Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
I started out with a nasal pillow mask earlier this year, and breathe right strips helped a lot in terms of mask comfort. Even after switching to a full face mask, I continued to use the strips to try and encourage more nasal breathing. I was consistenly getting quite a few CA's each night which led me to turning off EPR. This helped bring down the CA's but didn't eliminate them.
I recently ran out of the nasal strips and decided to see what happened if I went a night without wearing one. To my surprise, I went from getting 5 - 6 CA's a night on average to only getting 1 or 2, without much of a change in comfort or my other stats. I turned EPR back on a couple nights ago and the CA's haven't gone up any. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Do you know what could be causing the change in CA's? The first attachment is a typical night with EPR and a nasal strip, the second with EPR and no nasal strip.
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
I use them every night, I have never had a CA problem with them. I use CPAP at constant 10cm and EPR at 3.
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
Seeing such wonderful OSCAR reports lets me know how serious my OAs/CAs/hypopneas are. Wow..what beautiful sleep that must be.
I only give suggestions from experience as a fellow CPAP user, not professional advice.
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
you definitely need to post more data. any theory based on 1 night is sitting on the smallest possible set of data. So i would record for at least a week w/out the strips to have meaningful comparisons. You will want to compare the averages of 7 day data sets. i think any lifestyle change from any less data isn't the best health decision...
Some important differences: CA may have changed a fair bit in a relative basis, but not much on an absolute basis. What seems to be a much bigger change is actually the median change in tidal volume - that's a pretty sizeable shift. Also the entire hour less of sleep is a big deal and the fact that majority of REM sleep is in the last third of the desired amount of sleep (ie: waking up when your body wants, not when the alarm clock goes off, the child disturbs, or dog barks). So that hour of loss can have significant changes.
If i were to theorize a reason strips can increase CA. It would be that CA events are due to high pressure. If you dilate your nasal passage, you reduce nasal resistance, thereby reducing the pressure necessary to splint your airway. Since your median pressure runs at your min pressure (ie: min is 8 and median is also 8), it means a greater fraction of air pressure it making it to your lungs, thereby increasing the chance for a CA. So what you need to do is the following:
1. reduce your min pressure. Maybe by 0.5 decrements until your median is consistently at least 1 full unit higher than your min. Then you'll know that your machine actually has space to adequately regulate your airway up and down.
2. then retry your nasal strip experiment
3. record 7 nights of with and w/out
4. compare the averages of the two scenarios and take into account the duration slept
5. finally, take note of how you felt. IMO, motivation to do things you like the LEAST, is the most sensitive indicator of a good nights sleep. Maybe that's motivation to workout, take out the trash, give a good effort at work, or being attentive your spouse. That imo is the pinnacle of a good night's sleep.
best of luck
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
Newbie here, but I tried using Breathe Right strips for a few nights and my leaks increased on my N20 AirFit. Not sure if it was user error, but the mask wasn't sealing properly for me compared to nights without the strips.
I use medium sized N20 and I suspect I have some minor nasal valve collapse on the left side of my nose. I tried the strips for 3 nights, gave up, and I'm content... for now.
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
That's good. Gotta do what works for you. Likely that your mask leaks because you fit yourself with the strips off. In your case, the dilation of the strips was enough to cause a problem.
If you have a lot of residual flow limit to resolve, You could try a smaller strip and higher up on the nose to just prevent the collapse and not dilate the nare.
Although what probably would be more useful, and noticable, is treating the collapsing effects during daytime. An air max nasal dilator, or nasal strip in the morning, after work, evening, activity, might be more useful to feel calmer. As anxiety is a risk with mouth breathing and asymmetrical nasal flow.
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
Now you've piqued my interest.
Or anxiety!
Right now, as it stands, the left side of my nose sinks in a bit as I inhale and both nostrils flare slightly. When I look INSIDE my nose, I do notice the left part of the nose is narrower than the right (no obstruction on the right) but I don't appear to have any difficulty breathing. If anything, I feel it slightly because it's either in my head, or this is all new to me.
What I mean by that is, I only recently started CPAP and I appear to have stopped snoring and mouth breathing at night. Of course, I'm sure most of my leaks (when not mask-based) are due to my mouth opening. But I sleep so much better now and my leaks seem to be OK. Flow limits have generally gone down thanks to Dormeo, PeaceLoveAndPizza and others. So the question I have now...
Was I always mouth breathing throughout the day and didn't notice it? It certainly feels like I'm breathing with my nose more than ever, but just can't tell if this is because of pap therapy. As a result, I've noticed the collapsing left side of my nose -- not the nostril closing up like other examples of nasal valve collapse I've seen.
Long story short, anxiety has been eating at me the past week over this latest discovery. Is my nasal mask (AirFit N20) causing my nose deformity? My cartilage seems mushy. Not sure if it's due to years of grappling and martial arts. I read the thread about IS MY CPAP MAKING MY NOSTRILS BIGGER and got a chuckle. I don't know what to tell you guys, but this is now messing with my head.
Any help is appreciated!
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
probably a stupid question on my part, but have you been to an ENT to check out your nose and nasal septum, check for polyps, etc.? I'm sure you probably have....
12-26-2023, 08:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-26-2023, 08:47 PM by punkrockcholo.)
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
Hello, I had a polyp over the summer and took steroids for two weeks in October. My breathing definitely felt obstructed back then and I was not on CPAP. In fact, it's the immediate period of time after the polyp "disappeared" that caused me to pick up the Airsense 10 and give pap therapy a real go.
As far as ENT, I scheduled an appointment two weeks from now to determine what else is going on in there.
***Quick edit - I didn't think about this nasal collapse at all for the two months I've been on *pap until last Tuesday (a week ago today). Anxiety... sheesh.
Cheers.
RE: Breathe Right Strips and Central Apneas
(12-26-2023, 07:13 PM)punkrockcholo Wrote: Now you've piqued my interest.
Or anxiety!
Right now, as it stands, the left side of my nose sinks in a bit as I inhale and both nostrils flare slightly. When I look INSIDE my nose, I do notice the left part of the nose is narrower than the right (no obstruction on the right) but I don't appear to have any difficulty breathing. If anything, I feel it slightly because it's either in my head, or this is all new to me.
What I mean by that is, I only recently started CPAP and I appear to have stopped snoring and mouth breathing at night. Of course, I'm sure most of my leaks (when not mask-based) are due to my mouth opening. But I sleep so much better now and my leaks seem to be OK. Flow limits have generally gone down thanks to Dormeo, PeaceLoveAndPizza and others. So the question I have now...
Was I always mouth breathing throughout the day and didn't notice it? It certainly feels like I'm breathing with my nose more than ever, but just can't tell if this is because of pap therapy. As a result, I've noticed the collapsing left side of my nose -- not the nostril closing up like other examples of nasal valve collapse I've seen.
Long story short, anxiety has been eating at me the past week over this latest discovery. Is my nasal mask (AirFit N20) causing my nose deformity? My cartilage seems mushy. Not sure if it's due to years of grappling and martial arts. I read the thread about IS MY CPAP MAKING MY NOSTRILS BIGGER and got a chuckle. I don't know what to tell you guys, but this is now messing with my head.
Any help is appreciated!
There is something called "cpap face" from extensive use of full face masks tightly strapped to the face preventing normal midface growth. i believe this is more common in developing faces of kids than adults. an certainly not on the order of a month. cartilage, relative to bone, is softer. but not due to injury, just by its relative nature. feel the cartilage of your ears to get an idea of how mushy it is. your nose deformity depends moreso on its development, and injuries. reviewing old photos from multiple ages can help answer this. that said, to fix nasal airflow, is not just the domain of an ENT, but also an airway dentist - something that doesn't seem to be commonly discussed on these forums. the former usually rearranges structures in the nose and nasopharynx to change airflow. the latter develops the midface with oral expansion appliances to improve nasal airflow.
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