Is it mask movement leak or mouth opening leak or both?

Anyone want to offer an idea on what these leaks were/are and what could/should be done about it?
And later I will tell you what I did.

Hint...2 different masks involved (the P10 and the Eclipse).

Please bear in mind I slept through ALL these leaks...the big and the little.

No one has any thoughts???? How about questions?

Here's what I see:
Three things seem to be happening together:
A drop in flow rate
Some flow limitations
Leaks.

My guess is you're opening your mouth, not mask movement.
Congestion?
EPAP too low?

Looks like mouth tape job failing to me... that's what mine look like anyway.

https://sleephq.com/public/0a2adc38-6ac ... d330799694

Okay....remember that we don't sleep the same each night...and that's going to include variables in either mask movement leak or mouth opening leak. It's why I don't go into panic mode when I see a lot of leaks (again these leaks didn't wake me up no matter how big or little they are) and why I choose to not go to extraordinary measures in an effort to "fix" things.
Most nights things don't need fixing and I learned a long time ago that most of the time "fixing" the leaks seemed to negatively affect my sleep quality. My sleep quality sucks enough without adding more potentially sleep disturbing stuff.

I do NOT have nasal congestion issues at all unless I am ill and I am not ill at the present time.

It's a bit difficult for me to measure potential mouth breathing causing dry mouth because I take a medication at bedtime that causes some dry mouth so it's not a reliable indicator of just how much mouth breathing I might be doing.

And yes....I know that I do some mouth opening/breathing but I don't do it every night and for the most part I don't go very deep into large leak territory and if I do it isn't for very long. I admit it and I already explained why I just don't care.

So....I had a bit of a zit come up on my nose which made for a problem with the Eclipse adhesive so I decided to use the P10 while things healed. Hence the P10 use for a few nights.

The top report for April 23...that's a P10 night...
The middle report (April 24) is also a P10 night but I added taping my mouth shut just to eliminate mouth breathing from the equation. More on that in a bit.
The bottom report from April 25....that's an Eclipse night and NO taping either. Since the Eclipse simply doesn't move around there isn't any mask movement to leak (and I made sure the adhesive didn't come loose) it's pretty safe assumption that the little bit of leak you see is mouth opening leak.

So...my point to all this is we simply can't tell from looking at the leak in these reports if the leak was mouth opening or mask movement. Some might say "look at the reduction in leak with the tape use compared to the prior P10 night" but remember I might not have had much leak anyway due to the fact that we don't sleep the same each night anyway.
I have had bad leak nights followed by near perfect 0.0 leak nights and not done anything to change outcome.
No tape....for sure no chin strap or anything yet no leak to speak of no matter what the cause. Yeah some of that leak on April 23 was likely mouth opening but we have zero proof that the bulk of it was mouth opening. We just don't know for sure exactly how much was mask movement and how much was mouth opening. It wouldn't be impossible for that April 24 report to have been like it was even without the tape.

This is why we say "look for trends" and "don't base major decisions on anything on just one single report".
I have already seen what my "trends" look like and they look more like the Eclipse report from April 25 than they do the April 23 report for sure.

BUT....even if every single leak on that April 23 report was mouth breathing it really wasn't bad enough or last long enough deep into large leak territory to really impact my therapy. Didn't impact my sleep since the leaks didn't wake me up and surprisingly the mouth really wasn't all that dry. Now I have had a rare occasion where the mouth was so dry it felt like it was cemented shut but that wasn't the case with the April 23 report. So I will admit that on a rare occasion there is likely significant mouth breathing but it is rare and I simply refused to tape my mouth (which does mess with my sleep quality) just to deal with something that might happen once every month or two.

The taping thing...yes if affects my sleep quality a bit but less annoying than trying a chin strap because for me anyway...chin straps didn't help and were highly annoying and caused enough discomfort to really mess with my sleep quality. In my mind though....a once a month not so pretty report doesn't make it an urgent need that I go to any extraordinary measures to keep the mouth shut.

AND....there is no way in hell that I will go down the full face mask road. Simply not going to happen and there's certainly no urgent need anyway. I got more than one reason to omit FFM use from my equipment list and all very important to me.

Oh...I am surprised no one mentioned the April 24 taped night and what happened around 01:00. I looked at that time frame up close...what with all those centrals...and I spotted a bit of maybe weak periodic breathing but I don't think I was asleep when that stuff happened. I have never had that sort of thing happen before. I see no need to go over analyzing something flagged when I wasn't asleep that I have never seen before. 75% of any AHI that I might see is always SWJ stuff and not real asleep flagged events.
Remember....my sleep quality isn't so great but it's not from apnea stuff. It's from pain/discomfort from my back/pelvic issues. I work on it the best I can but it's a war that I know I won't ever win. I keep fighting the battle though and sometimes I win but sometimes I just have a crappy night despite waging a good fight.

vandownbytheriver wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 7:03 am

Looks like mouth tape job failing to me... that's what mine look like anyway.

https://sleephq.com/public/0a2adc38-6ac ... d330799694

You would be wrong....the tape was ONLY USED the one night and it was stuck solid as a cemented rock the next morning.
It never failed. That fact I am 100% certain of. It took an act of God to get that crap pulled off my face.
It did do a nice job of exfoliating though once I got it off....

Our baseline leak lines do look similar though...meaning on my P10 nights it never really goes to 0.0 leak on the baseline.
I haven't figured that out yet. Thought it might be a tiny hole in the hose (which was what it was in the past when I saw reports like that) but I brought out a brand new heated hose for that April 23 report....and no real change in what the line looked like.

I have no explanation for the obvious difference between the P10 leak lines and the Eclipse leak line that does go down to 0.0 as we would expect it to. Mask setting choice hasn't changed at all.
And to make things more confusing....I have had P10 reports where the leak baseline is at 0.0.

Next week I am due to get the new F & P nasal cushion mask...called the Solo
https://www.fphcare.com/au/homecare/cam ... solo-mask/
I will check the leak line after I use it.
Everyone please note....I am NOT unhappy with the Eclipse at all. I just got in the mood to try something different for grins and when I got the notice about the Solo I thought "it looks a lot like the ResMed AirFit N30 and that's actually a decent mask and might be worth an experiment". I don't experiment with stuff that doesn't interest me at all unless it's free and the Solo wasn't free at all. I bought it with some FSA dollars I had laying around.
I am not going to replace the Eclipse.....one of my .preferences is a "no headgear all all mask" and so far the Eclipse is the only mask that meets that requirement for my use.

Folks to be fair you have to understand that when I wear the P10 mask it is ridiculously loose. I probably need to tighten up the headgear a bit but I am a lazy sot.

So the mask movement doesn't come as a big surprise to me.

Again remember....the leaks did NOT cause wake ups that I am aware of. I have had leaky nights that did cause wake ups but none of the 3 nights above. So I kinda know what a leak wake up consists of....had one last night with the Eclipse.
The adhesive came loose in one little spot and that leak did annoy me. Happened right at normal wake up/get up time though so didn't try very long to make it stick better last night. I haven't pulled the SD card yet so I don't know what that leak is looking like but I will get it done later.

Got some stuff to do right now.

Below is last night's report.
Eclipse and no tape.
I circled the areas of a small amount of leak at the end of the night. The adhesive came loose...a little and subsequent leak was teeny tiny. Not nearly as big as one might think but it may have contributed to causing a wake up. It's hard for me to know for sure especially at that time at the end of the night. My meds have worn off by then and I tend to wake up due to discomfort by then. It's always a "restless" kind of sleep at the end of the night anyway. It is entirely possible that discomfort woke me up and it was then that I noticed the tiny leak.

The bigger leaks at the beginning of the night.....obviously mouth breathing/opening but didn't even make it to official large leak territory and I for sure slept through all that.....don't care and shrug my shoulders and move on.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 8:29 am

vandownbytheriver wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 7:03 am

Looks like mouth tape job failing to me...

You would be wrong....the tape was ONLY USED the one night and it was stuck solid as a cemented rock the next morning.
It never failed. That fact I am 100% certain of. It took an act of God to get that crap pulled off my face.
It did do a nice job of exfoliating though once I got it off....

Unless I test the tape job in the morning I can't be sure... I pressurize my cheeks until I make the tape job fail and find where it starts (might as well, it's morning right?). For me it was one corner, always that corner... if the tape job held it was obviously harder to blow through.

vandownbytheriver wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:28 pm

Unless I test the tape job in the morning I can't be sure.

The very first thing I did the morning after I taped was to check to make sure there weren't any leaks.
There weren't any.
Besides you would have had to see my tape job....it wasn't a teeny tiny strip of tape. It was tape that was 2 inches wide and I don't know how long of a piece I used but at least 6 inches or more. It extended past the corners of my mouth by at least a full inch....well into the cheek area.

Gorilla duct tape. Don't laugh...it's all I had handy that would hold and I wasn't about to go buy some medical grade tape just for a one night experiment and I knew it was going to be a one night taping experiment. I might waste some money on some stuff but it sure as hell isn't going to be on tape that I won't ever use again.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:49 pm

vandownbytheriver wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:28 pm

Unless I test the tape job in the morning I can't be sure.

The very first thing I did the morning after I taped was to check to make sure there weren't any leaks.
There weren't any.
Besides you would have had to see my tape job....it wasn't a teeny tiny strip of tape. It was tape that was 2 inches wide and I don't know how long of a piece I used but at least 6 inches or more. It extended past the corners of my mouth by at least a full inch....well into the cheek area.

Gorilla duct tape. Don't laugh...it's all I had handy that would hold and I wasn't about to go buy some medical grade tape just for a one night experiment and I knew it was going to be a one night taping experiment. I might waste some money on some stuff but it sure as hell isn't going to be on tape that I won't ever use again.

Damn gurl! Thass some dedication. I use CRST to hold my O2Ring on too... great stuff... also good as a general all-purpose medical tape.

The thing about CRST is that it's not *too* strong... you can emergency escape from it in a hurry by opening your mouth hard. That GT stuff... damn... you *are* hard-core.

vandownbytheriver wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 28, 2024 6:27 pm

That GT stuff... damn... you *are* hard-core.

I am fortunate that my skin isn't the paper skin that old people get. You know what I mean.
My husband has the paper skin and if you just look at his skin sideways he bleeds something awful.

I tested the Gorilla tape prior to going with it for all night. I easily could remove it without pulling off a layer of skin.
No big deal (for me) and it did exfoliate some of my post menopausal chin/moustache whiskers that I normally would just yank out with tweezers. It isn't something that I just go around telling other people to use though. I know how strong it is.

You know the old adage "don't do as I do...do as I say".