25
votes
Nose dilators
Has anybody tried these? I just ordered a Silent Mammoth... which is essentially a coat hanger bent all fancy. It arrives in a few days.
Anyway, anybody have any experience with these sorts of things? I went with this one purely because its metal and I don't want to have some ten-use plastic to recycle if this whole thing leads to improvement.
I don't have sleep apnea but I do think my cute button nose could use a little opening. :)
I have mild snoring and have used both nasal strips and nasal dilators. I've used Breathe Rite strips and Mute dilators.
Nasal dilators are more effective in my experience (not that nasal strips aren't effective, they are, just not as much as a properly fitted dilator).
Pros and cons.
Nasal strips.
Pros:
more comfortable in my experience
no cleaning involved (disposable/single use) other than washing the skin on your nose
Cons:
single use
somewhat less effective than dilators
Nasal dilators.
Pros:
more effective at widening the nasal passage and making breathing easier / alleviating snoring
reusable
Cons:
less comfortable (I actually had nosebleeds and cut the bridge of my nose when I started using them - that DID resolve later, but still, not great)
cleaning involved (have to clean after every use)
depending on material, they can get to the point where you just need to throw it away (plastic models - they end up as bacterial breeding grounds)
I started with strips, switched to dilators for a while, but now I'm back to strips. In part my switch back is because I'm losing weight (this reduces my snoring issues) and because I had a bunch of them left so they were a sunk-cost.
congrats on the weight loss! i lost around 30 or 40 lbs twelve years ago now and have kept it off (6’4” 225 and i’m 175 now) — i definitely snored when i was heavier. keep it up :)
one other reason i opted for metal over plastic is the potential for sharp edges like that.
this whole corner of the market feels like a scam.
do you meditate at all? if so, and if you’re stripped-up while meditating, do you notice a difference?
Thank you.
Eh, maybe in the 'sell a treatment, not a cure' sense by making solutions that have to be constantly replaced. Maybe your metal version won't have that issue? The products do work in that they open up the nares and I can definitely feel the difference in ease of breathing.
I don't, no.
I just ordered "Intake Breathing Magnetic Nasal Strips" because of what you wrote here. I had tried Breathe Right strips before but did not keep up with them. I've been using mouth tape lately and it feels like an improvement, so I'm curious to see if this adds to that. I learned that the Intake strips could potentially work with my mouth tape cut into strips for a cheap alternative to buying refills.
Good luck! I hope it works the way you want.
Just putting this out there, if anyone snores a lot and has access to the coverage, it would be worth checking with your doctor to see about a sleep study to check for apnea. A CPAP is a significantly greater intervention, but I sleep so much better when I use it. I'd say 3 hours on the CPAP >> 6 hours not on the CPAP.
It was brought home to me earlier in the year, when I was in the ER for something else. I was wired into all the machines, and every time I'd doze off, the apnea would start, and the pulse ox alarms would go crazy until I woke up. This is even with the bed mostly propped up (so I was more sitting than lying flat).
I use a nasal mask similar to this one. We call it my "elephant nose". I added a ring to the top of my bedframe to guide the hose over the top, and I don't have any trouble sleeping with it on. The biggest trouble I have is not putting it back on if I get up in the middle of the night or falling asleep before I put it on.
Its shocking how many people have sleep apnea and how many people don't treat it. Im in the rail industry so they test for it pretty aggressively. Conservative guess... 10% of us are diagnosed with it and MUST use the machines to work. At least one guy I talked to uses a machine but is below the threshold for the railway medical act.
We call mine my Sleep Charger. The little kids got it immediately
Is that a cultural reference? This big kid did not get it.
Oh no, not cultural. They have just been familiar from an early age with plugging things into chargers at bedtime so they work in the morning.
I work with a guy that basically is wearing breath right strips permanently now because of his nose issues... I'm assuming he isn't aware of these things or maybe he'd be using one. Let me know how it goes and maybe I'll suggest it to him.
definitely will do. those strips are pretty expensive unless he’s got a good hack for giving them new life. there are some magnetic ones, but i’m not sure if those are reusable or not.
so much waste in this industry. i’m surprised there isn’t a semipermanent insert for this.
Boy if this isn’t a concept I’m uncomfortable with! I’m categorically against installing things that you insert into your body that a doctor has not prescribed, and putting things into your airways is particularly alarming. So my recommendation is to ask the doctor which one they recommend.
The real issue here is that breathing is a bit more complex than just the outside part of your nose and if you are snoring that is potentially a symptom of sleep apnea, a condition which raises your risks for a number of deadly diseases. So really, do see your doctor about it!
oh yeah, this is purely to open my nostrils a bit. i don’t snore or anything, though.
i tried a breathe right strip a few weeks ago and really liked it, but i don’t want that glue on my skin.
i’ll hit up my doc, actually — this might be covered :) good call.
Can I ask why you want to open your nostrils despite no issues breathing or sleeping? It seems like they're doing fine. It would seem even the low risk of introducing germs into your nostrils or scratching the inside of your nose would outweigh any possible "wider nostril" benefit?
Please definitely talk to your doc, this feels like risk for no reward, even if just a minor one
I get a decent breath through my nose, but I would like to have my upper nostril open a little more sometimes. I get a lot of headaches and I'm throwing everything at it.
I'll definitely be keeping the thing sterile, though. I'll see what the doc says.
Not trying to be alarmist but just wanted to mention, the combination of “not getting enough air breathing” combined with headaches sounds like the symptoms I would expect from carbon monoxide (CO). Strongly recommend you consider getting it borrowing a CO detector and keeping it in the same room/rooms that you’re noticing these symptoms. At the very least, it’s a good idea to rule that out and cross it off the list of possibilities.
haha I wish... sort of. All of my breathing tests are normal and my CO alarms are varied in age and calibrated etc. So long as I've been alive, I've never had a moment without a headache (womp womp)
I just want to breathe even more than I am. :)
That’s awful. I really hope you find a solution.
yeah -- that'd be sweet. I'm optimistic, though. :)
On a different side of things, I broke my nose a few years ago and recently got surgery for a deviated septum and it was a game changer.
I do breathing meditation and I have good lung capacity, but I was getting winded doing basic things and couldn’t catch my breath. Recovery after the surgery sucked but it was amazing being able to do things again.
I know it’s not exactly what you where asking, but if anyone is thinking about the surgery it was night and day for me, and I wish I would have had it done sooner.
thats sort of it. I just figure that more air in might do some good. When I inhale through my nose, it definitely feels restricted... or at least more constricted than I think it should be.
I’ve been trying a lot of these, from the ones on Amazon to the ones at drug stores here. What annoys me is how expensive some of these are considering how small and basic the item really is. None of the plastic ones I tried worked well for me. Some were ok-ish, but most hurt my nose or fall off overnight. In the end I stuck to the strips, thought I dislike the single use nature of them. I’ll give this Silent Mammoth a shot tho. Have not come across it before and the minimal design seems less bulky than what I tried so far.
its wild, right? I texted a pic to my Mom, who is always inventing little tools and stuff, and she said 'just bend a coat hanger and rubberize it' haha --- which isnt far off from what it is.
lets compare notes after a few days. I get mine tomorrow.
It is wild! At least this one is made of metal so it should be easier to keep clean and won’t wear out. Yeah, let’s compare notes! Mine’s arriving closer to the end of the month.
ok! I got mine in and just started wearing it. Its weird going in, but with a little adjustment, it isnt too bad. I don't know what I was expecting, but maybe I was breathing pretty good the whole time :)
Still waiting for mine. Thanks for the update! I tried a lot of these. I try not to get too excited, but if it works well it will be a nice surprise. Nostrils crossed… err I mean fingers crossed! ;-)
one thing about this is that it’s weird to get it in right, but once it slides into place, it’s pretty good. it just needs to be perfect. i tried sleeping with it in again but i remove it and hold onto it in my sleep.
Ok I got this in the mail today. I don’t love that there is a plastic coating on it. This was not apparent in the photo. I thought this was straight up metal. I tried putting it in and adjusting a bit, but it still hurts that middle part of the nose where it latches. At one point in the fiddling process I did feel it was finally in correctly and my nostrils were indeed open. It felt about as open as with the strips. I’ll continue playing around with the fit. But I gotta say I don’t think it was worth the $ they ask. I will not be buying another one.
yes! when it slides past that bump it isn’t so bad, but i’m with you on all points. i can see why they have the plastic coating and why it wears out, but… the whole thing would be a nice $9 item, but no more.
Silent Mammoth: 1 Star.
I can recommend Intake. Just make sure you get the fit right. Took a few weeks finding the best fit for me, but most nights it does the trick. I also use a sleep wedge underneath my pillow, as I find the less completely horizontal I am, the less my nasal airway seems to close up.
Now if you've found a trick for those of us with eyelids ever-so-slightly too short to stay shut while sleeping...
I am very much pro-angle for sleeping. If I lay flat, I feel like I am tilted backward. I usually use a pillow with a folded towel below it to make a shitty ramp.
wrt short eyelids, that's terrible! Do you tape them or sleep with a damp mask or anything?
with those magnetic strips, how do they actually work? Is it a magnet taped to your nose then pulled up?
Re: Intake: yep. You could get your own skin tape and recycle the magnets you get in the first batch if you don't like subscriptions.
As for my poor eyes... haven't found the best solution but a sleep mask is a must despite not fully solving the problem. Did try skin tape once, just where the top eyelid folds, but that was super inconvenient. At least a mask I can lift up when I need to see for a minute. Woe is me.
well, that's a shitty thing. A close friend has this thing where her eyelids flutter or something at night, so her eyes get wicked dry and are super painful all the time. eye stuff is terrible.
Whoever the hell sold me this metal thing on Amazon delayed their shipping, so I think I'll get it on Monday instead. I will cherish this old life before a $70 piece of hanger was shoved up my nose.
I actually used a Silent Mammoth before. It was extremely functional but not at all comfortable. I wonder if I bought a size too large. It opens up the airway really well and stays in place snugly. Your nose might get used to it if you wear it enough, I never did though.
I got this in today and I've been wearing it. I can absolutely see how it would be uncomfortable. The most minor adjustment helps out, but I have to tweak it every time. How anybody designed this little thing is beyond me. Its weird going in, but ultimately not too uncomfortable... do I have a big nose‽ oh my god.
edit: ok yeah -- it isnt comfortable for very long.
that seems to be a common review of it. i wish there was a way to know my nose size. i’m a bigger person but it’s not like i’ve got a huge nose. but yeah, i also went with the bigger one. i’ll find out in two days :)