Sleep research led to a new sleep apnea drug

I wake up without my cpap mask after a few hours every night. In total I might get 6 hours with it after putting it on multiple times.

Doctors think I’m doing fine due to total amount of hours used, and my resmed cpap claims I’m at below 1 event/hour. I’m not doing fine and I think the numbers are lying to me.

I snore a million, my mouth gets dry, and my nose tightens up, so my nasal mask isn’t always that nice to use. Other masks also annoy me.

What do? I haven’t sleep a solid 8 hours for 3-4 years :(

I've tried a CPAP machine for 6 weeks and felt no different and gave up. I think I was a 6 on the scale. I wish it had worked though!

Currently I've just given up and embracing feeling relatively tired all the time. I've tried side sleeping devices (woody knows backpack) mandibular advancement splints etc.

So hard to tell (I find anyway) to get to a definitive answer

I have severe obstructive sleep apnea -- am 6ft and 210. I wear a CPAP and now swear by it. A couple things to help those who try:

1) Make sure you have a CPAP machine with a water tank so the forced air is moist. For me, if the water runs out, that's when I wake up bc my nose dries.

2) Get a spray saline solution for your nose -- not Afrin or drugs (habit inducing) -- just simple and cheap Arm & Hammer Simply Saline.

3) Wear a shirt when you're in bed and put the hose under your shirt so it's hard to roll off.

4) Bonus -- sleep elevated.

Those are my best tips. If you can do the CPAP and suffer the awkwardness, you'll really feel so much better. First time it stuck, I woke up at 4:45 am fully rested and felt as if a heavy weight was lifted off me.

Best luck :)

I had bad sleep apnea until last year, sleeping 8-9 hours a night and usually feeling tired in the morning.

As of the last 12 months it seems to be heald, after I used mouth tape and a nasal dilator consistently for 30 nights in a row. I highly recommend trying this, it was quite cheap (~$20) and the change seems to have been permanent. I used 3m micro-pore tape that doesn't tear the facial hair, and the nasal dilator I used was called "woody knows", though there are many brands that may work just as well. I barely snore anymore where I used to be a raging snorer according to those in the know and my own audio recordings of myself. Most importantly, I only need about 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep now and I will wake up feeling well rested most days. I can also breathe exclusively through my nose now where before I could not. I can take very big breaths through just the nose and do this now when exercising.

I don't think it's all perfect though as I still often breathe through my mouth. I'm starting to wear the mouth tape at night again as an experiment - it really isn't that annoying.

Relatedly, I recently started looking into "mewing" after a breath-work teacher I took classes with recommended it to me as she has been doing it with good results (improved breathing). It seems related to this as Mew recommends keeping the mouth shut all the time. I intend to try the mewing exercises and see if that helps my breathing further.

I went through the whole process of seeing an ENT, using the machine for the at-home sleep study so insurance would give me a CPAP, then not being able to sleep with a CPAP, and over the course of a couple years I fixed my sleep apnea by fixing my posture and breathing. If you have forward head posture or are not used to breathing through your nose, you might also benefit from this. I think it’s kind of crazy that we do surgeries and take medicine that modifies your brain chemistry for what I believe in many cases is a structural issue.

If you’re curious to try this, read James Nestor’s book Breath, do yoga with breathing exercises, or see a physical therapist. It takes time to fix these structural issues, but you can literally change the shape of your nose, palate, and jaw from just practice.

Here’s a quick exercise you could try. Sit up, relax your body, breathe in through your nose, and feel the breath move up your nose, down to the base of your skull, down your neck, and then as far down your spine as you can. The air isn’t literally moving through these areas, but you should feel a current of sensations moving roughly along that path. As you breathe out, follow the current in the opposite direction. As you tune into this current, your neck and back will naturally straighten a bit, it should feel very natural and even pleasant. Keep your body relaxed and allow your neck and back to align with this current. If you keep doing this regularly it should help improve your posture and breathing. This is basically a pranayama / yoga breathing exercise. If it feels painful, definitely stop and try physical therapy or working with a hatha yoga instructor who can give you more guided instruction.

I used to snore so badly it sounded like, without much exaggeration, a dying elephant. I only did this exercise for a couple years and it slowly improved over that time, and now I sleep quietly.