(mumbling) - CPAP mouth leak, what is it?
Why it is important?
And how do we...
Fix it.
(chuckles)
CPAP mouth leak, what is it?
Why is it important?
And how do we fix it?
Let's go.
(bright music)
Hello friends, welcome back to my channel, CPAP Reviews,
always great to be with you.
My name's Nick, and today, I'm gonna be talking to you
about CPAP mouth leak.
All right, now this occurs when the pressure,
the positive air pressure, actually forces your mouth open
and so you get air rushing out through your mouth.
And sometimes this is caused
just from the pressure being too strong
and overwhelming your breathing,
your ability to breathe through your nose.
And other times it can be,
just because the muscles that support your jaw and mouth,
just relax a bit too much,
especially when we go into these deep stages of sleep,
and this causes our mouth just to drop open,
and then the air just rashes out.
Dry mouth, the numero uno complaint from CPAP users
all around the world.
Not a day goes by when I don't hear someone
mention the words, dry mouth, drives me nuts.
But no matter what mask you use,
or how high you dial up your humidifier levels,
if you're someone who suffers from mouth leak,
or you're a mouth breather with your therapy,
at some point in time,
you're gonna suffer from dry mouth symptoms,
that's just the way it is.
And here's a little something that you might not know,
it can also cause some pretty nasty dental problems,
especially tooth decay.
In fact, the Oral Cancer Council estimates
that over 30% of cavities in older adults
is actually caused from dry mouth.
Mouth leak is also gonna cause noise,
CPAP therapy is noisy enough as it is
(heavy breathing)
without having air rushing out through your mouth,
making all sorts of annoying noises.
And that can be very frustrating
for your bed partner as well.
(hissing)
(air rushing) (laughing)
It's also gonna cause interruptions to your sleep.
It's quite unnatural
to have that air shooting out through your mouth,
so it's gonna cause you to wake up more often
throughout the night.
(heavy breathing)
Now here's some tips on how to improve your nasal breathing
and reduce your mouth leak.
Firstly, cold, dry air causes congestion, right?
Shrinking of the nasal passages, and when this happens,
it's much harder to breathe through your nose,
so what do we do?
We breathe through our mouth.
So ideally we want warm, humid air,
so crank up that humidifier, crank up that heated tube,
and that's gonna really alleviate the congestion
and make it much easier to breathe through our nose.
Think about like when you got a cold,
or your sinuses are all blocked up,
what happens when you hop into a nice warm shower?
(White Christmas playing)
♪ Just like the ones I used to know ♪
It's easier to breathe, isn't it?
It's because you've got that nice steamy humid air.
(inhales sharply)
Really opens up the nasal passages,
makes it much easier to breathe.
So making it easier to breathe through our nose
is really going to reduce the need
for us to breathe through our mouth.
You also want to fine tune your therapy pressure levels.
I've done a number of videos on this topic,
if you wanna watch one, click the link above.
But the goal is to use our CPAP Therapy data
to fine tune those pressure levels
to get them working at the lowest possible rate
while still controlling your snoring and sleep apnea,
you know, giving you a healthy apnea hypopnea index.
It's gonna do the world of good for your therapy,
and it's really gonna reduce those mask leaks, and also,
it's gonna be far less likely that that high air pressure
is gonna overwhelm your breathing
and force air out through your mouth,
'cause that's sort of a lot of the time what happens.
The air pressure builds up through the night and eventually
it hits a point where your breathing just goes,
no, I can't breathe enough through my nose.
(exhales)
And it just pushes your mouth open.
Now, if you've tried both those tips
and you're still struggling with your mouth leak,
then there are some additional accessories you can try
that are just gonna provide a little bit of extra support.
This is what we call a chin strap,
and it provides mouth and jaw support
for when your muscles relaxed during sleep.
And they're quite effective for some,
however, they are a little bit annoying
in that you have to wear another piece of head gear
on top of, you know, your mask and the head gear
that you already wear.
But certainly does provide a bit of extra support
for your jaw from it dropping down.
My personal favorite solution
for reducing mouth leak however,
would have to be these little strips, they work wonders.
Oral mouth tape is becoming increasingly more popular
amongst CPAP users.
It's super affordable, super easy to do,
you literally just peel them off,
put them over your mouth,
and then put your mask on over the top, and you're done.
And you can also use these with full face mask as well,
so if you're someone suffering from dry mouth
and using you're full face mask,
give these a go and you might just notice
that it makes a big difference.
Also, for those of you who aren't on CPAP Therapy,
maybe you're someone who snores a lot,
or maybe you just wake up with a dry mouth,
also give these a go.
They're gonna really help promote nasal breathing,
and help reduce those dry mouth symptoms.
Just before I say goodbye,
I do want to quickly touch on one more subject.
And that is, I hear a lot of sleep apnea patients
referring to themselves as mouth breathers,
and I really dislike that term.
And the reason being is because it misleads patients
into believing that they have to wear a full face mask,
and it's just false, you don't.
We are all brought into this wonderful world
breathing through this thing,
it's the way we were meant to breath, through our nose.
Our nose acts as a humidifier, all right?
As air travels in through our nose, it's gently warmed,
moisture's added on its way down into our lungs
for gas exchange, right?
And the nose also is a filter.
The little hairs inside your nose also filter out
a lot of impurities, dusts and foam.
(chuckles)
All right?
So we want to be breathing through our nose,
it's the way we were designed to be breathing.
But what happens is, when you suffer from sleep apnea,
over the many nights and years,
you develop those bad habits of breathing through your mouth
because you just can't,
(sucking air)
you can't get enough air in through your nose
when you have sleep apnea, so what do you do?
(sucking air)
You suck it in through your mouth.
But those bad habits can be reversed
in a couple of weeks or a month with just a bit of practice,
it just takes a bit of practice.
So once you're on CPAP Therapy,
90% of you can be using this style mask at night,
the little nasal pillow mask,
so much more enjoyable than a full face mask, all right?
And if you're having a little bit of trouble
with the mouth leak side of things,
you can try practicing with some mouth tape or a chin strap
and see how you go.
Start low with your therapy pressure,
practice breathing through your nose,
give it some time, and your body will adjust,
and you'll be able to transition from a full face mask
to a nice little nasal pillow mask.
Not everyone, there are some of you
who have got deviated septums, sinusitis,
a whole lot of stuff going on up there with your nose.
But if you haven't been medically diagnosed
with any of that stuff,
and during the day, just when you're walking around
or you can breathe okay through your nose,
you should be able to do it over night time.
All right.
(laughs)
Thanks for watching, guys, I hope you enjoyed the video,
if you did and you'd like to show your support,
you can do so by hitting that thumbs up button,
subscribing to the channel,
and we've also got a great little Facebook page
full of very friendly and helpful people.
Until next time, have a great day, and amazing sleep,
and I'll see you soon, bye for now.
(White Christmas playing)