Dry Mouth

[Natasha Kleinhans]

Hi guys I have a question. I constantly wake up with a dry mouth when sleeping with my CPAP. (Ever since I started using my CPAP) I have tried setting the humidifier higher, but that doesn't help. Any advise, I would greatly appreciate it.

[saltydawg2]

That happens to me, as well. I also have a full face mask. Even with that, if you breathe through your mouth, it will get dry. I have to use a chinstrap, and that helps a lot, but you need one that does not go very high above your chin, or the mask will overlap it, with potential leak issues. Also, I notice when I eat foods for dinner that are high in salt, such as pizza, pork, or ham also contribute to the problem. I keep water handy, just in case. As far as humidifier, higher is relative. Depends on where your starting point was. Hope this helps.

[Bompa]

I use biotene spray.

It's available at most Pharmacies and WallMart.

It comes in spray, gel, and mouthwash.

Hope it works for you.

[AshSF]

I was a self-diagnosed mouth breather. When I started with my therapy with a FFM (F10), I use to wake up with an ultra dry mouth. I started doing nasal irrigation using neti pot before going to bed. After a few weeks, the dry mouth feeling went away. No more dry mouth. And if I woke up in the middle of the night, I was surprised to see that mouth was shut and I was breathing thru the nose. And now, I breathe thru the nose even during the day. Now after 15 weeks of therapy, I am actually looking into trying a nasal pillow mask.

So you may want to
1) Train yourself to breathe thru the mouth.
2) Do nasal irrigation to open up your nasal passages. Over a few weeks, nasal irrigation with saline water may reduce inflammation in the nasal passages, and consequently make it easier for you to breathe thru your nose.

Hope it helps. YMMV.

[PaytonA]

Several questions for you Natasha. Are you using Climateline tubing? Is your humidifier running out of water? Has it run out of water at any point? Is your mask making it more difficult to close your mouth all of the way?

I use a Mirage Quattro and was first provided with a medium size. The medium interfered with keeping my mouth closed all of the way and I was having dry mouth problems. I use the Climateline on the auto setting and adjust the absolute humidity by adjusting the tubing temperature. I increased the absolute humidity until it was almost as high as it would go. It helped some but did not solve the problem.

Bought a new Mirage Quattro size small and began getting improvement after an adjustment period. I also use Biotene mouth wash before I go to bed every night and I practice keeping my mouth closed and my tongue properly positioned every night while awaiting sleep with my mask and CPAP on.

I am now in the process of stepwise decreasing the absolute humidity to avoid my nose plugging up during the night. I started at 84 deg. F hose temperature and am now down to 81 deg. F. This reduces the absolute humidity. Since the machine with climate control maintains the relative humidity at 80%, changing the hose temperature from 84 F to 81 F changes the absolute humidity from 23 grams of water per cubic meter of air to 21 grams of water per cubic meter of air. Not a lot but it is helping the nasal plugging and so far no dry mouth.

One other piece of information. Resmed maintains that it is the absolute humidity that controls the comfort level of the air.

A chin strap in addition to your full face mask may alleviate the dry mouth for you. It did not help me but we all react differently.

Best of luck in your journey.

Best Regards,

PaytonA

[PaytonA]

One other thing that I just thought of. Back a while ago I switched from the standard 2 piece tank to the 3 piece, washable in the dishwasher, tank.

I had noticed with the 2 piece tank the efficiency of moisture absorbtion in the air degraded quite a bit as the water level in the tank got lower. This is due to an overly direct route from the air inlet to the air outlet. The three piece stainless steel tank provides a more complex route which forces the air to stay in the water chamber longer so its performance does not degrade as much as the water level goes down.

Using the Climateline tubing can make this all a non-starter since it will control the humidity but if one is not using Climateline it makes a difference.

Best Regards,

PaytonA

[woozie38]

Hi guys I have a question. I constantly wake up with a dry mouth when sleeping with my CPAP. (Ever since I started using my CPAP) I have tried setting the humidifier higher, but that doesn't help. Any advise, I would greatly appreciate it.

This is a very difficult issue to overcome. Dry mouth is the result of air, either PAP air, or breath exiting orally. Technicaly a patient wearing a FFM should not be able to exhale at a rate greater than the mask exhaust ports will allow, therefore for dry mouth to occur, there has to be mask leaks. Whilst using an FFM the lower jaw drops downward in deep sleep, but the mask held in place by its well designed headgear, remains in position. This causes the mask & chin to separate producing air leaks around the chin area. I have designed a solution to this problem which I call the "Woozle". Read about in in this post. You can make a Woozle yourself! This device could help you as it helped me and many others.

[PaytonA]

First, I think woozie's invention is a great idea, and I agree with woozie with one exception. You do not have to have mask leaks with a full face mask to get dry mouth from air coming out your mouth. All it takes is leaks from your mouth into your mask or breathing through your mouth and if you can not seal off your mouth you will get some mouth leaks into the mask.

Looking at the full face mask one might think that because you have pressure on both sides of your lips you will not get mouth leaks. That would be true if this were a static situation but it is not. It is a dynamic situation with a lot of air moving and and pressures changing. One effect is that the pressure in your mouth is not always the same as in the mask. Another possibility is that the air rushing by one's lips might cause a small slightly lower pressure area in front of one's mouth.

All of this is to say that one can have mouth leaks with a full face mask. While mouth leaks with a full face mask do not adversely affect therapy they can cause dry mouth. How do I know this? From my own personal experience. I have fought with the dry mouth demon for a while now and finally appear to be gaining the upper hand.

The solution is a chin strap or a "woozie" strap,and the Biotene mouth wash for dry mouth. I tried a chin strap and it was making bad marks on my face so I quit using it and now do mouth and tongue training exercises with the mask on while waiting for sleep. My feeling is that you do not have to eliminate mouth leaks but they must be reduced to avoid dry mouth.

Best Regards,

PaytonA