For Obstructive Sleep Apnea Sufferers, Throat Exercises Provide Relief

There is a simple (and free) technique that researchers from Brazil have studied, suggesting that exercising the throat muscles may improve severe obstructive sleep apnea symptoms. These throat exercises, derived from speech therapy, seem to work because they have a marked ability to strengthen and tone the muscles of the throat, even reducing the circumference of a patient’s neck.

Sleep apnea is a potentially life threatening sleep disorder that is caused when the muscles of the throat collapse during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most common type of apnea and also the most serious because it causes the soft tissue in the palate, throat, or tongue to “obstruct” the flow of air as a person struggles to breathe while they are asleep. Apnea is particularly severe when there are more than twenty or thirty events per hour because it severely limits the amount of oxygen the person receives throughout the night. Carrying extra weight, especially around the throat area has been found to be a related cause of OSA.

According to an article last month in The New York Times, a study on the effects of specific throat exercises on obstructive sleep apnea patients was conducted by the Heart Institute’s Pulmonary Sleep Laboratory at the University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil. Researchers split the OSA patients into two groups. One group was instructed to do simple breathing exercises every day, the other group was instructed to do 30 minutes of throat exercises a day, comparable to those that speech therapists employ. The motions included swallowing and chewing, sliding the tongue back and forth to front of the palate, and repeating particular vowel sounds quickly. This exercise technique may be an alternative for some patients to the most widely known treatment of sleep apnea today, the CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, which is attached to a mask the patient wears while asleep.

The researchers found that after three months, the group that only did the breathing exercises had almost no improvement, while those that performed the throat exercises reduced the severity of their sleep apnea by 39 percent. Although the patients’ body mass index remained consistent, also noted was that the exercises reduced the circumference of the subjects’ necks significantly. The study also stated they snored less and slept better, concluding that throat exercises “significantly reduce Obstructive Sleep Apnea severity and symptoms, and represent a promising treatment for moderate OSA.”

The report analysis can be found at PubMed.org. For more information about the available treatments of obstructive sleep apnea, including a throat exercise program, contact The Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center. If you suspect you have sleep apnea, it is important to get the treatment you need.

Snoring: It’s in the Air that You Breathe

Using EPA air pollution data from a number of different American cities, researchers have established the first link between air pollution and both hypopnea (under breathing) and apnea (pauses in breathing) during sleep. Also studied was the affect that increases of temperature play on these sleeping disorders. Known as sleep disordered breathing (SDB), hypopnea and apnea can cause temporary elevations in blood pressure, lower blood oxygen levels, and can lead to high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.

In a study that will be published in the upcoming issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health have explored the effects of air pollution and temperature increases on sleep apnea and hypopnea episodes. Using data from the EPA monitoring air pollution levels in 7 U.S. cities (Framingham, Minneapolis, New York City, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Sacramento and Tucson), they studied it against data from the Sleep Heart Health Study of 6,000 people from 1995 to 1998.

The doctors were looking to find a correlation between “the elevation in ambient air pollution with an increased risk of SDB, nocturnal hypoxia and with reduced sleep quality,” as well as how “seasonal variations in temperature would exert an independent effect on SDB and sleep efficiency.” Using the data, and taking into account certain seasonal variables, they looked at known SDB factors including a patient’s age, gender and whether or not they smoke.

The results were that this is the first study to link air pollution and sleep disordered breathing. Antonella Zanobetti, Ph.D, a researcher on the project stated, ’We found novel evidence for pollution and temperature effects on sleep-disordered breathing.” They also found that increases in sleep apnea or hypopnea “were associated with increases in short-term temperature over all seasons, and with increases in particle pollution levels in the summer months." The short-term rises in temperature were associated with changes in respiratory disturbances, blood oxygen levels and decreases in sleep efficiency.

Sleep disordered breathing affects nearly 17 percent of the adults in the U.S., and many more aren’t aware they have a problem, since the episodes happen at night. If you feel you might suffer from a sleep apnea or hypopnea, because you’re experiencing some of the daytime symptoms, it is important to get treatment.

To get more information on how to treat sleep apnea or snoring disorder, contact The Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Apnea Center.