[tommica]

I had a coworker that himself is getting a jaw surgery because his bone structure would sometimes make him stop breathing while sleeping for short moments.

His brother apparently was a horrible snorer, but that was due to his nose, that the "skin" would collapse inwards when he took a sharp breath through his nose, instead of expanding. Apparently just having some kind of tape on his nose to stop that from happening while sleeping made a huge difference.

[this_steve_j]

Fellow mouth taper here! It’s a must for shared hotel rooms. I have no idea about the safety or effectiveness for sleep apnea, but it significantly (N=1) improves others’ sleep.

[cebert]

I am not a medical professional but was recently officially diagnosed with sleep apnea and am using a CPAP. I was taping my mouth, which did work. However, I was strongly advised against doing this when I mentioned this to my sleep specialist. It’s possible for your nose to get obstructed and you can risk suffocating.

[david-gpu]

> However, I was strongly advised against doing this when I mentioned this to my sleep specialist. It’s possible for your nose to get obstructed and you can risk suffocating

CPAP user here. I tape my mouth. The risk of suffocating due to a blocked nose seems low to me, for two reasons. First, because I can simply do a one-sided smile and breathe normally through my mouth -- I've tried many times for funsies and it's never failed. Second, because you should always fold the two bottom corners of the tape to facilitate its quick removal in the morning anyway.

The real risk of taping your mouth at night, in my opinion, is if there's any chance of vomiting. Without any other way to go, you would aspirate the vomit and that's bad. What I do to reduce that risk is not eating for three hours before using the CPAP.

So why go through all that effort when one could simply use a full face CPAP mask? That's because it is difficult to produce an airtight seal around your whole face, which is necessary for CPAP therapy to work. Creating a seal around your nose is much easier and the smaller size of a nasal nask allows you to sleep on your side, which for most people means you can get away with using lower pressures, which in turn are more comfortable.

[m_a_g]

Vomitting without waking up is next to impossible unless you are blackout drunk.

[david-gpu]

The concern is not having enough time to remove the tape from your mouth.

Among other reasons this can happen because CPAP therapy can cause you to swallow air unwittingly while you sleep due to the pressure it places on your epiglottis. The subsequent burps can contain a mixture of swallowed air and the contents of your stomach.

[m_a_g]

You seem to be misinformed. You don’t wake up vomiting out of nowhere. That is not how it works unless you are using sedatives. You’d be wide awake once your body wants to vomit and you’ll have plenty of time to remove that tape five times. But you do you.

[smeej]

I can't even almost vomit without waking up. I was wondering how anyone could sleep through actually doing it!

[david-gpu]

The problem is not whether you wake up, but whether you have enough time and presence of mind to remove the tape from your mouth before stuff starts coming out of your stomach and enters your lungs.

[elric]

I don't suppose your sleep specialist elaborated? Suffocating in your sleep is really hard, this is why people with sleep apnea don't just die instantly, instead we start to feel awful over a very long period of time. Your body wakes you up when your breathing is compromised (usually in response to an increase in CO2).

Guess they're just covering their arse with that advice.

Also, when you're on nasal CPAP, and pressurised air is being blown into your nose, you'd have to have really weird things happening to suddenly get a nose that's completely obstructed in spite of the pressure....

[KevinGlass]

It would seem the risk of death from the CPAP is far higher than that of mouth taping. A quick google and I can’t find any injuries or deaths from mouth taping but here we have confirmed hundreds of deaths from faulty CPAP machines

[mechhacker]

What tape works for you?

[this_steve_j]

I like the 2” x 100’ 3M surgical tape although i don’t remember what exact variant. Medipore, micropore, maybe both.

[Jenda_]

The GP talked about nose tape (I guess nasal strips), not mouth tape.

I personally use:

- better breath strips from aliexpress

- a 3D print similar to https://noson.eu/

[werdnapk]

Jaw surgery helps open up the airways by moving the jaw forward.

[nerdbert]

Many people can get a mouthguard-type thing that has the same effect.

[Solvency]

No they can't. It costs an obscene amount of money and insurance won't cover it unless you get a sleep study ($$$$$) and it proves you have sleep apnea. Don't have apnea but still snore? Tough luck!

[nerdbert]

My insurance paid for all of that without a quibble after my family doctor made a referral. My insurance company has many customers. So I am going to stick with "many people".

[loco5niner]

Weird. I wonder how I got one then.

[Solvency]

What insurance? What doctor prescribed? ENT + UnitedHealthcare = "haha, no. You need a sleep study and that's not covered either."

[loco5niner]

I got a sleep study on insurance(yes $$$). I talked to a sleep doctor on my Cigna insurance and bought directly on cpap.com without going through insurance for $400.

[baq]

holy shit I'm the brother except I'm an only child. need to try out the tape

[dkbrk]

You may also want to check out "Max-Air Nose Cones".

[joncrocks]

There's also `nasal strips` - plastic strips with adhesive (like a plaster) to open up the upper-nose.

[JKCalhoun]

Hey, cool, Amazon link to "Max-Air Nose Cones" instead lists AIRMAX Nose Cones. Gotta love that site.

[whyhat]

Hi, Mr. Calhoun! I’m sorry this is such an unorthodox way of reaching out to you, and I know this is probably off topic for the original thread, but I couldn’t really find another way to contact you. I’m trying to get in touch with you about your raspberry pi TV project. I’m a 16 year old high school student, and my best friend loves retro tv and custom gifts, so I figured a great going away to college gift would be a project like this, loaded with all his favorite old (legally obtained) tv shows, and the videos of various musicals we’ve done together. I’ve been looking for a project very similar to yours for a few months now, and the closest thing I’ve found is a video describing a portable version of the project by a YouTube channel called Irish Craig Party. Unfortunately, it was the only video on the channel, the comments were turned off, and they had zero social media/github attached to the channel. I had to keep looking around for similar projects. I was totally willing to do some of the coding myself, but some fundamental challenges like the scheduling or the real time playback were a bit too intense for my admittedly barebones coding skills. Now I humbly come to you. You had mentioned that you were planning to open source it in a thread from a while ago, but you were debugging. Is there any way to get the code for this? I already have the vast majority of the parts, I’m willing to debug and modify it in any way, I just need the foundations. Thank you for hearing me out, I’m sorry for not finding a better way to reach out, and thank you for your time.