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Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
I'd start a thread on the main forum named something like "GurdBonk Starting" Then keep all posts about your therapy there. That provides us a history.

If your machine is not 100% new, and is a Demo or slightly used, start with a Factory Reset so you have a solid starting point.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
Hi all
Just a quick update. I've been on the machine for about 9 months now with a high compliance rate. I went over the stats and now have an average AHI of 0.3 using the nasal mask. Recently I purchased a nasal pillow, a BMC Fealite, and have had  a couple of days on it. Very light mask but I'm having a bit of difficulty getting used to it due to where the hose is, but with persistence it should be ok. The BMC machine is running like a watch and I am happy with it thus far, and if I can squeeze several years out of it I will be very, very happy.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here

HI All,
I started cpap 5 years ago. Couldn't sleep with the screaming monkey jumping up and down on my face. I quit after the worst 4 months of sleep. Got 5 years older, apnea apparently got worst or less able to tolerate it, so I tried again. A Dreamstation  (Apap) and a Dreamwear nasal mask. Now the fun began.
Blowing in my nose is a good thing, because I have nighttime stuffiness, but the pressure keeps the nasal passages open.
I recommend the mask because it's so unobtrusive.
Now the bad things.
Air goes in my nose and out my mouth.
If I hold my mouth closed it burbles through my lips
If I tape my lips shut, it blows up my checks
and then blows off the lip bandage.
All of which either keep me from falling asleep or wake me up multiple times.

So all those ad pictures of the happy nasal mask wearers...I don't believe them.
The typical solutions of tape and chin straps don't work. Tape blows off and fabric straps, still allow the mouth to open. Full face masks don't work for me, nor an oral cpap mask.

I went to a dentist and I asked him to make a form fitting oral appliance, which is molded to my teeth and locks my jaws closed. You can see it in the center of the picture.
I found 3 X 4 inch waterproof bandages at Rite Aid 6 for $2.99. This keeps air from coming through my lips.
I made a Silence of the Lambs strap from a steel plate that covers my  lips and cheeks. Steel, because poofing cheeks require a lot of rigidity to keep them from poofing. The steel is covered by 2 inch duct tape and has a polyethylene foam liner around the lip area. A Velcro strap around the back of my neck holds it in place. This also keeps the bandage from blowing off. 
I ain't pretty at night, and will need a suitcase to carry all my parts, but at least I'm sleeping >6hrs a night, AHI about 3.5, 90% Pressure 12.5.
I believe the min Apap setting should be set .5 to 1 cm below the 90% pressure, to limit the number of events it takes to step up the pressure, to get to the 90% pressure.

Your thoughts?
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
Hello, burtshulman! You will be able to get help with your pressure questions -- and share your ingenious solutions to "chipmunk cheeks," if you start a thread in the main part of the forum. I'd suggest simply doing a copy/paste of your post here.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
I got the resmed airsense 10, so far it helps me in many ways. specially when my nose is clogged due to colds. long time ago with no CPAP, I cant even breathe it is bad. But with my CPAP machine and mask, I use the face mask F20, It makes me I guess breathe better. So far this machine help me. I travel a lot back and forth to europe and I ended up buying 1 here in the US and another to use when I am Europe. not having it for 2 days sucks. specially on a 10hr flight then a night in a hotel...   those wait times with no CPAP I can feel the difference... my chest feels weird and just not the same.
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
It's great to hear the different CPAP has made in your life! Now if only the little travel versions were as good as the full-sized ones!
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
(03-19-2020, 06:52 PM)burtshulman Wrote:
Air goes in my nose and out my mouth.
If I hold my mouth closed it burbles through my lips
If I tape my lips shut, it blows up my checks
and then blows off the lip bandage.
All of which either keep me from falling asleep or wake me up multiple times.

So all those ad pictures of the happy nasal mask wearers...I don't believe them.
The typical solutions of tape and chin straps don't work. Tape blows off and fabric straps, still allow the mouth to open. Full face masks don't work for me, nor an oral cpap mask.
It's not the mouth but the tongue that keeps the airway closed: if your tongue isn't in its natural position air is allowed to escape through your mouth.  Now a tape (as long as it is fixed) won't allow the air escape through your lips, but arrive in your mouth causing that blown up checks.
All those "happy nasal leak wearers" manage more or less to have their tongues is its natural position; either they haven't been mouth breathers at all or trained the tongue.  During that training, which might last a year or longer, a tape is helpful to use the nasal mask in that training period. 
Using a nasal mask as a mouth breather undermines the therapy as the pressure doesn't arrive where is should.  Hence obviously you have the option to train your tongue or use an FFM.  Remember: all the action to keep your mouth shut only might cure the symptoms but not the cause.  A nasal breather will breathe through the nose even if the mouth is open.  
Mike
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
Mike has said it all.  I started with a full face mask and would open my mouth during the night to the point where my mask was being pulled of the bridge of my nose. This wide mouth position had probably been learned to allow air in through a collapsing airway.  I too have tried chinstraps (useless) and cervucal collars (helpful) and finally the tape.  I would, through the day, concentrate on tongue position to close off my detour.  Put on your nasal mask and play with that tongue up against your palate and lying on the bottom of your mouth and you will learn the proper position on your first attempt.  Now a year later I still place a small piece of tape BUT have found amazing freedom with nasal pillows. Leakage rate is average a 12 where it was 30 and beyond. Therapy pressures are half of what they were with a full mask.  I can scratch or rub any part of my face if it itches.  NO FACIAL CREASES.  I am in love with my mask
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
I've been a CPAP user for 14 years and had little trouble adapting to it. That said, unlike many who have indicated that it improved their lives, I don't notice any difference from before I started using it. I didn't ever experience things like excessive fatigue prior to starting the therapy. No difference in blood pressure after starting, etc. etc.  But I definitely needed it based upon earthquake snoring and high sleep study AHIs (47.6 three months ago). Even after losing lots of weight and bringing my BMI below 24, it didn't help. Anyway, my nine year old CPAP was acting up last fall and I decided to replace it. I was unaware of the wooden headed Medicare rules now in place, so it took me about three months of jumping through hoops to finally get my replacement (Resmed Airsense 10 Autoset). I've always successfully used a nasal mask so the Airfit N20 was a good choice. About a month of checking results on OSCAR and tweaking, I think I've pretty well optimized things. My biggest irritant had been my Large Leak numbers. Finally settling on a fixed pressure of 7 did the trick. Large leaks is now zero. My second biggest irritant is the Clear Airway numbers. Without that my AHI would be below 1 most nights. From looking at OSCAR, it appears that almost all of them are reported while I am awake. I typically take about a half hour to get to sleep and the events are clustered during that time frame. I recently watched a Youtube where a sleep tech showed how to analyze Oscar results and he showed how looking at flow rate I can tell if I am actually awake. So if the events are being reported during those times, they are actually false readings. In spite of that, my reported average is still low being around 2, so I guess I shouldn't complain, especially when I see that many of the folks reporting here have such terrible struggles.

Since my searches on this site didn't seem to find any discussion of false events by a CPAP machine, I thought I'd bring it up.

BTW, kudos to the OSCAR developers. I'm a numbers nerd and enjoy analyzing results. Smile
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RE: Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here
(03-25-2020, 09:08 AM)giannie Wrote: Since my searches on this site didn't seem to find any discussion of false events by a CPAP machine, I thought I'd bring it up.

Try searching on "sleep wake junk."  Not the most intuitive way to do it, but you'll see a fair amount of information.  It's great you watched that Lanky Lefty video; I did too and learned a heck of a lot!
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