Sleep Apnea Treatment

Obstructive sleep apnea has many different treatment options, but choosing one can be a complicated process. If you suffer from sleep apnea, it’s important to speak to your doctor or a sleep specialist to get help in making a treatment decision. Factors as diverse as your physical makeup (in your airway) and the level of severity of your problem can affect your treatment options.

 

CPAP is the best, most effective way to treat sleep apnea. It is also the method of treatment most highly recommended to commercial drivers and pregnant women. To use CPAP, you put on a respiratory mask that is connected to an apnea machine that blows room air into your throat.

 

The air holds your throat open, which prevents the obstruction that causes sleep apnea. While this sounds uncomfortable, many people grow to love the positive results of the treatment. When it comes to choosing a mask and apnea machine, you have several choices, so explore your options. Generally CPAP also includes apnea monitors.

Apnea surgery is a drastic treatment option, and even when you undergo a surgical procedure, there is no guarantee it will work. Sometimes surgery can even make your sleep apnea get worse.

 

If you and your doctor decide that surgery is the best way to go, check into your options. There are several different surgeries to treat sleep apnea, and they all have different success rates.

 

If surgery seems too extreme, but nothing else is working, you can try other, non-surgical medical procedures. Sometimes doctors can remove the tissue that obstructs your breathing, or even harden your palate if it’s too soft by inserting tiny polyester rods into the tissue.

By far the simplest remedy for someone suffering from mild to moderate sleep apnea is to change sleeping position. When a person sleeps on his back, the airway can become blocked by other tissue in the throat, like the tongue or tonsils, much more easily.

 

The problem is, once you’ve grown used to sleeping on your back, chances are you’ll roll into your preferred sleeping position while you’re asleep. You can try to prevent this with a simple homemade remedy, like stuffing tennis balls in a tube sock and pinning it to your back, or by buying one of the many products on the market that help you maintain a side-sleeping position.

 

Another option is a positional alarm, which sets off a noise when the sleeper rolls back. However, the noise itself can be such an interruption to regular sleep that it might be counter-effective.

 

You can also try foam wedges to prop yourself up if you can’t sleep in any position but on your back. If you elevate your entire back, this can help your airway stay open. However, regular pillows won’t work for this remedy, since they can send your chin down on your chest and make sleep apnea worse. You might find that keeping your sleeping position altered permanently can give you the results you need without more drastic measures.

You can also treat sleep apnea by using a dental appliance, which works by either pushing the tongue down, pushing the lower jaw forward or both. These appliances are worn like a retainer or a sports mouth guard.

 

If you decide to pursue this treatment option, ask your doctor or sleep specialist for a reference to a dentist who knows how to properly treat sleep apnea. Dental appliances for sleep apnea usually work best for people whose apnea is mild and who are at a healthy weight, but they sometimes are effective for more severe cases of apnea or for overweight people. People who find dental appliances for sleep apnea effective usually end up using them permanently.

Weight loss can sometimes help apnea sufferers improve sleep, especially if their cases are mild. Sometimes excess weight around the neck can make your air passage narrow, which can lead to more obstruction. Of course, thin people can suffer from sleep apnea too, and overweight people don’t necessarily develop apnea. However, if you suspect that weight gain on your neck might be a factor, losing weight is worth a try.

 

Weight loss can be difficult if you aren’t treating your sleep apnea in other ways, however. The exhaustion the disorder causes makes exercise that much more challenging, and sometimes people eat just to keep from falling asleep.

 

When you talk to your doctor about treating your sleep apnea, it’s often a good idea to ask for advice about dietary changes in addition to other treatment methods. If weight gain caused your sleep apnea to develop in the first place, then if you gain weight again later in life you will probably develop sleep apnea once more.

 

Avoiding alcohol and other substances that can depress your central nervous system, like sleeping pills, can help you if you suffer from sleep apnea. If you consume these substances near bedtime, they can slow down your breathing and make your apnea worse.

Sometimes, a combination of treatments works best if you suffer from sleep apnea. For instance, you might change your position, lose weight and stop drinking alcohol close to bedtime. Your doctor can help you find the treatment combination that works best for you and your case.

Alternative treatment methods are successful for some people with sleep apnea, though the effectiveness of these treatments has not been proven. One of the most popular alternative treatments for sleep apnea is acupuncture.

 

Cures for sleep apnea are often complex, and many sufferers have to try a number of different treatments before finding one that works.

 

 

Advanced Brain Monitoring, Inc. (n.d.) OSA Treatment. Retrieved January 10, 2008, from the Advanced Brain Monitoring Web site: http://www.b-alert.com/OSA_treatment.html.

 

American Sleep Apnea Association (2007). Treatment Options for Adults with Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Retrieved January 10, 2008, from the American Sleep Apnea Association Web site: http://www.sleepapnea.org/resources/pubs/treatment.html.