When I asked my doctor about medication for sleep apnea, he told me a saying: "when you take medications is like making the devil your friend only to cross the lake".
It is a saying, but it makes you think about it.
The medication is a dangerous "tool" to cure your body. However, maybe you don't have another alternative.
Sleep apnea medication is an additional option to complete the treatment for your sleep disorder. Unfortunately, most of the medications are not ideal for you and may have undesirable side effects.
Most of the time, the medications are used to treat central apnea. These drugs stimulate the breathing reflex, but they should be considered temporary measures.
Modafinil is used in patients who have partially responded to CPAP. It can reduce the number of daytime naps and improve the quality of life. You must respect the treatment duration and dosage prescribed by the doctor to feel better, or it could be worse.
The patients treated with modafilin may feel better, but is advised to consistently use CPAP. Taking modafinil without CPAP is a risk for cardiovascular side effects.
Remember that modafinil does not treat sleep apnea, but it only treats the symptoms.
Speaking about side effects, regular use of modafinil may cause headache, dizziness, nervousness, chest pain and insomnia.
Acetazolamide is a respiratory stimulant and it is used by mountain climbers to prevent altitude sickness. The research showed that this medicine can decrease the number of apnea events and can decrease the daytime sleepiness.
There is a study that shows a dose-dependent effect. A lower dose of acetazolamide can improve central apnea events, and a higher dose can decrease obstructive apnea events.
However, long-term studies are necessary to determine if therapy has a positive effect on sleep apnea. We need more evidence to trust this medications.
Another experimental drug is clomipramine. It is an antidepressant who can improve sleep and decrease the number of apnea events. Like all known sleep apnea medicines, clomipramine has side effects, like impotence.
Theophylline is a drug that can reduce sleep fragmentation due to nocturnal asthma. The side effect of theophylline is insomnia.
Theophylline, which is mainly used to treat asthmatics, operates through an unknown mechanism, but is is assumed that it activates the respiratory center by increasing the metabolic rate.
As with acetazolamide, this medicine mainly improves the sleep respiratory function of patients with central sleep apnea events, but not in cases with obstructive sleep apnea.
These drugs have been tried only experimentally on sleep apnea. Most of them are respiratory stimulants and antidepressants. They are not recommended for long-term us, and many of them has some serious side-effects.
I hope that science can develop a sleep apnea medication that can treat this disorder once and for all. Until then, we should listen carefully what doctors are saying.
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When I asked my doctor about medication for sleep apnea, he told me a saying: "when you take medications is like making the devil your friend only to cross the lake". 
People who read about Sleep Apnea Medication also read about:
