Sleep Apnea Exercises: An Integral Part Of The Treatment

Obstructive sleep apnea affects one out of four Americans. Being overweight is one of the prime causes for someone to be affected with this utterly disabling and distressful health condition. While treatment is based on the severity of the condition, the cause of onset plays an equally important role in therapy selection. Whatever be the state of the illness, doctors recommend weight loss as the first step to get better. Along with physical exercises, diet control, etc, the patient is also advised to do special sleep apnea exercises as part of the weight loss initiatives.

What are these exercises?

Reuters (Health) recently reported that according to a study published in the American journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, sleep specialists recommend doing exercises involving the tongue and soft palate to reduce the severity of moderate sleep apnea.

However, not many know what these exercises are all about and how they help. When we talk about obesity, we normally think of the visible parts of the body losing shape, like the abdomen, thighs, etc. However, obesity may also impact certain invisible parts of the body. For example, muscles located in the throat, neck, tongue, directly involved with breathing may accumulate excess fat and become weak and flaccid. This in turn makes them vulnerable to collapse during sleep.

Fortunately, such excess fat accumulation can be controlled and the muscles toned and strengthened once more with the help of special exercises that arr designed to focus exclusively on these specific areas.

What role does obesity play?

Sleep apnea and weigh gain are closely linked. While on one hand, obesity triggers the onset, during the course of the illness, the patient also gains excess weight, which then becomes one of the symptoms as well as an after-effect of the condition.

Weight gain is part of this illness for a couple of reasons: sleep deprivation results in abnormal hunger pangs which make the patient eat irrationally. Secondly, sleep apnea negatively impacts the working of two important appetite-related hormones, Grehlin and Leptin. Any imbalance invariably causes the individual to gain weight

The relation ultimately proves to be so cataclysmic for the patient that unless weight loss initiatives are taken on a war-footing, no treatment initiative can ever be expected to yield the desired results.

What do these exercises do?

The primary aim of such exercises is to tone and strengthen the otolaryngologic muscles that belong to the throat, nose and mouth. These include singing, playing the didgeridoo, exercises for the jaw, chewing gum, yawning, yoga, etc.

While there are specific work-out programs for different locations of breathing muscles, selection is totally based on which of these muscles need toning. The best person to take a decision in this matter is the doctor who is treating the condition.

However, one must have realistic expectations from such efforts as they alone cannot help in recovering from the condition. They have to be done regularly, according to medical instructions for at least 3 months before any visible improvement of the condition is perceived. They are meant to be complementary to the mainline therapy.

For example, if a patient is advised somnoplasty procedure for removal of excess tissues from the respiratory tract or to reposition deviated septum, the surgery may open up the air passage for obstruction-free breathing, but even then, sleep apnea exercises should be continued in order to reduce excess fat accumulation of the breathing muscles.