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Using CPAP with a blocked nostril. Tongue and chin pushed to a side. - Printable Version

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Using CPAP with a blocked nostril. Tongue and chin pushed to a side. - morpheus1958 - 12-19-2017

Sharing my observation as this might help someone.

I use nasal pillow with my CPAP device.
I observed that sometimes one of my nostrils gets blocked during sleep ,
when that happens I observed that in the morning, my tongue is skewed towards the nostril that was blocked. Also my lower jaw is shifted a bit towards the blocked nostril. Things generally return back to symmetry by the end of the day.

My hypotheses is that, when the nostil gets blocked, all the air pressure from CPAP goes through a single nostril.
This causes unsymmetrical forces in the oral cavity. And the tongue muscle is pushed in the direction of blocked nostril for the whole night ( by the air coming in from open nostril). This causes the tongue to be titled slightly on one side when I open my mouth in the morning. Also if I run my tongue along the lips in the morningĀ  I can hear clicking sounds at the base of the tongue only on one side, as if some tiny knots are getting back to normal.

To alleviate the problem, I started taking warm baths before sleeping, which has helped to unblock the nostril.

I also plan to start using neti pot and apply a moisturizing saline gel to unblock nostril, and hope it would be useful.


RE: Using CPAP with a blocked nostril. Tongue and chin pushed to a side. - paulag1955 - 12-19-2017

If you've never used a neti pot before, be aware that water can continue to drain out of your nose for quite a while...in my experience up to two hours. So you might want to test that in the morning to how it works for you.