Didgeridoo playing helps decrease OSA: a new study

[atomickitty3000]

Just came across this article that looks whether tongue and other upper airway exercises help reduce OSA symptoms. Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil found that these types of exercises, including playing the didgeridoo, actually decreased the severity of symptoms. Here's an excerpt:

In the study, Lorenzi-Filho and his colleagues assigned 31 people who were recently diagnosed with mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea to do a daily and weekly regimen of tongue and pharyngeal exercises or a fake regimen involving deep breathing and saline rinses of the nose.

Overall, the treatment group showed a 40 per cent decrease in the severity of their symptoms. Ten of the 16 patients in the treatment group originally classified as moderate were reclassified as mild (eight) or with no obstructive sleep apnea (two).

In comparison, no one in the control group was reclassified.

"[T]here seems to be reasonable logic to targeting tongue strength as a potential mechanism for remodelling the upper airway," Catriona Steele of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and the University of Toronto wrote in a journal editorial accompanying the study.

The exercises were adapted from traditional speech therapy techniques, Steele said.

More research is needed to understand how the exercises work and whether different patients need different sets of exercises, the researchers said.

To read the full article, go to http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/05/ ... cises.html

[yardbird]

To read the full response go here: |
V


a little more....


Bulls***



I play a didgeridoo. I can circular breathe. I also play native american style flutes .... I still have OSA and it hasn't improved.

This article and possibly others like it surface from time to time. I have no doubt that exercise is good for you. But the idea that this can improve your OSA in any significant way is horse hockey.

[timbalionguy]

I wonder if playing the bagpipes would help. I have seen rock bagpipers play, and their neck is really moving providing breath support.

[Raj]

Yardbird, you might want to release a bit of your certainty that playing the didge and practicing mouth and tongue exercises are useless for everyone. OSA can be caused by a number of different physiological conditions or combinations of conditions, and while in your particular case, such exercises may be of no benefit, they could well be of immense benefit to others. And, of course, you can't even be sure that your OSA wouldn't be even worse if you didn't play the didge; one person isn't much of control group to put it mildly.

At this point, no one can quantify how much time spend practicing on the didge or performing the oral exercises might be necessary for anyone to see improvement. And, as the article implied, different causes for an individual's OSA might require different exercises. But I see no reason to abandon research in this area, and many reasons to continue.

[yardbird]

Raj-

Your point is well taken. We're all different. .... exercise is good for us. My response was somewhat broad..... no it was VERY broad... but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Raj]

Very graceful response, Yardbird. I thank you.

[montana]

My husband and I traveled to Australia a year ago. Our Son and wife and 2 grandsons live there.
We were in a gift shop at a museum looking at didgeridoos. I a guy comes up to us and says ...pssst ..."I have very nice didgeridoos at home and they are bigger and better and half the price" lol . So we got his phone number.
We set up an appointment and took our hulking Son with us as backup in case the guy was a crazy Aussie lol . Well anyway he was the real deal. He could do circular breathing. He could really play them and was in demand to play them in concert type settings. While we were at his house he mentioned that paying the didgeridoo got rid of his sleep apnea. He did not know my Son and I both use the cpap. He showed us an article written about him. I can't remember his name at the moment.

Oh we bought 3 very nice didgeridoos 2 for us and 1 for our Son ..and no they didn't cure my apnea. I haven't mastered circular breathing. They are very fun to play though.

[Goofproof]

I almost cured my OSA by blowing on the exhaust pipe of my car. It might have worked but I forgot to turn the ing key to off. One more time into the Dingroo Breach. jim

[Snorebert]

I almost cured my OSA by blowing on the exhaust pipe of my car. It might have worked but I forgot to turn the ing key to off. One more time into the Dingroo Breach. jim

Jim - it must be Friday !!

Hey, if I got my old trumpet out, hooked up the CPAP with the Swift LT on - crank up the pressure I could play a note forever! Talk about your mouth breather!

-Clark

[yardbird]

Very graceful response, Yardbird. I thank you.

no problem , Raj.

Om namo bagavate Vasude via

*yardbird bows*




for those who don't speak it, that translates (roughly) to, "I honor the light that lives in the heart of us all"