Acupuncture: Your New Sleep Apnea Treatment

Sleep apnea is one of the harshest sleep disorders around. In order to treat it, sufferers need to sleep with a CPAP mask—which can be really uncomfortable for some people. But people who aren’t compatible with CPAP now have a more feasible solution. Try acupuncture.

A recent study suggests that acupuncture is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Acupuncture reduces nocturnal respiratory events and sleep disruptions. Researchers say that its anti-inflammatory effects make it an effective sleep disorder treatment.

They say that the neck is the main acupuncture point for people with sleep apnea. One of the main symptoms of sleep apnea is gasping for breath during sleep. The neck stimulates a muscle that allows for easy air flow, resulting in better breathing for the sleep apnea sufferer.

The article is published in Acupuncture in Medicine (2010;28:115-119 doi:10.1136/aim.2009.001867), an affiliate of the British Medical Journal.

ABSTRACT

Background:  Most patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) do not tolerate treatment with nasal continuous positive airway pressure, the ‘gold standard’ treatment for this condition. It was shown in a pilot study that acupuncture was more effective than placebo treatment (sham acupuncture) in producing significant changes in the respiratory events assessed by polysomnography (PSG).

Objectives: To investigate the immediate effect of manual acupuncture (MA) and electroacupuncture (EA) on the sleep pattern of patients presenting with moderate OSA.

Methods: 40 patients with an Apnoea–Hypopnoea Index (AHI) of 15–30/h were randomly allocated to MA treatment (n=10), EA 10 Hz treatment (n=10), EA 2 Hz treatment (n=10) and a no-treatment control group (n=10). The patients received MA or EA (2 or 10 Hz) just before the PSG study at 20:00.

Results: The AHI (p=0.005; p=0.005), the Apnoea Index (p=0.038; p=0.009) and the respiratory events (p=0.039; p=0.014) decreased significantly in the MA and EA 10 Hz groups, respectively (AHI (21.9, 11.2), Apnoea Index (5.15, 0.7), respiratory events (120.5, 61.0) in the MA group before and after. AHI (20.6, 9.9), Apnoea Index (8.2, 0.3), respiratory events (117.0, 56.0) in the EA 10 Hz group before and after). The micro-arousals decreased only in the MA group (146.0 vs 88.5, p=0.0002). There were no significant changes in the EA 2 Hz group or in the control group.

Conclusion: A single session of either MA or EA 10 Hz had an acute effect in reducing the AHI as well as the number of nocturnal respiratory events of patients presenting with moderate OSA.