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Burning Nose - PaulaO2 - 08-28-2012
This usually only happens to me in the winter when the humidifier runs dry in the middle of the night. But last night, the humidifier was off (as it has been all summer).
I went to bed with a screaming migraine (common occurrence), finally went to sleep (with help from some drugs), only to wake up a few hours later with a burning nose. When the humidifier runs dry, it smells like ammonia or something. This last night was close but not quite. I got up, rinsed and filled the tank, took some more medication, turned the humidifier on, and went back to bed. My thinking was the humid air would help with the congestion just as it has before.
I woke up congested as heck as soon as I took the mask off. And since then, the one nostril is burning, I'm sneezing my dang head off, and I still have the migraine. NOT a good day.
There has been several times this summer this has happened but not to this degree of severity. Each time, as well as last night, the humidifier was off but the metal bottom was warmish. It was a cool night so room temp would not have accounted for the warmth.
Usually I just put water in the tank and go back to bed and it goes away.
Is the humidifier not off? It says it is. I have the slimline on, not the climateline. The humidifier was set to 'off' and I reset it to 4.5.
RE: Burning Nose - mjbearit - 08-28-2012
Paula, have you tried using your nasal rinse to see if that helps with the burning sensation? Do you perhaps use vinegar to clean your water tank?
RE: Burning Nose - PaulaO2 - 08-28-2012
I was just about to go try the nasal rinse. The migraine has me thinking a tad bit slower than usual and I had to remember where I had last put it.
I use vinegar but have not in a long time since I've not used the humidifier. And when I do use vinegar, I rinse like mad and let it air dry then rinse again.
The first time this happened, I had not been using vinegar at all.
RE: Burning Nose - PollCat - 08-28-2012
My ENT recommended coating the inside of my nose with Bacitracin which contains less petro-product than petroleum-jelly and therefore is less likely to affect the nasal pillows.
RE: Burning Nose - PaulaO2 - 08-28-2012
The nasal rinse didn't work.
I'm washing everything down and changing out the pillows.
No clue what bacitracin is. I have some Ayr gel around here somewhere.
It hasn't done this in a long time. When I run out of water in the humidifier, it does this the next day. Odd how it is doing it but the humidifier wasn't on. When I recover from this, I'm going to take the humidifier off completely. The symptoms are much like when I have seasonal allergies. Runny nose, sneezing, and watery eye (same side as the burning nostril). I'm on so many drugs right now to take care of the migraine, I'm afraid to add something else!
RE: Burning Nose - JudgeMental - 08-28-2012
Bacitracin is a antibiotic ointment that is marketed under different names such as Polysporin and CVS calls it "triple antibiotic ointment." Household uses for scrapes, burns, small cuts. Nothing heavy.
Ragweed has all of a sudden come on with a vengence here in N.FL. Sneezing, runny nose..the whole gauntlet. Could be?
The smell that you had, I feel is a slight residual of something that you cleaned the tank with a time or two ago. Vinegar sometimes will leave just a hint no matter how many times you rinse. Thats why I will use a smidgen of a "splash" of peroxide if I ever use anything other then mild soap.
RE: Burning Nose - BabyDoc - 08-28-2012
Paula, vasomotor rhinitis can be triggered by unhumidified air blowing over your nasal mucosa. Your nose sometimes fights back when it is being dried out by the blowing dry air. When it does, it pours out secretions in abundance, as if you had an allergy. Symptoms of frequent sneezing, congestion, burning are common when this happens. It often takes 24 to 48 hours to completely recover, assuming you restore normal humidity to your nose. Antihistamines can be tried, but usually don't do too much to lessen the outpouring of secretions.
I used to encountered a similar experience only on Sabbath. Being orthodox Jewish, on Sabbath, I left my S9 APAP running constantly, so I wouldn't have to turn it on and off.
Unless I was acutally wearing my nasal pillows, the machine could run at full blast emptying the water chamber in less than 24 hours. I, therefore, thought it was better if I emptied the water chamber and turned off the humidifier. However, when I did this, I became severely congested within just a few hours of using my nasal pillows. I couldn't believe I was getting a "Sabath Cold" every week, until I did a search on the web and discovered that vaso-motor rhinitis, looking like a cold, COULD be triggered by abscent humididity with CPAP, particularly with nasal pillows. For a while, I solved my problem by going back to my nasal mask, which seemed a bit kinder to my nose. Eventually, I found I could put a timer on my Resmed S9 that turned on the machine just before my expected bedtime and run the humidifier as usual with my nasal pillows. Before I realized the abscent humidity was causing these allergy-like symptoms, I actually replaced the water tank, nasal pillow, slim line tubing, and put in a hypoallergenic filter to see if I would do any better. None of these made any difference until I turned the humidity back on. The strange thing about all of this is that I don't require much added humidity. Normally, I run my humidifier at a setting of 0.5 or 1.0. You wouldn't think that going from 0.5 to nothing, would create such a problem with your nose in such a short time.
Just as you described, Paula, it doesn't take long for abscent humidity and blowing air to cause nasal congestion. Like you, the congestion was almost immediate within an hour or two. However, regardless of what I did, it took almost two days for me to fully recover and not feel congested. It isn't known why some people are more susceptible to this problem than others.
RE: Burning Nose - PaulaO2 - 08-28-2012
Several years ago, I was sick with some sort of allergy year round for over a year. We could not track down what it was. I went to Florida on vacation with my brother's family and I thought I'd get relief. But the reactions were just as bad there. I got back and called the DME to discuss if something could be growing inside the machine since I regularly cleaned everything back then. They checked the records and called back to confirm if I was still using the same hose. Back then, hose replacement was rare. They sent me another one and within two days, it had cleared up. The hose was gray and not transparent at all. The DME guy thinks I had some lovely stuff growing in the hose despite my cleaning.
On another forum, I asked about the burning I get when the water goes dry and specifically said I did NOT use ammonia but that's what the smell was like. SIX people told me to stop using ammonia to clean and I deserved what I got. Needless to say, I didn't go back.
Earlier in the spring, I used the humidifier as a 'passover' humidifier but in the past, oh, two months, I'd not even done that.
I do not see how the vinegar would sometimes cause this problem and most of the time not. Add in the fact it has been literally months since I last cleaned the tank (the only thing I use vinegar on anymore). This has happened before (humidifier off, tank empty) but usually I get up immediately, add water, and I'm fine. But I think the drugs I was on for the migraine caused me to not notice it sooner.
I think you may be right, BabyDoc. Hopefully it will go away soon.
RE: Burning Nose - BabyDoc - 08-28-2012
It's kind of interesting when you search out this subject. I have found people who have complained that too much humidity causes vasomotor rhinitis, just like too little.
Yet, I would bet it is more common with people who use no humidity. Think about how dry your lips become in the winter when forced air heating dries out the air (unless you have a furnace humidifier). In the same way, imagine the inside of your nose drying out when you blow dry air, UNDER PRESSURE, into your nose. This is especially likely to happen when you use nasal pillows when you have no humidifier attached to your machine. Your nose burns because it is abraded and made raw by the drying air. Some people may even have nose bleeds when the damage is extreme. But before that happens your nose responds by pouring out secretions to protect it from further damage.
Why doesn't this happen every time you run your machine dry? I really don't know, for sure, but would guess that it has something to do with ambient room humidity variability. Perhaps when the room humidity is high enough, you might get away with no water in your tank. If you have air conditioning running full blast, like we do in our house in the summer, the room humidity would be less and the response to having no water in the humidifier is going to be more predictable, nearly immediate, and more severe, just as it might be in the winter when forced air heating makes the air dry and you don't have moisture being added by you machine's humidifier.
RE: Burning Nose - PaulaO2 - 08-29-2012
Nose is slightly better today but woke to my eye swollen and glued shut. Yay. Swellings gone down a lot. It is just like when I have an allergy "attack". Yay again.
When I first laid down, I could breathe nothing through my nose. A few seconds after turning on the machine, I could breathe. Side benefit of CPAPs!