Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsUntreated Sleep ApneaCPAPOther TreatmentsSurgical TreatmentIf Treatment Isn’t WorkingNext in Sleep Apnea Guide5 Alternative Treatments for Sleep Apnea to Avoid CPAP

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Table of Contents

Untreated Sleep Apnea

CPAP

Other Treatments

Surgical Treatment

If Treatment Isn’t Working

Next in Sleep Apnea Guide

Sleepapneais a commonsleep disorderthat causes frequent breathing pauses while you sleep. Treating sleep apnea aims to reduce breathing interruptions (called apneas) and improve your sleep.

Sleep apnea typically cannot be cured, but the condition is treatable and manageable. Treatment might include lifestyle changes, oral appliances, positive airway pressure,adaptive ventilation devices, and more.Continuous positive airway pressure(CPAP) can successfully treat most sleep apnea cases, including mild ones.

Treatment can begin once you receive a sleep apnea diagnosis. Diagnosing sleep apnea starts with your healthcare provider asking about your symptoms and medical history.

If they suspect sleep apnea based on this information, they will request asleep studyto determine the source of your sleep troubles. This may be an overnight test where you are monitored in a sleep lab, or a device may monitor your sleep pattern at home.

This article covers sleep apnea treatment options, including CPAP therapy, treatment without CPAP, and surgical treatment.

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Person in bed with CPAP

Sleep Apnea Treatment: Before CPAP

The two types of sleep apnea are obstructive and central. The most common isobstructive sleep apnea(OSA).It causes the throat muscles to relax and block air from entering the lungs.

The American Heart Association notes that in middle-aged people, about 17% of women and 24% of men meet the diagnostic criteria for OSA.

Central sleep apnea (CSA) inhibits your breathing while you sleep and occurs because the brain does not send proper signals to the muscles that control breathing.

The breathing pauses from sleep apnea cause your brain to respond and briefly wake up to breathe normally again. This is why you feel fatigued, even when you have slept most of the night.

Untreated sleep apnea can affect your mental and physical health. It can lead to problems with concentration and focus, making decisions, remembering, and regulating behavior and emotions. It is also linked tohigh blood pressure, headaches, sore throats, blood vessel problems, andweight gain.

The Health Effects of Sleep Apnea

What Is the Connection Between High Blood Pressure and Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea treatment can help lower blood pressure because it improves sleep, so blood pressure dips can occur at normal levels.

Sleep Apnea Treatment With CPAP

CPAP therapy aims to reduce breathing disruption and improve your sleep.It keeps the airway open using pressured air pumped from a machine into a hose and a mask worn on the face.

To reduce abnormal breathing, the CPAP machine works to push air into the airway so it stays open while you sleep. As a result, you will experience fewer apneas during sleep.

A CPAP device can offer both short and long-term benefits and can treat all types of sleep apnea and nighttime breathing troubles. It can also reduce the additional symptoms of the condition, including snoring, daytime fatigue, nighttime awakenings, and associated health conditions like high blood pressure.

Auto-CPAPandbilevel positive airway pressure(BiPAP) are additional airway pressure devices.Auto-CPAP automatically adjusts the pressure while you sleep, and BiPAP provides more pressure with inhaling and less with exhaling.

Sleep Apnea Treatment Without CPAP

CPAP therapy is considered the most effective therapy for sleep apnea. But CPAP compliance and use can be hard for some people due to health problems or the inability to get comfortable and fall asleep using a CPAP mask.

Additional problems with CPAP compliance include dry mouth andnasal congestion,claustrophobia,and infections. If this is true for you, you might consider other treatment options.

Lifestyle Changes

Lifestyle changes might help with milder cases of sleep apnea.

Weight loss: Numerous studies show a connection between weight and sleep, but researchers do not know exactly what that connection is. What they do know, however, is that weight loss can alleviate sleep apnea.

A 2021 report examined how weight loss might help reduce sleep apnea symptoms.Researchers found weight loss led to reduced fat on the tongue and abdomen and reduced size of soft tissues in the airway. At the same time, all three factors led to symptom improvements; reducedtongue fat was found to have the most significant effect.

Exercise: Physical exercise can help ease sleep apnea symptoms even without weight loss.Try to get at least 30 minutes of moderate activity several times a week. Moderate activity includes brisk walking, jogging, using an elliptical machine, biking, and swimming.

Avoiding alcohol and other sedatives: Both alcohol and sedatives relax the throat muscles and affect your breathing.Alcohol disrupts sleep, and research shows alcohol consumption is linked to more prolonged and frequent apnea events and lowerblood oxygen levels.

Cutting out alcohol or reducing the amount you drink can lead to reduced sleep apnea symptoms. Sedative drugs, includingsleep aids, might also worsen sleep apnea symptoms, so it makes sense to avoid these to improve sleep quality.

Don’t smoke: A study reported in 2014 shows cigarette smoking increases the severity of OSA because it disrupts the body’s naturalsleep rhythm, inflames the upper airway, constricts muscles in therespiratory system, and reduces the body’s ability to wake up naturally.

Whilequitting smokingwon’t cure sleep apnea, it will reduce the number of apnea events and improve sleep quality.

Changing your sleep position:Sleeping on your sidemight help you breathe better, reduce snoring, and help you to wake up feeling more refreshed. Studies on people with sleep apnea show that side sleeping can improve breathing and sleep quality and reduce snoring.

Other Sleep Apnea Devices

You may have additional options if you have been diagnosed with CSA. For example,supplemental oxygencan help deliver oxygen to your lungs while you sleep, andadaptive servo-ventilation(ASV) therapy uses pressure to regulate breathing patterns and prevent pauses while you sleep.

Sleep Apnea Treatment: With and Without CPAP

Oropharyngeal Exercises

Myofunctional therapy, ororopharyngealexercise, is designed to strengthen the mouth, tongue, and throat muscles to help maintain the airway while you sleep. These exercises can improve sleep apnea and serve as an adjunct (additional) therapy to other sleep apnea treatments.

Many of these exercises are easy and are meant to strengthen your tongue, facial, and throat muscles.You can group them and do them twice or thrice daily.

Oropharyngeal exercise examples from the Sleep Foundation include:

Myofunctional Therapy Exercises May Help to Improve Sleep Apnea

Surgical Sleep Apnea Treatment

Surgery might be an option for people with sleep apnea when other therapies have failed. Your healthcare provider will want you to try other treatments for a few months before considering surgery.

Surgical options for sleep apnea include:

Newest/Emerging Sleep Apnea TreatmentsPhrenic nerve stimulation is an option for people with CSA who do not respond to other treatments.This involves surgically implanting a device to encourage breathing. The device will send an electric current to stimulate the diaphragm helping it to contract as it should.Both procedures are relatively new and have not been thoroughly researched.

Newest/Emerging Sleep Apnea Treatments

Phrenic nerve stimulation is an option for people with CSA who do not respond to other treatments.This involves surgically implanting a device to encourage breathing. The device will send an electric current to stimulate the diaphragm helping it to contract as it should.Both procedures are relatively new and have not been thoroughly researched.

Phrenic nerve stimulation is an option for people with CSA who do not respond to other treatments.This involves surgically implanting a device to encourage breathing. The device will send an electric current to stimulate the diaphragm helping it to contract as it should.

Both procedures are relatively new and have not been thoroughly researched.

Sleep Apnea Treatment Not Working

If you are not noticing improvements, you should inform the healthcare provider treating your sleep apnea. You might consider seeing aboard-certified sleep specialistwho can help you best find therapies that might best help you and improve your sleep apnea symptoms.

Signs Your CPAP Machine Is Not Working or Needs Adjusting

Summary

Sleep apnea is a severe sleep disorder where breathing repeatedly stops and starts while you sleep. People with sleep apnea often snore loudly and feel tired even after sleeping all night. A sleep specialist can diagnose the condition with an overnight or home sleep study.

There is no cure for sleep apnea, but the condition is treatable. Treatments can improve the condition and include lifestyle changes like weight loss and not smoking, oral appliances, CPAP therapy, and as a last resort, surgery to treat an underlying cause. CPAP is the most common treatment for the condition and treat both mild and severe sleep apnea.

16 SourcesVerywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Franklin KA, Lindberg E.Obstructive sleep apnea is a common disorder in the population-a review on the epidemiology of sleep apnea.J Thorac Dis.2015;7(8):1311-1322. doi:10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2015.06.11Yeghiazarians Y, Jneid H, Tietjens JR, et al.Obstructive sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2021;144(3). doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000988National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.What is sleep apnea?Bloomfield D, Park A.Night time blood pressure dip.World J Cardiol. 2015;7(7):373-376. doi:10.4330/wjc.v7.i7.373Sleep Foundation.CPAP: continuous positive airway pressure.National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.CPAP.Sleep Foundation.Sleep apnea treatment.Sleep Foundation.Common side effects of CPAP.Kawada T.Weight loss and upper airway anatomy in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021;203(2):269-270. doi:10.1164/rccm.202008-3379LELee-Iannotti JK, Parish JM.Exercise as a treatment for sleep apnea.J Clin Sleep Med. 2020;16(7):1005-1006. doi:10.5664/jcsm.8582Kolla BP, Foroughi M, Saeidifard F, Chakravorty S, Wang Z, Mansukhani MP. The impact of alcohol on breathing parameters during sleep: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep Med Rev. 2018;42:59-67. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2018.05.007Krishnan V, Dixon-Williams S, Thornton JD.Where there is smoke…there is sleep apnea: exploring the relationship between smoking and sleep apnea.Chest. 2014;146(6):1673-1680. doi:10.1378/chest.14-0772Ravesloot MJ, van Maanen JP, Dun L, de Vries N.The undervalued potential of positional therapy in position-dependent snoring and obstructive sleep apnea – a review of the literature.Sleep Breath. 2013;17(1):39-49. doi:10.1007/s11325-012-0683-5Sleep Foundation.Oral appliances for sleep apnea.Camacho M, Certal V, Abdullatif J, et al.Myofunctional therapy to treat obstructive sleep apnea: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep. 2015;38(5):669-675. doi:10.5665/sleep.4652Sleep Foundation.Mouth and throat exercises to help stop snoring and improve OSA.

16 Sources

Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Franklin KA, Lindberg E.Obstructive sleep apnea is a common disorder in the population-a review on the epidemiology of sleep apnea.J Thorac Dis.2015;7(8):1311-1322. doi:10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2015.06.11Yeghiazarians Y, Jneid H, Tietjens JR, et al.Obstructive sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2021;144(3). doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000988National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.What is sleep apnea?Bloomfield D, Park A.Night time blood pressure dip.World J Cardiol. 2015;7(7):373-376. doi:10.4330/wjc.v7.i7.373Sleep Foundation.CPAP: continuous positive airway pressure.National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.CPAP.Sleep Foundation.Sleep apnea treatment.Sleep Foundation.Common side effects of CPAP.Kawada T.Weight loss and upper airway anatomy in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021;203(2):269-270. doi:10.1164/rccm.202008-3379LELee-Iannotti JK, Parish JM.Exercise as a treatment for sleep apnea.J Clin Sleep Med. 2020;16(7):1005-1006. doi:10.5664/jcsm.8582Kolla BP, Foroughi M, Saeidifard F, Chakravorty S, Wang Z, Mansukhani MP. The impact of alcohol on breathing parameters during sleep: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep Med Rev. 2018;42:59-67. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2018.05.007Krishnan V, Dixon-Williams S, Thornton JD.Where there is smoke…there is sleep apnea: exploring the relationship between smoking and sleep apnea.Chest. 2014;146(6):1673-1680. doi:10.1378/chest.14-0772Ravesloot MJ, van Maanen JP, Dun L, de Vries N.The undervalued potential of positional therapy in position-dependent snoring and obstructive sleep apnea – a review of the literature.Sleep Breath. 2013;17(1):39-49. doi:10.1007/s11325-012-0683-5Sleep Foundation.Oral appliances for sleep apnea.Camacho M, Certal V, Abdullatif J, et al.Myofunctional therapy to treat obstructive sleep apnea: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep. 2015;38(5):669-675. doi:10.5665/sleep.4652Sleep Foundation.Mouth and throat exercises to help stop snoring and improve OSA.

Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Franklin KA, Lindberg E.Obstructive sleep apnea is a common disorder in the population-a review on the epidemiology of sleep apnea.J Thorac Dis.2015;7(8):1311-1322. doi:10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2015.06.11Yeghiazarians Y, Jneid H, Tietjens JR, et al.Obstructive sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2021;144(3). doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000988National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.What is sleep apnea?Bloomfield D, Park A.Night time blood pressure dip.World J Cardiol. 2015;7(7):373-376. doi:10.4330/wjc.v7.i7.373Sleep Foundation.CPAP: continuous positive airway pressure.National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.CPAP.Sleep Foundation.Sleep apnea treatment.Sleep Foundation.Common side effects of CPAP.Kawada T.Weight loss and upper airway anatomy in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021;203(2):269-270. doi:10.1164/rccm.202008-3379LELee-Iannotti JK, Parish JM.Exercise as a treatment for sleep apnea.J Clin Sleep Med. 2020;16(7):1005-1006. doi:10.5664/jcsm.8582Kolla BP, Foroughi M, Saeidifard F, Chakravorty S, Wang Z, Mansukhani MP. The impact of alcohol on breathing parameters during sleep: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep Med Rev. 2018;42:59-67. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2018.05.007Krishnan V, Dixon-Williams S, Thornton JD.Where there is smoke…there is sleep apnea: exploring the relationship between smoking and sleep apnea.Chest. 2014;146(6):1673-1680. doi:10.1378/chest.14-0772Ravesloot MJ, van Maanen JP, Dun L, de Vries N.The undervalued potential of positional therapy in position-dependent snoring and obstructive sleep apnea – a review of the literature.Sleep Breath. 2013;17(1):39-49. doi:10.1007/s11325-012-0683-5Sleep Foundation.Oral appliances for sleep apnea.Camacho M, Certal V, Abdullatif J, et al.Myofunctional therapy to treat obstructive sleep apnea: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep. 2015;38(5):669-675. doi:10.5665/sleep.4652Sleep Foundation.Mouth and throat exercises to help stop snoring and improve OSA.

Franklin KA, Lindberg E.Obstructive sleep apnea is a common disorder in the population-a review on the epidemiology of sleep apnea.J Thorac Dis.2015;7(8):1311-1322. doi:10.3978/j.issn.2072-1439.2015.06.11

Yeghiazarians Y, Jneid H, Tietjens JR, et al.Obstructive sleep apnea and cardiovascular disease: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2021;144(3). doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000988

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.What is sleep apnea?

Bloomfield D, Park A.Night time blood pressure dip.World J Cardiol. 2015;7(7):373-376. doi:10.4330/wjc.v7.i7.373

Sleep Foundation.CPAP: continuous positive airway pressure.

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.CPAP.

Sleep Foundation.Sleep apnea treatment.

Sleep Foundation.Common side effects of CPAP.

Kawada T.Weight loss and upper airway anatomy in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2021;203(2):269-270. doi:10.1164/rccm.202008-3379LE

Lee-Iannotti JK, Parish JM.Exercise as a treatment for sleep apnea.J Clin Sleep Med. 2020;16(7):1005-1006. doi:10.5664/jcsm.8582

Kolla BP, Foroughi M, Saeidifard F, Chakravorty S, Wang Z, Mansukhani MP. The impact of alcohol on breathing parameters during sleep: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep Med Rev. 2018;42:59-67. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2018.05.007

Krishnan V, Dixon-Williams S, Thornton JD.Where there is smoke…there is sleep apnea: exploring the relationship between smoking and sleep apnea.Chest. 2014;146(6):1673-1680. doi:10.1378/chest.14-0772

Ravesloot MJ, van Maanen JP, Dun L, de Vries N.The undervalued potential of positional therapy in position-dependent snoring and obstructive sleep apnea – a review of the literature.Sleep Breath. 2013;17(1):39-49. doi:10.1007/s11325-012-0683-5

Sleep Foundation.Oral appliances for sleep apnea.

Camacho M, Certal V, Abdullatif J, et al.Myofunctional therapy to treat obstructive sleep apnea: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Sleep. 2015;38(5):669-675. doi:10.5665/sleep.4652

Sleep Foundation.Mouth and throat exercises to help stop snoring and improve OSA.

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