New Age Dawning: Breathe Well, Sleep Well, Age Well

well while you slept. You’d get more than a flabby body. You’d be headed for some serious health problems. But if you’re suffering from obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA for short, this is exactly what’s happening.

Having Trouble Breathing While Sleeping?
Although all humans have varying degrees of airway narrowing, those with sleep apnea, or its milder variant upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS) have anatomies that are more prone to collapse than others. If you have a triangular facial structure or if you have a long neck or if you have a thick, stocky neck, like a football player, or if your tongue happens to sit higher up on your arches (see diagram), all of these anatomical factors can predispose you to airway obstruction or breathing problems while you sleep. Obesity, or one’s weight is not the primary indicator as once believed for having sleep apnea.

This is why for some OSA and UARS patients, sleeping on their sides or stomaches is an important prerequisite for getting a good nights rest. The reason being that this position, as opposed to sleeping on their backs, gives the tissue around their airway a bit more openness, and their tongues don’t tend to collapse as easily if they were lying flat on their backs, especially in deep sleep when throat muscles tend to relax more.

Although many OSA and UARS patients think they prefer to sleep this way just because this is how they’ve always slept, they may very well have made a choice to sleep this way for very good reason. It’s almost like a reflexive survival mechanism, since these preferences to sleep on our sides or stomachs, may have been formed not by any conscious effort, but as a reflexive coping mechanism for something that’s ailing us. This

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