I'm not. My doc told me that there were a lot worse things in life than being "addicted" to one little squirt of Afrin at bedtime.SteveBR wrote:My newest ENT actually gave me a green light to use Afrin. I was shocked.
He said it's when we start needing it and using it a other times during the day that can lead us down that dark ugly Rebound path.
For myself I can't sleep if my nose is stopped up. Wouldn't matter if I used a full face mask to allow the mouth breathing should I need to...the cold hard fact of life is that if my nose is really badly congested I simply have a horrible time sleeping period.
Since for me getting to sleep and staying asleep really trumps everything else....I do what I have to do to get the sleep and worry about the other stuff later. No I don't always have the most perfect leak line graph...but most of the time it is quite acceptable...but I at least sleep.
I learned a long time ago that a really pretty perfect leak line doesn't mean much if a person wakes up a gazillion times a night fiddling with something that I was using to get that nice pretty leak line. Remember what is said...sometimes we make compromises and I always will choose sleep itself over perfect numbers because without the sleep itself the numbers on anything really don't mean much.
I don't know if your proposed idea to help with definitive answers to the "are those FLs nasal mucosa or not"...I am afraid that you might find that you have to sacrifice sleep quality itself to maybe get that answer. You may end up with a lot of SWJ clouding the results.
It's your body and your sleep that you and if maybe finding the answer is of critical importance to you...then by all means try it. I have tried other less useful experiments for less of a reason than that. Sometimes I learned something useful and sometimes all I learned what what a stupid idea that experiment was...but I always learned something.
It's really the only way to get a maybe answer though in your situation because allowing the machine to do what it wants with a higher maximum we know for sure causes significant problems that we for sure want to avoid. For me...those higher pressures have never disturbed my sleep but I thoroughly understand that it isn't always that way for others and if there is no absolutely critical need for more pressure....don't let the machine go there if it is causing a problem. There's no urgent need in your case. Your AHI is nice and low once the SWJ is removed. You report feeling and sleeping better. Might be a different story if you were reporting no improvement at all and the obstructive component of your AHI was much higher and we couldn't blame enough of it on SWJ.
I avoid the Afrin myself as much as I can because I know how easy it is for me to cross that line where I start to use it too much and can develop the physical dependency that ends up with my using it during the day a LOT. Been there and done that and don't want to go there again.
But I do have a small bottle handy for emergency use and I use only the teeniest tiniest amount and very sparingly when I realize that I am going to have trouble sleeping with the congestion I might have. Fortunately for me it isn't often but I will do it if I have to because given the choice of a tiny bit of Afrin and sleep vs no sleep if no Afrin...I will do the Afrin. Is it ideal? Of course not but neither is not sleeping.
Now I also do the Flonase thing and the Simply Saline thing first before I resort to the tiny Afrin dose...the Afrin is always the last resort and not the first resort. I don't have the seasonal allergy thing much any more.. Did the allergy shot thing some 40 years ago which helped a lot.
Mainly when I end up with any congestion now it is I have caught a cold or something like that.
And like you I often find that I wake up with a clearer nose than when I went to bed because of the humidity in the air coming from the machine.
Think how a hot steamy shower seems to open up the nasal passages...while what we get from the humidifier isn't nearly as much as that hot shower the end result is the same. The moisture helps the nasal mucosa to not swell which is what causes the congestion.