Learn How To Work With Your Sleep Apnea

Are you still tired when you get out of bed every morning, or suffering with headaches and irritability? Does your family think your snoring sounds like a jet engine? If this sounds like you, you could have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is very dangerous, so start finding a treatment regimen immediately.

Stopping bad habits may help with your sleep apnea. Drinking alcohol and smoking are very bad for the condition. Drinking helps depress your respiratory system, causing breathing issues. Cigarettes can hurt your lungs, possibly even causing lung cancer. Dropping both these habits entirely will help ease the symptoms of sleep apnea.

Try your best to use your CPAP machine as much as possible if you get one. Unfortunately, adjusting to this device while sleeping can be hard for some people. Good health over the long term is what is important, and you need to build up the amount of time you use it until you can use it throughout the night. If you find it hard to get used to your CPAP, use it for only 4 hours at a go.

You can both shed unwanted pounds and reduce the effects of sleep apnea with a nutritious and healthy diet. Not everyone is aware of just how significantly bad dietary choices can affect a sleep apnea condition. Studies have shown that people that eat poor quality food have worse apnea than those who are overweight but eat healthier.

Don't drink a lot of alcohol. Drinking alcohol relaxes the muscles of your throat and airway. While this might often be a desirable side effect of drinking, it can also cause sleep apnea. When your throat muscles relax, your airway narrows and causes sleep apnea. Try your best to limit your drinking if you do decide to have alcohol, and try to not have any right before bed.

Consider any alternative you can find to using sleeping pills. Sleeping pills cause your throat muscles to relax, just like alcohol. They also can cause other harmful issues to make your sleep apnea worse. See if your doctor knows of any sleeping medication that doesn't cause respiratory depression.

To help alleviate this condition, you should sleep on your side. A lot of people who have sleep apnea are back sleepers. Your airways become blocked when you sleep on your back. Try to sleep on your side to avoid that. If you move around at night and tend to always wind up on your back, try propping yourself up with pillows.

If you aren't sleeping with a partner each night who can let you know of any irregularities in your sleeping patterns, it can be hard to know if you have this condition. One way to see is to set up a video camera to record yourself as you sleep. The video should also contain audio in order to hear the noises that occur while you're sleeping.

Sleep apnea is serious and can cause various health issues, but it is treatable. Use the tips you have learned from this article to guide you in finding relief. If they're not effective, speak with your doctor immediately concerning other options.