Best Sleep Apnea Treatments.com

Sleep apnea is a condition that prevents the sleeper from breathing properly which in turn wakens the sleeper, and can become a bad enough condition that it can lead to heart disease and many other serious ailments.  It can even become life threatening if allowed to reach critical stages. There are various sleep apnea remedies available depending your situation. Consult with your doctor before embarking on any treatment.It is generally accepted that there are two distinct types of sleep apnea. Central apnea is caused by a lack of body messages to the brain to stimulate regular breathing while asleep. Additionally, there is Obstructive Sleep Apnea that is characterized as having a physical reason for breath blockage during sleep.  This would, of course, happen despite the concentrated exertion of the sleeper to breathe.  Regardless of which type of sleep apnea you have, listed are some of the following methods that may work.  Since this a condition that can be potentially life threatening, do not start any treatment without the advise from your doctor.  Because your blockage may be caused by excess tissue in your mouth and palate attributable to being obese, you may try to lose weight. This can only help your general well being.Smoking and drinking alcohol may also prevent you from controlling the soft tissues in your throat, thus you might try to eliminate those habits.If you suffer from apnea only when sleeping on your back, a tennis ball sewn into the back of your pajamas may prevent that and encourage you to sleep on your side. This is an old school remedy.Some people find that it helps to raise the bed a few inches.  Sleep apnea pillows (wedge pillows) are very popular and have been know to lessen the problem    .Sleeping pills or over-the-counter sleep aids been known to cause relaxation of the throat and help with sleep apnea. Your doctor may suggest a sleep mask to be worn in conjunction with an air-producing device called a C-PAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine or a BiPAP  (Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure) machine that actually allows you to breathe out without the continuous air pressure that a C-PAP produces.  Either one of these machines will keep the passageway unobstructed via air pressure to enable you to breathe properly and no longer have to struggle for breath. Some people swear by oral prosthetics that keep the airway open, and others swear by strange operations entailing scarring of their palate, insertion of polyester substances into the palate, or even having radio frequencies introduced into their palates.There is also surgery available for some, which entails removing the uvula, tonsils or the adenoids in an effort to clear or widen the airway.Finally, a more dramatic solution for sleep apnea is Maxillomandibular Osteotomy or Advancement (MMO or MMA), procedures which entail detachment of both the upper and lower jaw, adjusting their placement and finally using pins and plates to solidify the new placement.  Great care needs to be taken when using sleep apnea remedies. Discuss any remedy with your doctor to understand the ramifications of any treatment.

These self-help strategies are usually worth a try before turning to costly, inconvenient, or uncomfortable medical procedures.

Stay off your back. Many people snore or experience apnea only when they sleep on their back, a position that allows the tongue and uvula to flop back into the airway. (Night time observation can reveal whether you have such “positional” apnea.) In one recent study, more than half the people with that kind of apnea cured it by learning to sleep on their side, using any of the following techniques: wearing an alarm that beeped whenever they lay on their back; sewing a tennis ball into the back of a pajama top; laying thick pillows length-wise down the bed to keep themselves from rolling over; or even just concentrating on staying off their back.

Lose weight. Most people with apnea are overweight. Even modest weight loss can improve their breathing by thinning the tissues surrounding the airway.

Avoid sleeping pills altogether, and skip alcohol and tranquilizers for at least four hours before bedtime. Those drugs can make the soft tissues in the throat sag even more, and can also weaken the lungs’ ability to inhale.

Stop smoking. While smoking itself does not cause sleep apnea, it may contribute to the airway blockage by swelling the tissues of the throat. Smoking may also magnify the oxygen deprivation produced by the apnea.

Check for improvement by having your sleep monitored periodically – every week or two if possible – and retaking the sleep questionnaire every month. Whatever method you try, keep your physician posted on your results so he or she can help decide whether you need additional treatment.

If you find that self-help is not very helpful, you may need professional treatment. Sleep specialists use a test called polysomnography to confirm the diagnosis of sleep apnea, gauge its severity, and adjust the treatment to the individual patient. The test usually requires patients to sleep in a laboratory for a night or two while technicians observe their breathing and monitor airflow, blood-oxygen levels, heart function, and brain waves.

Once polysomnography confirms the diagnosis, patients are fitted with a nose mask attached to an electric pump, which forces air down the airway. The treatment, known as CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), nearly always quiets snoring and prevents apnea. But people need to continue using the machine indefinitely. And some people can’t adjust to the mask or the noise of the pump.

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Researchers are not sure why apnea occurs. Attempts to correct the disorder through surgical widening of the nasal passages have largely failed, indicating the problem is less of an anatomical than neurological nature.

Alan Solko, 64, of Queens, used to snore so loudly that his wife couldn’t bear sleeping with him and visitors could hear him “all the way down the hall,” he said recently. “I felt nothing. I just snored. I slept very well. But I kept my wife up all night,” he said.

One of the most common, most dangerous and most easily treated sleep disorders is apnea. Million of Americans stop breathing for up to two minutes at a time in their sleep and suffer related respiratory and heart problems, according to the American Sleep Disorders Association.

After seven years of ever-louder nocturnal snoring, Solko sought help at the Stony Brook University Hospital sleep laboratory. “I didn’t know until I slept in the test at the hospital that I was stopping breathing three hundred times or more a night. That scared the hell out of me. It meant I could die in my sleep,” Solko said.

Solko was given a CPAP device (controlled positive airways pressure) to use while sleeping, “and it’s like a miracle,” he said. “You have a mask that you put over your face when you sleep, and this machine just pumps ordinary air through your nostrils.”

CPAP has revolutionized treatment for apnea, experts say. But many insurance carriers and Medicare do not fully cover the price of CPAP. That financial burden can deter some patients from seeking treatment.

There are changes in the respiratory control of breathing. And one kind of change is a reduction of respiratory drive. And during REM [rapid eye movement] sleep there is a tremendous amount of change that seems to impact respiratory drive.

In REM sleep, the heart and breathing rates may vary dramatically, then fall sharply during deep sleep. Some scientists believe apnea is a condition in which the brain mechanisms responsible for controlling changes in breathing rates somehow go awry.

Nearly all apnea sufferers are men, which forces scientists to seek some male factor in the brain that affects breathing. So far, no such tie has been found, but many in the field believe it may be linked to the same factors that put men at greater risks for heart attacks.

The mortal danger of sleep apnea is particularly dramatic among infants. Up to 50 percent of all prematurely born babies suffer apnea, requiring constant monitoring and respiratory support.

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An ancient myth told of the plight of Undine, a nymph condemned to a life of sleeplessness out of fear she would stop breathing while asleep and die. Modern science calls it sleep apnea.

The ailment — an interruption of breathing during sleep — also is known as ”Undine’s Curse,” and it afflicts a large number of middle-aged, overweight men, many who unknowingly suffer the condition.

Sleep apnea goes all the way back to Greek mythology. We’re finally getting the upper hand on it by diagnosing those who didn’t even know they were affected.

The condition also has been diagnosed in infants who can be aroused from lapses in breathing by being shaken, an action that doctors say awakens the baby and forces the brain to message the lungs to begin functioning again. Sleep apnea in the case of infants is the cause of sudden infant death syndrome, for which there is no known cure.

The condition now is being diagnosed with the help of a computer and electrodes that monitor patients at home while they sleep. The computer, in use at several medical centres around the country, is among the most accurate of devices capable of monitoring the sometimes life-threatening disorder, Johns explained.

The system uses a mesh halter to which electrodes are fixed and stuck on the chests of patients to measure a series of vital functions, including the length of time between breaths.

The halter and electrodes are placed on the patient at the clinic and worn home. At night, while the patient sleeps, the electrodes are plugged into a small box that records the patient’s sleep patterns.

The system measures heart rate, lung function, oxygen saturation in the blood and paradoxing which is the opposite movement of chest and abdomen.

He said the monitoring box is brought back to the clinic the next morning, at which time the data collected during the night is fed into and analyzed by a computer.

If the patient is apneic, the computer might show decreased respiration during sleep, a decrease in heart rate and a desaturation of oxygen in the blood stream.

The operation is similar to a tonsilectomy and involves removal of tissue at the back of the throat, which enlarges air passages to enable unobstructed breathing. Other surgical methods also successfully treat sleep apnea caused by nasal deformity or nasal polyps.

The computerized diagnostic method also helps determine if the patient suffers from other types of sleeping and breathing disorders, primarily central nervous system dysfunction in which the brain is not telling the lungs and diaphragm to move.

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Although vastly underdiagnosed and virtually untreated, sleep apnea can contribute to high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems and strokes. It also can be deadly.  

In one study, Stanford University researchers looked at 159 truck drivers. They found that 79 percent had sleep apnea, and many were unable to control when they fell asleep driving. In another study looking at accidents in which drivers fell asleep at the wheel, 87 percent of the drivers died, taking with them one or two other people.  

Men suffer from the condition almost three times more often than women, , in part because of anatomical differences in the upper airways. But because many women who suffer from it are post-menopausal, there is some speculation it also may be hormone-related, he said.  

The most common and severe form of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea. In many cases, it’s caused by sagging muscles at the base of the throat, enlarged tonsils, a small airway opening or a large tongue, according to the American Medical Association Encyclopedia of Medicine. In about 20 percent of cases, being overweight is a major cause of the problem.

Obstructing the airway makes breathing labored and causes loud snoring. If there is complete blockage, the breathing stops altogether and the sleeper is briefly silent. This makes the diaphragm and chest muscles work harder; the sleeper gasps and briefly awakes as breathing is started again.

In central sleep apnea, the airway is opened but the diaphragm and chest muscles don’t work, perhaps because of a disturbance in the brain’s regulation of breathing during sleep, according to the AMA encyclopedia.

If you suspect you’re suffering from sleep apnea, talk to your doctor, who may refer you to a lab where your sleep can be monitored. Losing weight and avoiding alcohol before bedtime may help. Wearing a mask attached to an air compressor that forces oxygen into the airway is an effective treatment for severe cases. And surgery that removes excess tissue from the throat is another possibility.  

First think through what you want from the doctor and make it clear to him or her. For instance, if you go to the doctor with lower back pain and your blood pressure is high, your doctor may concentrate on treating the blood pressure because it’s potentially life-threatening. However you should make it clear the back pain is still something you want treated. Second, ask questions. Studies show patients who ask questions do better, he said.

Third, be honest about what you can and can’t do. If you can’t take your medicine four times a day, tell the doctor. Maybe he can give it to you in another form. If you can’t diet or exercise, it’s important the doctor knows this, too.

Wake up happy! Discover the proven sleep apnea treatments that guarantee a healthy and restful sleep! To grab your free report go to Best Sleep Apnea Treatments

Adapted from “When You Can’t Sleep: The ABCs of ZZZs,” by the National Sleep Foundation.

• Set a schedule:

Go to bed at a set time each night and get up at the same time each morning. Disrupting this schedule may lead to insomnia. “Sleeping in” on weekends also makes it harder to wake up early on Monday morning because it re-sets your sleep cycles for a later awakening.

• Exercise:

Try to exercise 20 to 30 minutes a day. Daily exercise often helps people sleep, although a workout soon before bedtime may interfere with sleep. For maximum benefit, try to get your exercise about 5 to 6 hours before going to bed.

• Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol:

Avoid drinks that contain caffeine, which acts as a stimulant and keeps people awake. Sources of caffeine include coffee, chocolate, soft drinks, non-herbal teas, diet drugs, and some pain relievers. Smokers tend to sleep very lightly and often wake up in the early morning due to nicotine withdrawal. Alcohol robs people of deep sleep and REM sleep and keeps them in the lighter stages of sleep.

• Relax before bed:

A warm bath, reading, or another relaxing routine can make it easier to fall sleep. You can train yourself to associate certain restful activities with sleep and make them part of your bedtime ritual.

• Sleep until sunlight:

If possible, wake up with the sun, or use very bright lights in the morning. Sunlight helps the body’s internal biological clock reset itself each day. Sleep experts recommend exposure to an hour of morning sunlight for people having problems falling asleep.

• Don’t lie in bed awake:

If you can’t get to sleep, don’t just lie in bed. Do something else, like reading, watching television, or listening to music, until you feel tired. The anxiety of being unable to fall asleep can actually contribute to insomnia.

• Control your room temperature:

Maintain a comfortable temperature in the bedroom. Extreme temperatures may disrupt sleep or prevent you from falling asleep.

• See a doctor if your sleeping problem continues:

If you have trouble falling asleep night after night, or if you always feel tired the next day, then you may have a sleep disorder and should see a physician. Your primary care physician may be able to help you; if not, you can probably find a sleep specialist at a major hospital near you. Most sleep disorders can be treated effectively, so you can finally get that good night’s sleep you need.

For information on other neurological disorders or research programs funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, contact the Institute’s Brain Resources and Information Network (BRAIN) at:

Sleep and sleep-related problems play a role in a large number of human disorders and affect almost every field of medicine. For example, problems like stroke and asthma attacks tend to occur more frequently during the night and early morning, perhaps due to changes in hormones, heart rate, and other characteristics associated with sleep. Sleep also affects some kinds of epilepsy in complex ways. REM sleep seems to help prevent seizures that begin in one part of the brain from spreading to other brain regions, while deep sleep may promote the spread of these seizures. Sleep deprivation also triggers seizures in people with some types of epilepsy.

Neurons that control sleep interact closely with the immune system. As anyone who has had the flu knows, infectious diseases tend to make us feel sleepy. This probably happens because cytokines, chemicals our immune systems produce while fighting an infection, are powerful sleep-inducing chemicals. Sleep may help the body conserve energy and other resources that the immune system needs to mount an attack.

Sleeping problems occur in almost all people with mental disorders, including those with depression and schizophrenia. People with depression, for example, often awaken in the early hours of the morning and find themselves unable to get back to sleep. The amount of sleep a person gets also strongly influences the symptoms of mental disorders. Sleep deprivation is an effective therapy for people with certain types of depression, while it can actually cause depression in other people. Extreme sleep deprivation can lead to a seemingly psychotic state of paranoia and hallucinations in otherwise healthy people, and disrupted sleep can trigger episodes of mania (agitation and hyperactivity) in people with manic depression.

Sleeping problems are common in many other disorders as well, including Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, cancer, and head injury. These sleeping problems may arise from changes in the brain regions and neurotransmitters that control sleep, or from the drugs used to control symptoms of other disorders. In patients who are hospitalized or who receive round-the-clock care, treatment schedules or hospital routines also may disrupt sleep. The old joke about a patient being awakened by a nurse so he could take a sleeping pill contains a grain of truth. Once sleeping problems develop, they can add to a person’s impairment and cause confusion, frustration, or depression. Patients who are unable to sleep also notice pain more and may increase their requests for pain medication. Better management of sleeping problems in people who have other disorders could improve these patients’ health and quality of life.

Circadian rhythms are regular changes in mental and physical characteristics that occur in the course of a day (circadian is Latin for “around a day”). Most circadian rhythms are controlled by the body’s biological “clock.” This clock, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN, is actually a pair of pinhead-sized brain structures that together contain about 20,000 neurons. The SCN rests in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, just above the point where the optic nerves cross. Light that reaches photoreceptors in the retina (a tissue at the back of the eye) creates signals that travel along the optic nerve to the SCN.

Signals from the SCN travel to several brain regions, including the pineal gland, which responds to light-induced signals by switching off production of the hormone melatonin. The body’s level of melatonin normally increases after darkness falls, making people feel drowsy. The SCN also governs functions that are synchronized with the sleep/wake cycle, including body temperature, hormone secretion, urine production, and changes in blood pressure.

By depriving people of light and other external time cues, scientists have learned that most people’s biological clocks work on a 25-hour cycle rather than a 24-hour one. But because sunlight or other bright lights can reset the SCN, our biological cycles normally follow the 24-hour cycle of the sun, rather than our innate cycle. Circadian rhythms can be affected to some degree by almost any kind of external time cue, such as the beeping of your alarm clock, the clatter of a garbage truck, or the timing of your meals. Scientists call external time cues zeitgebers (German for “time givers”).

When travelers pass from one time zone to another, they suffer from disrupted circadian rhythms, an uncomfortable feeling known as jet lag. For instance, if you travel from California to New York, you “lose” 3 hours according to your body’s clock. You will feel tired when the alarm rings at 8 a.m. the next morning because, according to your body’s clock, it is still 5 a.m. It usually takes several days for your body’s cycles to adjust to the new time.

To reduce the effects of jet lag, some doctors try to manipulate the biological clock with a technique called light therapy. They expose people to special lights, many times brighter than ordinary household light, for several hours near the time the subjects want to wake up. This helps them reset their biological clocks and adjust to a new time zone.

Symptoms much like jet lag are common in people who work nights or who perform shift work. Because these people’s work schedules are at odds with powerful sleep-regulating cues like sunlight, they often become uncontrollably drowsy during work, and they may suffer insomnia or other problems when they try to sleep. Shift workers have an increased risk of heart problems, digestive disturbances, and emotional and mental problems, all of which may be related to their sleeping problems. The number and severity of workplace accidents also tend to increase during the night shift. Major industrial accidents attributed partly to errors made by fatigued night-shift workers include the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plant accidents. One study also found that medical interns working on the night shift are twice as likely as others to misinterpret hospital test records, which could endanger their patients. It may be possible to reduce shift-related fatigue by using bright lights in the workplace, minimizing shift changes, and taking scheduled naps.

Many people with total blindness experience life-long sleeping problems because their retinas are unable to detect light. These people have a kind of permanent jet lag and periodic insomnia because their circadian rhythms follow their innate cycle rather than a 24-hour one. Daily supplements of melatonin may improve night-time sleep for such patients. However, since the high doses of melatonin found in most supplements can build up in the body, long-term use of this substance may create new problems. Because the potential side effects of melatonin supplements are still largely unknown, most experts discourage melatonin use by the general public.

We typically spend more than 2 hours each night dreaming. Scientists do not know much about how or why we dream. Sigmund Freud, who greatly influenced the field of psychology, believed dreaming was a “safety valve” for unconscious desires. Only after 1953, when researchers first described REM in sleeping infants, did scientists begin to carefully study sleep and dreaming. They soon realized that the strange, illogical experiences we call dreams almost always occur during REM sleep. While most mammals and birds show signs of REM sleep, reptiles and other cold-blooded animals do not.

REM sleep begins with signals from an area at the base of the brain called the pons (see figure 2 ). These signals travel to a brain region called the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain that is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The pons also sends signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis of the limb muscles. If something interferes with this paralysis, people will begin to physically “act out” their dreams – a rare, dangerous problem called REM sleep behavior disorder. A person dreaming about a ball game, for example, may run headlong into furniture or blindly strike someone sleeping nearby while trying to catch a ball in the dream.

REM sleep stimulates the brain regions used in learning. This may be important for normal brain development during infancy, which would explain why infants spend much more time in REM sleep than adults . Like deep sleep, REM sleep is associated with increased production of proteins. One study found that REM sleep affects learning of certain mental skills. People taught a skill and then deprived of non-REM sleep could recall what they had learned after sleeping, while people deprived of REM sleep could not.

Some scientists believe dreams are the cortex’s attempt to find meaning in the random signals that it receives during REM sleep. The cortex is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes information from the environment during consciousness. It may be that, given random signals from the pons during REM sleep, the cortex tries to interpret these signals as well, creating a “story” out of fragmented brain activity.

Although scientists are still trying to learn exactly why people need sleep, animal studies show that sleep is necessary for survival. For example, while rats normally live for two to three years, those deprived of REM sleep survive only about 5 weeks on average, and rats deprived of all sleep stages live only about 3 weeks. Sleep-deprived rats also develop abnormally low body temperatures and sores on their tail and paws. The sores may develop because the rats’ immune systems become impaired. Some studies suggest that sleep deprivation affects the immune system in detrimental ways.

Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate the next day. It also leads to impaired memory and physical performance and reduced ability to carry out math calculations. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Some experts believe sleep gives neurons used while we are awake a chance to shut down and repair themselves. Without sleep, neurons may become so depleted in energy or so polluted with byproducts of normal cellular activities that they begin to malfunction. Sleep also may give the brain a chance to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate from lack of activity.

Deep sleep coincides with the release of growth hormone in children and young adults. Many of the body’s cells also show increased production and reduced breakdown of proteins during deep sleep. Since proteins are the building blocks needed for cell growth and for repair of damage from factors like stress and ultraviolet rays, deep sleep may truly be “beauty sleep.” Activity in parts of the brain that control emotions, decision-making processes, and social interactions is drastically reduced during deep sleep, suggesting that this type of sleep may help people maintain optimal emotional and social functioning while they are awake. A study in rats also showed that certain nerve-signaling patterns which the rats generated during the day were repeated during deep sleep. This pattern repetition may help encode memories and improve learning.