5 Life-saving Sleep Apnea Hacks

Were you or a loved one diagnosed with sleep apnea? Waiting for the CPAP machine? Here are five essential sleep apnea hacks to save the day as you wait.

Let’s briefly glance at sleep apnea – it may help us make sense of why we do what we do about it.

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder. It is a condition where your body involuntarily stops breathing in your sleep for brief periods. Since we get our oxygen levels from the air we breath, the periods of apnea (absent breathing) causes a drop in the oxygen levels.

This can affect many of our vital organs, especially the heart and the brain. As a result it increases the risk for a heart attack or a stroke and abnormal heart rhythm. The other potential serious complications are diabetes, high blood pressure, hormonal imbalance, difficulty losing weight, fatigue, cognitive/ memory impairment, increased nocturnal urination etc.

Common sleep apnea symptoms include headache on waking up in the morning, not feeling refreshed after a full night’s sleep, weight gain without change in activity or diet, trouble losing weight despite exercise and watching diet, fall asleep during the daytime when watching TV or reading the newspaper etc.

The airways (anywhere between the nose to the lungs) especially in the throat can go limp during sleep (as when you imagine our hand and legs going limp when resting), often leading to apnea: this is called obstructive sleep apnea (since there is an obstruction to the airflow in your airway).

Central sleep apnea is when the brain fails to direct your respiratory muscles to breath.

How do you know what kind of apnea you have? From a sleep study: a study of your sleep patterns, simultaneously monitoring parameters like oxygen levels, heart rate, breathing pattern etc. while you sleep.

You may want to contact your primary care doctor who may be able to order a home sleep study or refer you to a specialist if you may benefit more from a lab-based sleep study.

If you are in a pinch for time and finances permit, then in this day of virtual work and school, you can just buy your own sleep study from amazon. Yes you heard me right! You may want to check out this link here.

Would you believe that I have had a sleep study done by ordering through amazon? It is a cool process: they send you the testing equipment, with instructions on how to use it. Pretty simple: usually includes a finger glove like piece to wear on an index finger to get oxygen level readings, and a small patch to stick on the chest as you drift away into lalaland. When you are done with the study, be sure to send the equipment back so it can be interpreted by a certified sleep doctor. You get the results by email/ mail with the diagnosis. You may even get a prescription for a machine based on your results.

This cuts out the sleep study part of your sleep apnea treatment, taking it one step closer. You can take the results and the prescription to a physical sleep medicine office, where they can help you be fitted for that machine and set it up for you.

What is the treatment for sleep apnea?

Artificial forced inspirations/ inhalations: like CPAP machines, AutoPAP machines, or BiPAP machines are the go-to answers in most cases. These are machines connected to a mask/ shield that pushes the air at a certain pressure through your airways. This keeps the airways open, so that the apneic events can be reduced and your lungs stay aerated like normal.

CPAP: continuous positive airway pressure—> delivers a continuous chain of forced inspirations at a certain pressure

BiPAP: bilevel positive airway pressure—-> delivers one level of pressure for the inhaled air and a different level of pressure for the exhaled air

AutoPAP: machine with sensitive technology that can sense the amount of pressure needed with each inhalation to keep the airway open and auto-adjust to deliver that pressure.

In the long run, weight loss would also be helpful. more often than not, folks have been cured of obstructive sleep apnea by losing sufficient amount of weight.

What do we do if it takes long to get the equipment?

While waiting to expedite the CPAP machine/ equipment, we can still beat some odds with these handy dandy hacks:

1. Sleeping posture: side -sleeping is linked to fewer apneic events, so it is preferable. If you absolutely are going to sleep on your back at some point, then sleeping with the head end elevated has shown to reduce apneic events! Simple, but did you know that? Either raising the entire headboard with a couple of wooden blocks or thick books on each side or using a wedge pillow may help. This elevation has also shown to reduce night-time urination in sleep apnea.
2. External airway patency: doing anything and everything under the sun to keep our airway open is the key to beating sleep apnea.
   • Breathrite nasal strips: creates more space for air to come in at the junction of the bony and soft part of the nose on each side. It may also help you stop snoring. I discovered this by pure serendipity….I was visiting family in Canada, and had ordered some chocolates for my nieces there, and received these instead (I really do not know how), only to be followed by what I actually ordered. Since returning it was a little complicated from a different country, I decided to keep it. Now if you didn’t know this, let me tell you I am very prone to allergies and sinus congestion. So even at my baseline, my nose is a little stuffy though I don’t realize it as I am well acclimatized to my sniffer. When I tried it on for the first time, it made a world of difference in my breathing and my sleep! Since then I use it every night, and when I miss a night I know when I wake up, the sleep was not as restorative. It’s amazing that sleep medicine advocates similar methods as adjunct to sleep apnea treatment. Maybe it was my guardian angel who dropped it into my life. I thanked the universe for lovingly looking out for me….staying in awe of how the universe has a way to get you what you actually need when you need it even when you are not consciously aware of the need 😉
   • Anti-snoring nasal vents/ plugs: These work similar to the strips above, except they are placed inside each nostril. They may also help with nasal congestion: my son asks for these when he has a cold. If you wish to try out different sizes to get the right fit, this may be a good option for you.
3. Mandibular advancing devices: If you are a CPAP user and cannot tolerate a PAP machine, especially if you have mild to moderate apnea, these may be a life-saver…. even while waiting for a PAP machine. They create a small space between your jaws and help to bring your lower jaw forward. Think of this as similar to what doctors do before intubating someone to create more space in the upper airway passages. This action brings your tongue forward as you lie down. This prevents your tongue from falling back into the throat and blocking the airflow during sleep. Teethgrinders, jaw clenchers and big-tonguers rejoice! — your better-sleeping days are near! Usually these are prescribed by a dentist who specializes in sleep devices, but if insurance reasons or time constraints make it hard on you, you could try out a similar device from amazon as well.
4. Phosphatidyl serine: This is a compound (a phospholipid) that goes into making the walls of our body cells especially the brain cells. Per wikipedia, it “accounts for 13–15 % of the phospholipids in the human cerebral cortex”. Each apneic episode is related to stress response that wakes the person up briefly and they fall back asleep and continue breathing after that. Often times this waking up is not recalled. With the cortisol response (stress hormone) during the stress response, the brain cells change and can lead to brain-fog or cognitive impairment. Phosphatidyl serine supplementation helps to reduce the cortisol levels. It has also been found to be effective for age-related memory decline and alzheimer’s disease according to rxlist.com and webmd.com From personal experience, I can say it helps me fall asleep and maintain sleep well. You that’s reading this and battling obstructive sleep apnea or insomnia from hormonal imbalance, men/man-opause, REJOICE! Works like a charm too!
5. Weight loss: last but not the least. Losing weight by itself can even completely wipe away sleep apnea, if significant weight loss can be achieved.

Hope you find these tips helpful. Also, as common sense would have it, please make sure to check with your doctor before starting any supplementation.

So, if you find it hard to get restful sleep, please get checked for sleep apnea, especially obstructive sleep apnea.

Here’s to healthy breathing and restorative sleep!