Sleep Apnea: Home Exercises
In addition to wearing a CPAP mask for sleep apnea, you can also strengthen the muscles around the airways by doing mouth exercises.
When practised for around 30 minutes a day, these simple myofunctional therapy exercises (which involve chewing and swallowing motions as well as specific movements of the tongue) have been found to improve symptoms by:
- reducing the severity of sleep apnea
- improving sleep
- easing snoring
Myofunctional therapy is to re-train the movement of the tongue and orofacial muscles to establish adequate postures. These exercises will strengthen the tongue and muscles which may improve breathing problems, speech and facial growth.
Other recommended exercises which you can also do:
- Push the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth and slide the tongue backwards. Repeat 20 times
- Suck your tongue upward so that the entire tongue lies against the roof of your mouth. Repeat 20 times
- Force the back of your tongue downward against the floor of your mouth while keeping the tip of your tongue in contact with your bottom front teeth
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