My Life and Sleep Apnea

There are many sleep apnea treatments and procedures; here are just a few of the main ones. The easy way to help with your sleep apnea is to lose weight . It probably won’t completely end your sleep apnea but it should help, although if you have central sleep apnea this wouldn’t help. The chin strap is simple device that fits around the top of the head and around your chin. The idea behind it is to keep your mouth shut. Some people use it with the cpap machine others just by itself. Dental devices fit in your mouth at night in order to keep the airway open. This is usually only effective with mild sleep apnea. Somnoplasty is a procedure that uses a radio frequency directed at the soft palate and the uvula. This in effect stiffens the soft palate eliminating the snoring. This is an outpatient procedure. Another outpatient surgery is the laser assisted uvula palatoplasty or LAUP . This procedure vaporizes the soft palate and the uvula. Done on an outpatient basis it takes more...

If your case of sleep apnea isn’t severe you might want to ask your doctor about LAUP . Laser Assisted Uvula Palatoplasty vaporizes the uvula and parts of the soft tissue that obstructs the patient’s night time sleeping. The best part about this procedure is that you don’t have to stay over night and the doctor uses a local anesthesia. The whole procedure is done while you are sitting in an upright chair; I guess it is like being at the dentist. Unfortunately you can’t it all done in one sitting, it takes about 5 visits to get it done. These visits are spaced out between 4 and 5 weeks presumably to let the discomfort in your throat to subside. After each procedure the patient will feel as if they have a sore throat which can be treated with medicine. Since I have severe sleep apnea I’m not a candidate for this procedure. But if your OSA isn’t severe (according to your sleep study) you should definitely ask your doctor about it. Last week I posted about throat exercises to help ...