Sleep Apnea Improves With Facial and Tongue Exercises.

A Brazilian study which included 31 adults with moderate obstructive sleep apnea shows, that doing certain tongue and facial exercises for 30 minutes daily may ease the severity of obstructive sleep apnea.

Those exercises included brushing the tongue with a toothbrush, putting the tip of the tongue on the soft palate and sliding the tongue backward, pronouncing vowels quickly or continuously, and keeping the tongue in a certain position when eating as well as other exercises for half an hour a day.

After 3 months, the patients that did the tongue and facial exercise, had reduced the severity of their obstructive sleep apnea by 39%. Those patients also reported that they were snoring less, sleeping better, and were less sleepy during the daytime than they had been before learning the exercises.
The comparison group showed no such improvements.

Does Sleep Apnea increase risk of death?

Does Sleep Apnea increase risk of death?

According to "The Busselton Health Study" it does.

Previous studies have suggested obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is one of the risk factors for cardiovascular associated death.
But these studies were carried out on subjects that were clinically referred and in a clinical setting

This recent study was carried out in the community, in the Australian town of Busselton using a home sleep apnea monitoring device.

They found that moderate to severe apnea is indeed associated independantly with a large increased risk of death from all causes, even in this community based study.
However mild obstructive sleep apnea did not carry the same risk.