How to Fix Sleep Apnea without CPAP (3 Exercises)
In a Nutshell
Three simple daily throat exercises—tongue-root press, palate lift, and cheek suction-hold—can strengthen the 20 muscles that keep the airway open, reducing or eliminating sleep-apnea obstruction and snoring within weeks. Nose breathing (optionally with mouth tape) plus maintaining adequate vitamin D levels further improves airway tone and oxygen–CO₂ balance, while alcohol worsens muscle relaxation. Weight loss helps only about one-third of cases; the exercises work regardless of body size.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Over a billion people have sleep apnea and many of them don't know what simple exercises can fix sleep apnea. After watching, check your airway by looking into a mirror and saying "ah" to see how much space you actually have. With sleep apnea, the airway is narrow and the muscles in the back of the throat are a little too relaxed and they can collapse at night and cut off your oxygen. There's definitely a connection with a good night rest and having enough oxygen. If you don't have enough, that's going to keep you up. A lot of people with sleep apnea are on the CPAP machine blowing air into their mouth trying to overcompensate with this obstruction in the back of their throat.
Another common thing that's taught is that you need to lose weight to get rid of sleep apnea. Apparently, that only actually helps in about a third of the cases. There's a lot of people that are thin and they have sleep apnea. Your airway in this tube in your throat is made from about 20 different muscles. If those muscles lose tone, they become lax and they actually increase in volume and they can obstruct the airway, especially if you're sleeping on your back where you have gravity pulling the back of the tongue into the airway.
Three very simple exercises will strengthen those muscles so you will no longer have this obstruction in the back of your throat when you sleep. These exercises will also help you stop snoring if that's also a problem. You really only need to do these exercises once a day for 7 minutes.
Before doing these exercises, check where your tongue is inside your mouth. If it's resting on the floor of your mouth, that could be part of the problem, especially if you are a mouth breather. It's not necessary to get into the various theories of why the tongue muscles and the related muscles lose their tone. It could be because we're consuming a lot of soft food. It could be because we eat meat that doesn't have collagen anymore and it's just very, very tender. In the meantime, let's actually get you to breathe through the night.
Highly recommend starting training yourself to breathe through your nose, especially at night. There's even mouth tape that you can get to kind of get in the habit of doing that. When you start breathing through the nose, this creates a back pressure that actually helps reduce sleep apnea. With a lot of people when they breathe through the nose, there's more of a restriction and they might feel that they're not getting enough oxygen, but that's actually not true. That restriction helps balance out oxygen and CO2, increasing the absorption of CO2. If you even just think about a panic attack, usually the person is hyperventilating. They actually have too much oxygen without enough CO2. So, what do we do for a panic attack? We breathe in a paper bag, increasing CO2, which then allows us to get more oxygen. So, nose breathing, despite the feeling that you're not getting enough air, actually will help you get more oxygen in the lungs.
Exercise number one is called tongue root press. Place the tip of your tongue behind the top of your front teeth. From there, flatten the rest of your tongue up against the roof of your mouth, creating like a suction cup, pressing hard from the tip all the way back to the base of the tongue in the back part. Hold this pressure for just 5 seconds, then relax for 2 seconds. Repeat this 15 times. When you drive the base of your tongue upward, place your thumb underneath your chin. You'll feel some soft tissue going upwards. That's the main muscle that's being activated. Doing this exercise over time is going to start to increase the opening in the back part of the throat. Out of these three, this is going to be the most important exercise to do. Because when you're sleeping and the back of the tongue is not toned, it'll kind of choke the back of the throat and cause you to wake up. People with sleep apnea are waking up many, many times through the night.
Exercise number two is the palate lift. Imagine the very beginning moment of a very giant yawn. That upward suction in the back part of your throat. The best way to do this is to look into a mirror. With your mouth open wide enough to see that thing in the back of the throat called the uvula, and without any noise or sound, actively lift that soft roof of the back part of your mouth upward and downward. Exactly as if you were trying to kind of stifle a yawn or prepare to sing a high note. Hold that lift at the top for about 3 seconds, then let it down. Repeat that 20 times. When you look in the mirror, you'll actively see that uvula retract upward and downward. The whole back upper part of your throat is going to open up. This specific exercise is the one that actually really helps snoring, especially when you hear your spouse snoring with that deep vibration. That's the top part of the palate vibrating.
Exercise number three is called the cheek suction and hold exercise. Think about this exercise as having a fish face for about 5 seconds, or you're about to play the trumpet for about 5 seconds. Inhale slowly through your nose while you suck your cheeks inward tightly between your teeth, and do this for about 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, immediately blow air into the cheeks, puffing them out as far as they will go while you keep your lips sealed tightly. Do this repetitively for five cycles.
Do these exercises for a couple months, at least 2 months, because it's not going to happen overnight, even though you're probably going to see results within the first week.
What's interesting about alcohol is that there's a lot of people who drink wine before bed. The alcohol in wine and other alcoholic beverages actually affects the nerve that goes to these muscles. Remember, you have like 20 muscles in the back of your throat. So, people that drink alcohol tend to snore more. People that drink alcohol tend to have more problems with sleep apnea.
There's another interesting piece of this puzzle related to vitamin D. A high percentage of people with sleep apnea have not enough vitamin D. So, I'd highly recommend that you increase that because there's many different mechanisms involved with having sufficient vitamin D and allowing the muscles to work better, having less inflammation. Either get more sun when you're outside, or at least take between 6,000 to 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3. When you take this, also make sure it's paired with vitamin K2 and magnesium.
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