eliminating all excess leakage, you might still find yourself waking up with a dry mouth. The trick is to try to teach your tongue to stay put on the roof of your mouth and keep the nasal cavity sealed off from the oral cavity.  In the meantime, you might want to use a "dry mouth" mouthwash (like Biotene) for the time being.  That can help at least a little bit.

[Scott C.]

robysue by any chance did you look at my previous charts at there leak rate before the tape? just how important is that leak rate? Thanks for your advise I really appreciate it .

Also would I have to lower the min. pressure if the mouth leak is gone?

[robysue]

robysue by any chance did you look at my previous charts at there leak rate before the tape? just how important is that leak rate? Thanks for your advise I really appreciate it .

Give me a hint on where to find them. Are they earlier in this thread? Or are they in a different one? If so, can you post a link?

Also would I have to lower the min. pressure if the mouth leak is gone?

Your choice: If you are comfortable with your current pressure settings, then there's not a good reason to lower the min pressure setting just because leaks are no longer a problem. But if you are really uncomfortable with your current pressure settings, the lowering the min pressure by 1 or 2 cm is an idea that's worth considering as an experiment.

[ajack]

`

"ajack" what is AFAIK? the pressure doesn't really bother me as much as I thought it would. Have not had an ah-ha moment in over a year so I am willing to try any and all suggestions. Including taping. Which by the way as far as I know it stayed on all night. Sleepyhead said I had an acceptable amount of large leaks.

That chart looks good to me, I'd be happy with that. A lot better than page 1. Now it's just the leaks and such to fix. I wear a full face mask, an F20, It's not that bad, if you can't get the nasal to work. You really do get use to it and it could also come in handy as a spare, when you got a cold. I still find DS slow to react, it only found an event at 3:30 to react to. The saw teeth are just the machine looking to see if a higher pressure is better.

AFAIK, as far as I know..... I'm still learning this stuff and every little bit helps me help myself too.

[Scott C.]

"robysue" here is a zoom in when I woke up with dry mouth. Looks to me the pressure was increasing at the time as you thought. You can view my previous charts on this thread. ( there are 2 charts on this post, first is zoomed in on a awakening event. 2nd on is zoomed all the way out to show AHI graph with interesting flat spots with no events. And the leak rate graph with no tape.





"ajake" Here is last nights chart without mouth tape. I changed the max. pressure to 13 because I thought it might help with dry mouth via You tube. Will stay at these settings for a few days, still messing with humidity. Currently it is set to adaptive. And 3 on main menu. Also the CAs have come down.

[ajack]

I can tell you my story with the FFM. I have an A/C on, so it's warm dry air, this time of year down here. I have my humidity set to 5, the machine max is 6. That works for me, unless I get a large leak and have more volume of air passing through the mask. Leaks don't wake me up anymore and I then I awake in the morning with a dry mouth (I'm a mouth breather) I can tell by how much water was used, to what the leaks were like

I think your CA would settle anyway, it was just your system getting use to you getting the cpap working. 13 is fine, you could set 12 If you want to limit the variations of pressure, You could even use cpap mode and a manual fixed pressure of 12 with a bit of flex for awhile. Several people have posted here, saying a fixed pressure works better for them.

[robysue]

quick note: I'm on the road and won't have internet the next couple of days except intermittently. Will post a response when I have the time and the internet.