New ways to conquer sleep apnea compete for place in bedroom

Associated Press

Every night without fail, Paul Blumstein straps on a mask that prevents him from repeatedly waking up, gasping for air.

It’s been his routine since he was diagnosed with a condition called sleep apnea. While it helps, he doesn’t like wearing the mask.

“It’s like an octopus has clung to my face,” said Blumstein, 70, of Annandale, Va. “I just want to sleep once in a while without that feeling.”

It’s been two decades since doctors fully recognized that breathing that stops and starts during sleep is tied to a host of health issues, even early death, but there still isn’t a treatment that most people find easy to use.

Airway pressure masks, the most common remedy, have improved in design, getting smaller and quieter, but patients still complain about sore nostrils, dry mouths and claustrophobia.

Now, new ways of conquering sleep apnea, and the explosive snoring that comes with it, are vying for a place in the bedrooms of millions of people craving a good night’s sleep. Products range from a $350 restraint meant to discourage back sleeping to a $24,000 surgical implant that pushes the tongue forward with each breath.

Mouthpieces, fitted by dentists, work for some people but have their own problems, including jaw pain. Some patients try surgery, but it often doesn’t work. Doctors recommend weight loss, but diet and exercise can be challenging for people who aren’t sleeping well.

So far, no pills for sleep apnea exist, but researchers are working on it. One drug containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, showed promise in a study this year.

What is sleep apnea? In people with the condition, throat and tongue muscles relax and block the airway during sleep, caused by obesity, aging or facial structure.

They stop breathing, sometimes for up to a minute and hundreds of times each night, then awake with loud gasping and snoring. That prevents them from getting deep, restorative sleep.

They are more likely than others to have strokes, heart attacks and heart rhythm problems, and they’re more likely to die prematurely. But it’s hard to tease out whether those problems are caused by sleep apnea itself, or by excess weight, lack of exercise or something else entirely.

For specialists, the first-choice, most-studied remedy remains continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP. It’s a motorized device that pumps air through a mask to open a sleeper’s airway. About 5 million Americans have tried CPAP.

While scientists haven’t proved CPAP helps people live longer, evidence shows it can reduce blood pressure, improve daytime sleepiness, lessen snoring and reduce the number of times a patient stops breathing. CPAP also improves quality of life, mood and productivity.