Allergic to Soft Nasal Silicone Pillow Masks

I normally use a solid full face mask but switched to a ResMed soft silicone mask a few months ago. Immediately after switching to this mask I thought I got the flu...runny nose all day long, sneezing, itchy eyes. This went on for about three weeks. I decided to go back to my full face mask and all of the sudden got over what I thought was the flu. This past week I went to a different soft silicone nose pillow mask. The next morning I woke up with the same symptoms as with the other soft mask...crazy bad runny nose, sneezing, itchy eyes. It now strikes me that I never had the flu and that I’m allergic to these soft silicone pillow masks. I have a beard and really like the seal I get with these silicone nasal pillow masks but can’t use these with this apparent allergy. Anyone have similar allergies and if so did you find any practical way of dealing with it? Thanks.

Welcome to the forum.

What pressure and humidity setting are you using with the full face mask?

What pressure and humidity setting are you using with the nasal pillow mask?

I doubt it is an allergic reaction per se but instead I am thinking cpap rhinitis from the more direct air flow into the nasal passage.
Probably need either more or less humidity. Extremely common for this to happen.

Running at 10 on my machine. This is what the prescription directed and the machine had set when it arrived. This setting feels fine aside from the crazy runny nose I wake up with. I will lower it tonight to a lower setting and see how I feel in the morning. Thank you for your reply. I had not heard of rhinitis but will do some research on it. I sure hope it’s as simple as lowering the air flow. My machine has a humidifier but I never have used it with the full face mask. Perhaps I will give it a try. Thanks again.

Google "cpap rhinitis"
It's more about the humidity than it is the air pressure.
Some people just need more or less humidity at a set pressure to keep the nasal mucosa happy.
When nasal mucosa get either too dry or too moist they swell up and react like they do with a typical allergy like response.
The more direct nature of the way the pressure gets to the nasal mucosa with nasal pillow masks might dry out the nasal mucosa or might cause them to be too moist.

You gave me a pressure setting but you didn't include the humidity setting.
So I don't know which way to advise you to change the humidity....I was not going to advise changing the pressure.
If your setting is on the low side...try a higher humidity setting.
If your humidity setting is on the higher side...try a lower setting.

Pugsy - Many thanks. I dropped my machine down to “6” last night and woke up feeling great. No runny nose or sneezing at all today. Thanks again for your guidance! I am very grateful.

Witz32 wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:16 pm

Pugsy - Many thanks. I dropped my machine down to “6” last night and woke up feeling great. No runny nose or sneezing at all today. Thanks again for your guidance! I am very grateful.

Suggest you change the title of the first post then

Glad you found a solution!