Bad bad sore throat, any ideas?

Hi everyone. I have periodically had this terrible sore throat pain mostly when I swallow, and said pain migrates up to my ear. I went to my ENT a few months ago and she could find nothing, and she even had me do a full MRI to rule our super bad things. It was very painful too, and it's back but not quite as awful but still bad.

So, I started thinking (a bit belatedly) that perhaps this is CPAP-related. I poke through the threads and somebody described having the exact same pain. It's on the right hand side and doesn't seem to be related to a dry throat.

What seems to be the default cure for CPAP woes is to crank up the humidity and heated tube temperature. I tried that last night at setting 5 for the humidity and got rained out about 3:30 a.m. I will try again although tonight but I'll use the AUTO setting and see what happens. Other ideas I am trying are lowering the machine (it's on the floor now, can't get much lower than that) replaced the little Hepa filter, and will do a sinus rinse and squirt some Flonase up each nostril after that. Thinking about taping the mouth shut but have not reached that point yet.

If it matters, my sleep is good. It's just this stupid sore throat. Sorry if this message is a little disjointed, have to take wife to her doctor. Thanks for any pearls of wisdom you can provide!

Have you been tested for reflux?

I have had reflux in the past. But recently I have started taking better care of myself, and avoid what I think to be triggers like chocolate and especially carbonated beverages. The weird thing about this sore throat is that its intensity varies even within the day. This morning on a scale from one to ten it was about a six, right now it’s about a two. This morning’s pain can possibly be attributed to a bad CPAP night I suppose 🫤 we’ll see if tonight is better!

The way to avoid rain out is to raise temp at the same time you raise humidity. Warmer air can carry more moisture without it turning into water.

This is a very good video regarding the appropriate tube temperature setting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_-VBpXOV8s

I followed the instructions and set my humidity setting to 4 and tube temp to 81. No more dry mouth (that was a big problem for me on the auto setting) and absolutely no rainout. Hope it works for you.