JUST BREATHE: No, there are no magic pills for sleep apnea, and some magic pills just make it worse

Sorry, I cannot provide you a link to purchase these for your sleep apnea because they don't exist.
 

It would be so nice to just pop a pill and be done with sleep apnea, right? Except that because sleep apnea (the obstructive variety, anyway) is an issue of physiological mechanics, no pill can fix that.

(Not sure what sleep apnea is? Check out this great 3-minute video to learn how to differentiate snoring from sleep apnea.)

So there aren't any magic pills for OSA. Fine, you say. But wait! There are still plenty of drugs that can actually aggravate OSA (whether you have been diagnosed or not). This goes for all kinds of sleep disordered breathing, not just apnea.

Alcohol--Can't share this one enough. Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but you will always have a withdrawal effect a couple of hours later, after you metabolize your nightcap, which disrupts the remainder of your sleep all night. On top of that, it relaxes the airway structures in a way that encourages them to collapse.

Muscle relaxants--Makes sense, right? You have soft tissues in your airway but you also have muscles there, too. The muscles help keep the soft tissues from collapsing. Relax those muscles and you have more chances to develop an obstructed airway when you're asleep.

Sedatives--Sleep medications play a lot of tricks on your brain to get it to fall into a sleep-like state. One of the problems with sedatives is that they interfere with the neurochemical messages that your brain processes with relation to your blood's oxygen/carbon dioxide balance. Your brain normally startles you awake so that you take a breath when that imbalance hits a certain threshold. If you are taking sedatives, it will take longer for your brain and lungs to work together to avoid this depression of the respiratory system. The result will be more apneas; if you already have OSA, the result will be more severe apneas.

Cigarettes--So maybe a smoke relaxes you at bedtime. What's the harm? It also introduces irritants into the airway which cause the tissues there to swell in response, creating obstruction.

Sleep Hygiene Tip of the Week || Forget about those nightcaps

Having trouble sleeping at night after a long, stressful day? You do yourself no favors by having that alcoholic nightcap, despite popular opinion.

Alcohol has a detrimental impact on sleep architecture, it turns out. It may help you fall asleep, which is often why people have drinks right before bed. But once your body metabolizes the alcohol in the bloodstream, which takes most of the first half of the sleep cycle, a "rebound" effect occurs in which the body shifts away from deeper sleep toward earlier stages, which is in direct opposition to the kind of sleep one should normally have in the second half of the night. In essence, your body goes into withdrawal. This is true for anyone who drinks any kind of alcohol right before sleep and is not specifically a problem falling within the realm of alcoholism.

The deeper sleep cycles, stage 3 and REM stage sleep, are critical for healing. Deep non-REM sleep helps the body to repair itself physiologically at the cellular level by introducing human growth hormone (HGH) during its first cycle; however, this cycle might very well be skipped if you are still metabolizing alcohol. In REM sleep, the brain recalibrates and compartmentalizes thoughts, memories, learned ideas and experiences from the previous day. Without adequate amounts of this stage of sleep, cognitive dysfunction can develop over time which can include fatigue, memory issues, learning disabilities and an inability to process information and multitask neurologically at your normal rate. Severe issues can lead to dementia.

In addition, research has shown the relationship between alcohol intake and diminished sleep quality to be bi-directional: disturbed nighttime sleep caused by nightcaps enjoyed prior to bed increases your chances of craving future alcohol use, and alcohol itself has the potential to influence the quality of sleep you get from one night to the next.

On top of all this, if you have a sleep-breathing disorder such as sleep apnea, you can be sure to expect it to worsen over time if you are having a regular nightcap. The muscles in the upper airway lose their patency (firmness) during episodes of sleep apnea; the muscle-relaxing qualities of alcohol will only exaggerate this problem and lead to longer, more serious episodes of obstructed breathing which, over time, can become life-threatening.

SLEEP HYGIENE TIP OF THE WEEK: No one here is saying you have to quit drinking, nor is it being suggested that you abstain completely from alcohol before bed from here on out. Special occasions in our lives mean that, from time to time, we will enjoy an alcoholic drink in the evening. Our tip is to avoid drinking right before bed as a matter of habit, or as a form of sedative use; you cannot expect to be at your 100 percent cognitive best following a late night out with drinks during special occasions. In addition, you can expect a slow degeneration of cognitive dysfunction over time if you do, in fact, make it a habit.

The main takeaway? Using alcohol every night as a bedtime sedative is going to have multiple negative impacts on your health. Try to avoid it whenever possible. If you are having trouble falling asleep at night, please talk to your doctor to determine root causes for this common condition. Insomnia is treatable and definitely worth overcoming for anyone who wants to live a rich, healthy, long life. Just don't treat it with a nightcap, okay?