I recently saw an article on PubMed that suggested that acupuncture may help improve some of the symptoms of sleep apnea. The study, published in Chinese, suggests that the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), and the oxygen desaturation index (ODI) were reduced, and oxygen saturation of the blood were both improved after 3 to 5 sessions of acupuncture each week until 30 sessions had been completed. Unfortunately, there were only 30 patients enrolled in this study, so the evidence that acupuncture may be beneficial for sleep apnea is not very strong.

Unfortunately, when I searched PubMed for other studies that looked at acupuncture and apnea, there was only one other study, conducted by the same group, in which 12 patients were actually treated with acupuncture. In this study, the patients were treated once a week for 10 weeks. As in the more recent study, the AHI improved in patients who got acupuncture. There was also a control group who got no treatment – in these patients the AHI deteriorated.

These two studies in people with sleep apnea suggest that it may be worth trying acupuncture to reduce the effect of sleep apnea. However, the number of patients is small, and you need to have at least 10 and up to 30 sessions to show the kind of effects that were seen in these studies. Clearly, more research will be needed before acupuncture can be used to treat sleep apnea. If I was able to find an acupuncturist who could do this, I would want to have another sleep study after the treatment session before I turned off my CPAP machine. Also, I would want to have a follow-up study 6-12 months after the course of acupuncture to make sure that the apnea had not become worse.

Do you or someone you know have sleep apnea? There is a stereotype that says that you have to be overweight, over 40, and a guy. However, the reality is that apnea can affect anyone. The usual symptoms include daytime sleepiness, waking up in the middle of the night gasping for breath or needing to use the bathroom. Snoring is often a sign that people think is associated with sleep apnea, but not everyone with apnea does snore, and not everyone who snores has sleep apnea. The only way to accurately measure apnea is with a painless sleep study. You are wired up with various recording systems, but once you are asleep you don’t notice. The standard indicator of severity of apnea is the apnea-hypopnea index (the AHI that I mentioned above).

The AHI is simply a measure of the number of times each hour that you stop breathing for more than 10-20 seconds (apnea) or have restricted breathing where your airway is not completely obstructed (hypopnea). My AHI was 31 times per hour before I got treated with CPAP. After more than 18 months of wearing a mask every night, it is now 2 times per hour (sometimes less, sometimes more).

Filed under: Acupuncture • Apnea

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