orofacial exercises for Sleep Apnea

Has anyone successfully used orofacial exercises for Sleep Apnea???

-S-

If they had, do you think we'd all be wearing masks overnight, let alone paying thousands for machines? And how would facial exercise 'grow' your airway when asleep?

stcrim wrote:Has anyone successfully used orofacial exercises for Sleep Apnea???

-S-

Not me but not because I've not tried.

There are some old forum postings re: Didgeridoos for toning throat muscles. Also on singing and exercises making certain sounds.

I did practice to and managed to learn to keep my tongue planted to the roof of my mouth in order to make a better seal for my nasal pillow mask and mitigate mouth leaks.

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desiderata wrote:The studies I've seen suggest (don't prove) that for some (not all) people with mild to moderate (not severe) sleep apnea (without co-morbid conditions), the OSA may possibly be somewhat reduced by 30 minutes every day of some oropharyngeal exercises. The main study I'm thinking of had patients supervised to make sure they were doing the exercises correctly, and they had to do them for 3 months before seeing any gains. To maintain any gains they probably must continue to be done at least every other day. Assuming that further aging of subjects doesn't change things.

There are also studies showing that for some subset of people who primarily snore (i.e., don't have sleep apnea) certain oropharyngeal exercises may improve - not eliminate - snoring.

In other words: No!

I did see one post by one of our members who did use them and got some
reduction in his AHI, not a lot but some. The subject of weight loss helping
our OSA also comes up and while it helps some of us some of us don't experience
a lower AHI with weight loss. I wonder if this could be associated with the
fact that almost all weight loss is associated with a loss of lean body mass
unless you also exercise when losing weight. I just wonder if combining these
orofacial exercises with a weight loss program would give better results ?

Teaching something that takes a lot of effort and a lot of time before any results are remotely possible
makes it a popular source of income for the unscrupulous.
How much does it cost for "lessons"?

Yes, the exercises worked for me. I was diagnosed in 2014 with moderate OSA and prescribed a CPAP. I couldn't use the CPAP due to claustrophobia issues so I started spending 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening performing 10 exercises from the Brazilian study: http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10. ... 0806-981OC
Sounds like a lot of time but I had about a 25 minute commute to work so I would do the majority of them while driving. Yeah, it's a lot of work and commitment but I dream now, still snore very slightly per my wife and I am not tired during the day.
I recommend giving it a try, I have now been sleeping without a CPAP and do the exercises once a week when I feel myself starting to wake up from tongue or throat blockage, which means the muscle tone is going. I wasn't overweight but I believe the muscles in my throat, tongue and face had become weak and needed to be toned up in order to breathe at night.
I hope that these exercises work for at least one person because I know how terrifying and miserable it is not sleeping and waking up thinking that you are choking!

And I strongly suggest you get a sleep study now - apart from getting older (unfortunately) when things just don't always recover as they do when we're young, you don't have any idea of your oxygen saturation levels when you sleep. I was never sleepy at all, had only short a.m. headaches, weird dreams a a little nighttime sweating when my ex told me I stopped breathing overnight (however many times I did it). And it turned out my 02 sats were consistently and often quite low overnight, so don't assume anything.