Travel CPAP and humidification?

I will be travelling in Europe with a lot of walking carrying my luggage. The last time I took my regular CPAP and I have to reduce the amount of weight I'm carrying -- I am getting older. Most of the light travel CPAP machines I see either don't have humidification or are almost as heavy as my current machine. I expect the humidity at night in heated hotels to be about 30% relative humidity. I've used my CPAP without humidifier running but with humidity above 70%. So, what to do?

My current CPAP is a Resmed Airsense 10 with humidifier chamber. It weights about 4lb with power supply, not counting mask and hose. It usually runs at 9 to 13 cm pressure. I have the humidity setting at 4. I've used it without humidification on summer trips on battery power and was fine, but weather was humid at the time.

My mask is a dreamwear and I've finally gotten to the point where it works OK. The other mask I used was an FP Eson nasal mask and it was terrible -- very uncomfortable, lots of leak, poor AHI, couldn't sleep with it. I have a beard and mustache, so some masks may not seal well. I have a nasal pillow attachment for my dreamwear but it doesn't seem comfortable; I use the thing that goes under my nose like a mustache.

The filter type humidifiers (HME/Heat Moisture Exchange Unit) apparently do not work with the dreamwear -- https://www.cpap.com/productpage/heat-m ... -unit.html.
The CPAPs I've found that have an addon heated humidifier are almost as heavy as my Airsense10. Things like the Z1 or resmed airmini use HMEs which won't work with my dreamwear mask.

Is there a travel cpap with humidification that I have overlooked that is light and compact?
Are there hacks that can help, like putting a wet towel next to the cpap intake?
Are there masks that might be a replacement for my dreamwear that I can use an HME with?
Should I just suck it up and go without humidification for my trip? I will try my cpap tonight with humidity set to 0 in similar conditions to what I expect on my trip.

Hi WalterC,

It depends on which parts of Europe you're going to be walking in. And in what season, what time of year.

Much of middle and northern Europe has a humidity of 50+, and here in the UK, the minimum humidity is 70 for most of the year.

As for 'heated hotels' - you must be thinking of, or planning to stay at, four-star hotels and above. If you stay at pensions and B&Bs and three-star hotels, you will find the room has heating, but as often as not, no air-conditioning.

I suggest you get out your itinery, and then check with Google what the climate is like along your intended way.

Thanks Rick. I'll be in Germany end of Feb. and beginning of March. Typical weather there then is not so different from Massachusetts where I am. Temps at night are a little above freezing. I calculated from the typical outdoor dew point at night and a room heated to 65F that the relative humidity in my hotel rooms will be around 30%, perhaps showers, humans perspiring, etc. might bring it up to 40%. Right now it is little colder outside here than there and I measure the relative humidity as 25-30% (outside it is 48%). Winter heating drops the humidity quite a bit. I won't be staying at 4 star hotels by any means, but most places I have stayed in winter are heated. Maybe I should look for airbnbs that advertise no heating

WalterC wrote:Should I just suck it up and go without humidification for my trip?

Leave the door to the bathroom open and a hot shower running all night???

Just about anything you need will be easier to buy than cpap stuff,
especially away from home. Pack accordingly.

A CPAP humidifier in Germany in winter would be mission-critical for me. It is light and makes trips more enjoyable.

Luggage rolls now. I put the handle of the other luggage through the back strap of my CPAP case and let it all roll together, so I don't care the weight of my CPAP case.

I would try to get by with one pair of shoes or cut back on clothing before I would dream of leaving my CPAP humidifier. (Besides, it's Germany. Clothing is mostly optional there. Even in the dry freezing cold of winter. ) I'd rather walk around with damp undies and socks from washing them every night in the sink than to sleep one minute without my humidifier. Not that I've ever done that.

Hey, just me.

Hello again WalterC,

My job took me to West Germany several times - just as it took me to 12 of the 50 United States, so I''ve learned to expect different climates.

And while I admire your ability to do the calculations from raw data, and the fact that you know the theory behind them, I'd have to ask: what's the source for your start figures, your raw data?

This is my source today - https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/ger ... ch/climate - and as you can see, the average outside humidity for February and March is 78 pc and 69 pc respectively.

As to the effect of heating, many Europeans will have the heating on - but still have a window or two open, to let fresh air in.

So my guess is the humidity inside will be higher than your 'by dead teckoning' calculation.

If it's any help, I had my Philips Respironics S1 551 for a year before they wrote to me and said, did I want to buy a humidifier? And using it without a humidifier in this part of Europe was OK.

The sensation in my throat was cold rather than not moist enough - and I got used to it. And now, on short trips - a week, say - I take just the blower unit.

Hello Rick

The Z1 HME most definitely works with the Dreamwear or any other mask that will fit into your Airsense 10. The HME fits between the mask and the hose. I have an S9 and it connects fine - I've just tested it.

Near as I can tell the HME needs to be as close to the face as possible so it can suck up whatever moisture is in your own breath and make use of it.
For that reason most of the masks that have short hoses as part of the mask frame don't offer a connection between the hose part of the mask and the frame where a person could insert the HME device and thus not a good option because the HME device has to be inserted too far back to really have a chance to do much in terms of adding back moisture.
It will insert between the long hose and short hose but it is going to be way back in line and the chance of it picking up moisture from exhaled breathe that far back in line is going to be slim.

Now the DreamWear...it might just fit between the swivel elbow at the mask junction and where the long hose connects. Holden4th says it fits...now whether it will will work very well with the DreamWear and how it is made...dunno but the HME is relatively cheap so I would suggest giving it a try and see if it adds enough moisture to keep you comfortable.

All this is assuming that your nose is okay with less/minimal/none added moisture. Mine wouldn't be...I already know that from trying a setting too low on the humidifier and running the tank dry a few times. Not pleasant and no way would I want to be trekking around Europe with the nasal symptoms I got when my nose got unhappy with lack of moisture. It would be far worse than the little inconvenience taking the humidifier might be...at least for me.

The obvious thing to do is to test this at home. Try using your regular CPAP without humidification and see if you can tolerate it.

Thanks everyone.
By leaving clothes home and going clothing optional and taking my regular cpap, there are several advantages:
I'll probably sleep better;
I'll be presenting a poster at a research conference; presenting naked will definitely draw more attention
I'll reduce everything else to a not quite bare minimum and see how much it weighs with current cpap. I'll try an HME and perhaps try other masks that work well with an HME (Pugsy has a good explanation of which masks should work and why).
I'll also try my cpap without humidity the next time the weather warms to what I expect there. Rick has done without humidification in similar conditions, so it might be OK for me too.

[Physics warning, if you are not interested in nerdy things skip the rest.]
ChicagoGranny has one solution. Actually there are several things that increase the humidity inside in winter, including showering, cooking, water vapor given off by people, water vapor from the basement. In very tightly sealed houses, the humidity will be higher because of these. My house is fairly well sealed, but on cold winter nights it gets very very dry, but probably more like 20% relative humidity(RH) than 10%. Sleeping with a CPAP with humidification I can get away with not using a room humidifier in winter. Opening windows when possible will also help (lowers temp).

Rick, you are right that the relative humidity will be higher than my calculations; this is because of the moisture sources inside the house/hotel. Relative humidity depends on temperature. If you take outside air at 32F/0C with 70% RH, put it into a sealed container and heat it to 65F/18C the relative humidity drops to 21% (hot air holds more water than cold air). A room is not perfectly sealed and there are moisture sources in the room, so the real humidity will be higher than 21%. It's hard to calculate exactly what it would be; clearly running the shower raises it quite a bit. For anybody interested in how to calculate this stuff, I cheated and used a dew point calculator. http://www.dpcalc.org/

WalterC wrote:. . . Opening windows when possible will also help (lowers temp). . . .

I ain't no physicist or nuthin, but just to clarify for readers, based on nothing more than my incomplete understanding of it all . . .

Opening the window to lower the temperature might help the reported number since it is a percentage (amount of actual moisture in the air as compared to what amount of moisture the air in the room at that given temperature could hold), but that obviously won't increase the amount of moisture in the air, which is the real point. I think. Not that I'm known here for ever having any real points, or anything.



Graphic explains how the exact same amount of moisture is assigned a different RH depending on temperature of air. As a general rule, when you allow cold into a room, you are allowing dry air into a room. This compounds the problem rather than helping it.

WalterC, of course, knows this. He is just getting back at me for suggesting that his CPAP humidifier is more important than his clothes.

I forgot to add that I've used the HME with my Dreamwear and it worked very well.

"Should I just suck it up and go without humidification for my trip?"
That's what I do. Tried a week at home without it first.

For part of last night I tried my CPAP with humidification set at 0. So, no humidity for 4.5 hours and the result was my nose was pretty dry when I got up during the night. I wonder how it would be after all night for 10 nights. It got much colder during the night, so I turned humidity up to 4 when I got back in bed.

Today Amazon will deliver my HME. I'll try that with my dreamwear mask and with my hated F&P Eson mask tonight.