Several varieties of bagpipe I'm aware of don't even require breathing, since they're powered by bellows. The pipes are surprisingly hard to learn by the way. One normally starts on the chanter, which is more like a recorder and is not bag assisted.
>One normally starts on the chanter, which is more like a recorder
In the case of the Great Highland bagpipes, the most similar traditional instrument is the rauschpfeife (capped double-reed with conical bore and without prominent bell):
I would imagine some basic breathing techniques may help, wonder what the research in anuloma viloma pranayama shows, but beware there's a lot written by random people on the internet about it without scientific evidence.
If you're talking about the great highland bagpipes, circular breathing can be really helpful while learning. Because of the "practice chanter," every piper have one or two and use it to learn new tunes or just practice technique.
I don't think circular breathing is the goal. It's just a means to an end. The goal is strengthening the muscles that keep the airway open. The resistance from blowing into the didgeridoo seems to be what does that. I have no idea how that compares to bagpipes, however.
The didge forces you to learn circular breathing, it's cheaper, it is easier to learn, and is easier to play well. Plus I think it sounds better. Everyone should learn to play the didgeridoo. Bagpipes are a whole another level, and feel more like a practical joke gone horribly wrong (Sorry Gran.)
A friend of mine started "blowing air into water with an straw" (making bubbles) very seriously. I was very skeptical to say the least; but after a couple of months the effects have been very eye opening. Not only it has helped sleep apnea and snoring but also helped with reducing their weight. They had an online group and most participants reported the same. The wight loss was reverted when they stopped for some personal reasons. I wonder if making bubbles in the water has the same effect.
Just read how this works and tried it. A bit tricky at first but actually quite easy once you get the hang of it. And it's kind of a fun exercise. Now I'm wondering if I should get a Didgeridoo too.
50mm/2” PVC pipe with a bit of beeswax on the end to protect your lips is a quick way to test out whether you want to spend the time to track down a proper didgeridoo.
circular breathing is useful for other instruments as well, though it's not typically a technique that's necessary until you get to fairly high levels.
I just made a test with one of the AI:
It seems there is some evidence in there, sounds like mainly you are strengthening the muscles around your throat with that technique and this then can reduce sleap apnea a little bit.
A very good reason. I refuse to use paper straws. They are disgusting (it feels like sucking on a piece of printer paper).
Don't get me wrong. I try to remove plastics in all areas of my life as well (because of microplastics), but can't they coat the surface in some biodegradable polymer like PHA/PBS?
Or if this is too expensive coat it with some beeswax at the very least...
There's some science on training those muscles, even without upside down drinking. "Dry swallowing" while on an incline seems to do the trick just fine.
My Dr explained to me that proper sleep is important for the body to "reset" chemical balances and metabolism. It is still calories in vs out, but you are more likely to store the calories than burn them due to the "metabolic system" being out of whack due to poor sleep.
My didgeridoo teacher had the class practice at home continuously blowing air through a straw - it still took me almost half a year to reliably be able to do circular breathing.
I have read a few references that humming or ‘ohming’ help sinus health and breathing so I guess it makes sense playing the didgeridoo would help also. Blowing bubbles through a straw won’t cause vibration, so probably in itself won’t help.
Someone really needs to properly do the science on this
I (presumably like the majority) assumed that sleep apnea was at least partially caused by weight gain, but if there is weight gain caused by sleep apnea it’s going to give doctors some new tools
I had textbook symptoms of sleep apnea with a BMI of 19, before I was diagnosed. The sleep tech told me bluntly that plenty of slim people, even children, develop sleep apnea.
Obesity increases the chance of developing sleep apnea, yes. But sleep apnea also increases the chance of becoming obese. It is not just a simple unidirectional cause and effect.
There is plenty of proper science on this. Weight gain does not cause obstructive sleep apnea until you get into extremes (e.g. huge necked bodybuilders or people with so much fat on their chest that they physically struggle to move it to breathe). Sleep apnea makes it harder to lose weight and easier to gain weight. Having sleep apnea and being heavier can make sleep apnea worse. Losing weight quickly can make sleep apnea worse when you lose muscle mass along side fat (e.g. on ozempic).
There are plenty of tools for doctors to treat sleep apnea. The problem is that they refuse to use them. Many people on CPAP would benefit greatly from being on BiPAP instead, but doctors commonly refuse to prescribe it. Some cases of sleep apnea can be treated using positional therapy (typically side sleeping), but there's no prescription for that. Some cases can be solved by exercising throat muscles (with or without a didgeridoo), but there's no prescription for that either, and there are virtually zero speech/physical therapists who focus on that. There are some surgeries that can really benefit some patients, but most sleep labs and ENTs refuse to even to even perform a proper sleep endoscopy.
Not sure why the other reply got downvoted to death. Commenter is right. The same motor seems to power resmed CPAP and resmed BiPAP. Haven't tried jailbreaking my own yet, but maybe I should give that a go.
At least in the US my understanding is insurers don't generally support BiPAP because it's more expensive. Surgery costs more, has extended recovery time, is more risky, and is less effective at the broader population level; if it works, it may not work forever. For a lot of people, CPAP is good enough, and so it's currently the standard.
BiPAP is only more expensive for artificial reasons. It's the same hardware just with a different algorithm. CPAP machines are around €/$500, BiPAP can be more than twice as much. But if you take into account that they last 5-10 years, and that my local hospital charges my insurance €90/month for leasing a CPAP device, it quickly becomes apparent how much of a cash grab that is.
Patient care should be at the top of the list, especially for something as important as sleep. But saving a few bucks in the short term seems to be more important. But people with improperly treated sleep apnea still suffer many of the same effects of people who aren't treated at all.
For surgery, it turns out there are higher rates of it being the improper treatment and partial or full failure, and you still might need CPAP anyways. And that’s on top of the fairly standard and obvious preference for non invasive treatments in general.
I will say a fairly non invasive surgery that is much easier to consider is fixing a deviated septum; it probably won’t fix your apnea, but it being deviated is probably not helping.
I share your concerns about surgery. The way I understand it, the difficulty lies in choosing the right surgery (or surgeries) for the right patient. The supposed gold-standard diagnostic approach is a drug induced sleep endoscopy, where an ENT looks at your airway while you sleep. The problem is that being sedated is not the same as being asleep. It's possible to do this "right", but that is much more time consuming than just shooting people up with propofol and scoping them while they're knocked out.
One thing to keep in mind is that surgery might still be useful even if it doesn't get you off CPAP: being able to use lower CPAP pressures could increase comfort and adherence.
I've been putting off my own septoplasty because it all sounds extremely unpleasant, so yeah.
The idea people aren't doing 'proper science' on this is a spectacular level of oblivious. There's nothing in here that I haven't at some point had a discussion about with my sleep doc in the last 20 years (well, not specifically a didgeridoo, but circular breathing and other types of breath exercises, including 'straw breathing'). Yes, some people do loose weight when they get their apnea under control, among other health benefits. That also is not new, and it's not some sort of miracle insight that noone has considered.
this is incorrect lol. the water is just to help with humidity, to prevent a dry mouth and sinuses. all resumed cpap machines for example can be used without the water tank as long as you have the backplate.
the water in the tank is heated to increase the humidity of the air circulating.
cpap machines work by increasing the air pressure on breath-ins and help open your airways by keeping your genioglossus tensor veli palatini muscles engaged.
Kind of, yeah. When I first got onto CPAP I was worried that it would cause my muscles to atrophy over time because it makes the inhale so much easier. But the pressure is still there on the exhale, which is exactly like breathing out through a straw into water (with 5-20cm water on top of the straw, depending on the CPAP pressure).
My voice teacher had me blow air into water with a straw. Felt good and had some therapeutic effect on my vocal chords.
Apparently the technique had been developed by a Finnish speech and voice therapist. Here is some background: https://www.laxvox.com/history/
I started playing didgeridoo 10 years ago for precisely this reason. Sleep apnea already cured by weight loss, but I knew by air pathways were prone to it, and I never wanted it to come back.
It worked
It took me 1-2 years to learn circular breathing, but even just learning to play for 15 seconds on one breath can give the "oxygen high" from breathing so much.
You can't get "oxygen high" from breathing normal air. The O2 levels will always stay the same unless you stop breathing for a while. What will make you feel weird in the head when breathing too fast is the reduction of CO2 in your blood.
No it would stay at pretty much 100% (as is normal). But co2 goes down, which lessens the ability of oxygen to come out of the blood. That's why you get dizzy when hyperventilating
If you've ever done the wim hof breathing method, it is a very intense experience.
Basically hyperventilation + long breath holds. Probably similar to what free divers do without the mammalian dive reflex due to the cold water. Or like a dangerous game kids used to do when I was in school where you hyperventilate and then have someone press on your chest until you pass out.
But anyway, I'm not sure if the science would back it up, but Wim Hof describes it as over oxygenating the blood and then stopping and letting CO2 ramp up or something. Whether it is significantly dropping the CO2 or increasing oxygen during the hyperventilation phase, isn't it kind of the same thing? Adjusting the ratio.
Anecdotally, when I was doing it regularly I seemed to not get sick at all.
Nope. The blood is already fully saturated with oxygen (in a healthy-ish person) at rest. Even intensely breathing pure o2 can't give you a saturation higher than 100%.
Blood oxygen saturation is always near 100% in a healthy person. 95% is the low end of normal. Dropping to 90% is considered hypoxemia, and 80% is a medical emergency. So there really shouldn’t be any room to increase it significantly.
In many people a momentary drop to the 80s or even below is not an emergency or anything close to it. Not saying that it is good.
Someone that is awake, sitting up, and struggling to breathe should be considered an emergency regardless of oxygen levels (and in this situation 80% would be very concerning).
EDIT: your comment is otherwise entirely correct, particularly at sea level.
One a friend and I hooked ourselves up to continuous pulse oximetry and had a contest to get the lowest recorded oxygen level. We tried everything we could think of, from just holding our breath to end-expiratory breath holding to hyperventilating to clear O2 (I used to do some recreational free-diving) beforehand to exercising (jumping jacks)...
Neither of us could get it below 98%, and this was at a mile of elevation (UNMH in Albuquerque).
It is pretty easy if you use the Wim Hof method. Breathe deep and fast for a few minutes, to the point where you get dizzy or feel weird sensations. Then exhale and stop breathing while being fully relaxed. I've done this while hooked to a pulse oximeter and it takes quite a while before O2 actually starts dropping (especially because the effect can be delayed in your limbs), but once it starts you'll pretty quickly run into the regime where a normal oxi will start an alarm because O2 is too low. You can even go below 85% without losing consciousness, because your limbs will desaturate faster than your brain. It's also not uncomfortable, because rising CO2 is what causes breathing reflex, but you dropped its levels far below the threshold by hyperventilating first.
Interesting. As I noted above (though typo O2 -> CO2), I used the same technique you describe, which I learned in free diving, and was not able to get below 98%, at altitude.
I'm quite sure no freediving instructor would ever teach you this particular method, because it is a surefire way to die underwater on your first attempt. Free diving breathing techniques usually revolve around lowering your heart rate, not lowering CO2. Wim Hof trainers will also tell you to never to use this method when near water.
As for the specifics that may have prevented you from doing what you wanted: If you breathe too shallow or too slow, you won't clear enough CO2. In freediving this is normal (even wanted), but for Wim Hof practice it means you didn't do it right. You really have to breathe so deep and fast that you enter an uncomfortable zone. It's not unlike physical exercise, except it's mostly mental.
> I'm quite sure no freediving instructor would ever teach you this particular method, because it is a surefire way to die underwater on your first attempt
Definitely no instructor involved, just a dumb 20 year-old living in Puerto Rico. It admittedly was dangerous, but I am living evidence that it was far from a "surefire" way to die. It was one of a hundred ways in which I put my life at risk during my 20s. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> As for the specifics that may have prevented you from doing what you wanted: If you breathe too shallow or too slow, you won't clear enough CO2.
I'm confident I was doing it sufficiently well to accomplish a longer period of breath holding than I otherwise would have been able to sustain, as evidenced by having done so (in addition to the usual symptoms of lightheadedness, confusion, loss of vision, near-syncope -- yes I agree quite uncomfortable). I know people on HN love to idolize Wim Hof, but in this context minute ventilation is not that difficult of a concept; I'm usually able to estimate the response in a paralyzed patient's PCO2 fairly well when making changes to their tidal volume and rate.
I didn't search for too long, but here's at least one relevant document, in which otherwise untrained subjects were able to achieve a substantial reduction in CO2 (17.4 vs 29.0) with a mere 15 seconds of hyperventilation, leading to an extra 23 seconds of breath holding prior to involuntary breathing moments. The peripheral O2 sat nadir in the hyperventilation group appears to have been identical to the non-hyperventilation group after the first trial (Fig 8b, looks like ~94%) and was only statistically significantly lower on trials 2-5: <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10363065/>
Can’t claim to know for sure, but I’d assume some kind of measurement limitations: the resolution and upper/lower limits of pulse ox are probably calibrated to some medical need, not to detect changes beyond what’s medically necessary
This was using equipment in the emergency department of our state's only L1 trauma center and comprehensive stroke center; I presume it was decent as far as medical monitoring equipment goes.
I once took a didgeridoo course and played for quite a while after that. One weekend of 2×3 hours of didgeridoo playing, and my nose was incredibly clear. Like never before and never again since.
By the way, you can practice circular breathing very well in the shower. Take water in your mouth and breathe in through your nose while simultaneously spraying the water out through your lips.
Double Reed instruments have also been shown to have a positive effect for those suffering from sleep apnoea. It seems due to the higher air pressure needed to play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_reed
I couldn't find a CPAP mask that worked for me, even after 6 months of trying across 4 different masks.
Then I read studies showing oropharyngeal exercises can help treat sleep apnea. Originally I used https://snoregym.com/ for that, but then I switched to simply chewing gum once a day (being careful to chew on both sides of my mouth roughly equally), and also chewing my food a bit longer.
?Yothi Yindi? I listened to this song a bit back in the early nineties but it sounds a bit dated now. (Ironically the traditional instruments sound a lot better than the synths.)
Didgeridoo (when played properly) can sound great. Like the bagpipes there are a lot of people who can barely play, but go out busking.
The carnyx is the nearest traditional western European equivalent. There is a guy who plays it called John Kenny who I don't rate. Abraham Cupeiro, on the other hand, is amazing. See here:
You may like Tribal Need's Genetic Modification Of Sound. Ricardo Moretti is also busking with a Roland Juno synth, looper and didgeridoo. I saw him in Berlin a couple of times in the early 2010s.
There seems to be a typing mistake. The embouchure should have diameter of 2.8-3.2 centimeters, not millimeters. Perhaps that can be done DIY from an PVC pipe with an hot air gun or a gas burner to soften and shape the end.
"Participants received a standardised acrylic plastic didgeridoo that was developed by the instructor in collaboration with Creacryl GmbH (Ebmatingen, Zurich, Switzerland, and costs €80 (£43; $94), fig 1). The didgeridoo is 130 cm long with a diameter of 4 cm and an elliptical embouchure with a diameter of 2.8-3.2 mm. Acrylic didgeridoos are easier for beginners to learn on than conventional wooden didgeridoos."
"Perhaps that can be done DIY from an PVC pipe with an hot air gun or a gas burner to soften and shape the end."
When I used to make my own PVC didgeridoos, I would melt candle wax and then dip one end repeatedly into the wax to build up wax layers until it had the desired thickness and shape.
I had excellent results using a large section of black bamboo, though I forget the exact taxonomy (lako?). I meticulously beat out the segment walls, then with a rasp fastened to a long stick, filed down the ridges. After sanding, I finished it with oil based stain, which necessitated it living outdoors for a while. In the end it proved a fine primitive instrument. I gifted it to someone and miss it. I can attest to the therapeutic effects of mastering the didge.
PVC works, but the acoustics do seem superior with actual plant material. Certainly the feel.
Twenty years ago my neighbor, a retired surgeon, made me a PVC didgeridoo and did the wax buildup thing - I still mostly play that didgeridoo. Years later my wife bought me a traditional heavy didgeridoo from Australia, but it doesn’t play as well; still, when I played at a friend’s wedding I used the Australian one because it looks better :-)
Unrelated to the content of this submission, but trying to visit this link in Firefox takes me into an endless recaptcha loop, whereas visiting in Chrome took me to the site without any captcha.
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Wondering what sort of plugins you've got on the Firefox side. If they're stripping out headers, for instance, it's a good way to make yourself look like a bot.
I've only got "Firefox Multi-Account Containers" and "Privacy Badger". I tried reloading with Privacy Badger disabled, still the same behaviour. Works in Safari and Chrome with no issues at all!
I don’t think they’re suggesting you do it like a sleeping pill and play some didgeridoo right before bed. Rather, it’s about regular practice like with any other instrument.
I'm actually trying this right now for my moderate sleep apnea.
I had an AHI of 17 a few years ago and then I had deviated septum surgery and taught myself how to breathe through my mouth using mouth tape.
And had a love-hate relationship with CPAP and finally got consistent with it in the past year.
And now I found a new sleep medicine doctor who agreed to help me try out this claim in the study. (Previous sleep doctor had no interest in helping me with that).
So we took another sleep test and AHI is still about 17. I'm doing the didgeridoo for 3 months for 15 minutes a day, using the air didge, which is adjustable but I'm using it in the lowest tone which is A.
And we are going to test again after the 3 months is up!
I remember a violin player back in my youth Orchestra days who always wanted to sleep in the same room as woodwond players (3 people in every room) because "string players snore".
the study was conducted using a didgeridoo but the circular breathing seems to be the important mechanism. No studies have been conducted on other instruments that require or benefit from it.
I doubt many of them actually figured out how to circular breathe after one lesson. Source: have been playing sax for 20 years, tried learning it many times, still no good.
Circular breathing is easiest to accomplish on the didgeridoo. This is because of several reasons: optimal back-pressure (hits the sweet spot between lack of resistance on a flute and too much of it on an oboe, for example), loose embouchure (relaxed lips make it easier to puff up the cheeks) and single drone focus (no distracting fingerings required).
I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect (probably stronger) to humming, which is known to dramatically (15-20x) increase the release of beneficial nitrous oxide in the nasal passages.
> I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect…
My gut says that there are some interesting discoveries waiting around the intersections of frequency of vibration, individual resonant frequency, and duration
Possibly yes when it comes to air pressure, but the learning curve will be steeper. But not when it comes to the generated vibrations, and my bet is the latter are more important.
Yeah I dunno if I believe this, I played trombone when I was a kid... I didn't get sleep apnea until like 10 years ago. Unless it somehow takes like 30 years to develop, it seems implausible.
n=25, self report AND only players with partners. I think there’s merit to using muscular musculature to improve your sleep apnea but this doesn’t answer the question of why playing the instrument wasn’t preventative in the first place.
What are you saying? That you expected your childhood trombone playing would somehow protect you from sleep apnea forever? "Use it or lose it." Sleep apnea can certainly take 30 years to develop. Old age increases the chances of getting it. Menopause does too. Muscles get weaker.
CPAP user here, and "have you tried taking up the didgeridoo" is comfortably the best sentence I've ever read in a medical journal.
The mask works fine — it's just that I go to bed every night looking like a minor Star Wars character, so I'm very open to alternatives. And from the other comments, the didgeridoo sounds like the boring tongue exercises in a trenchcoat: same throat muscles, except you might actually keep doing it. Which is the entire problem with the tongue exercises.
Study was moderate apnea so I'm keeping the machine. But I am absolutely buying a didgeridoo and becoming insufferable about it. My household has been notified.
There are also various simple tongue and throat exercises that can improve your sleep apnea that would generally be better tolerated by your neighbors than playing a Didgeridoo, see for example...
...along with various other videos on that person's youtube channel (he's an NHS Sleep and Ear Surgeon).
Of course, there are lots of underlying causes of sleep apnea that vary between people, so what helps one person may or may not be relevant for others. Seeing a doctor in the field should be your first step if you suspect you are suffering from sleep apnea.
You'll hear Charlie McMahon going at it with continuous circular breathing for five to eight minutes or so on the early Gondwanaland albums (along with sliding length didgeridoo effects and 'singing' down tube).
There is another active study with a device called the DidgeriTU. Which is a mouth breathing appliance that you blow in. But fits in the palm of your hand. I'm interested to see the results of that one!
Attention is magic stuff. Putting it on part of your body can make it better. Withdrawing it can make it worse. I suspect that much disease stems from such neglect.
I used to have a chronically stuffed nose. Then I started doing a kind of meditation where I put my attention upon my nose. My nose opened up and I almost never get a stuffed nose anymore.
That's not a placebo. A placebo would be learning to play some other instrument like a piano, that doesn't involve breath. I also RTFA and saw no mention of any meaningful control group. For all they know the effects would come from learning any instrument, or just going to regular classes, or...
> The randomisation list was concealed from the recruiting physicians and the didgeridoo instructor in an administrative office otherwise not involved in the study. We used a central telephone service, which the didgeridoo instructor used to obtain group allocation.
Oh, did you make use of the central telephone service did you? You didn't send the list by carrier pigeons?
Unfortunately, digeridoo playing is just as disruptive to partner's sleep as snoring is. Perhaps they should try bagpipes?
I suspect bagpipes may be the worst wind instrument to learn in this regard, at least if the goal is to train circular breathing?
Several varieties of bagpipe I'm aware of don't even require breathing, since they're powered by bellows. The pipes are surprisingly hard to learn by the way. One normally starts on the chanter, which is more like a recorder and is not bag assisted.
>One normally starts on the chanter, which is more like a recorder
In the case of the Great Highland bagpipes, the most similar traditional instrument is the rauschpfeife (capped double-reed with conical bore and without prominent bell):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauschpfeife
I would imagine some basic breathing techniques may help, wonder what the research in anuloma viloma pranayama shows, but beware there's a lot written by random people on the internet about it without scientific evidence.
If you're talking about the great highland bagpipes, circular breathing can be really helpful while learning. Because of the "practice chanter," every piper have one or two and use it to learn new tunes or just practice technique.
I don't think circular breathing is the goal. It's just a means to an end. The goal is strengthening the muscles that keep the airway open. The resistance from blowing into the didgeridoo seems to be what does that. I have no idea how that compares to bagpipes, however.
Both can practice in the other room.
Didge isn't that loud unless you're really going for it. Nothing compared to bagpipes.
Use a box didgeridoo instead, it's much quiter than a full-size one.
Funny.
The didge forces you to learn circular breathing, it's cheaper, it is easier to learn, and is easier to play well. Plus I think it sounds better. Everyone should learn to play the didgeridoo. Bagpipes are a whole another level, and feel more like a practical joke gone horribly wrong (Sorry Gran.)
Bagpipes can quite easily be blocked out by the brain. With one caveat: the otherwise highly prized vibrato technique must be avoided.
A friend of mine started "blowing air into water with an straw" (making bubbles) very seriously. I was very skeptical to say the least; but after a couple of months the effects have been very eye opening. Not only it has helped sleep apnea and snoring but also helped with reducing their weight. They had an online group and most participants reported the same. The wight loss was reverted when they stopped for some personal reasons. I wonder if making bubbles in the water has the same effect.
Just learned from comments here it's called "circular breathing"!
Just read how this works and tried it. A bit tricky at first but actually quite easy once you get the hang of it. And it's kind of a fun exercise. Now I'm wondering if I should get a Didgeridoo too.
Yes. Someone who masters circular breathing in a weekend should start playing a wind instrument.
50mm/2” PVC pipe with a bit of beeswax on the end to protect your lips is a quick way to test out whether you want to spend the time to track down a proper didgeridoo.
circular breathing is useful for other instruments as well, though it's not typically a technique that's necessary until you get to fairly high levels.
Can you please expand on that? How many times and minutes a day? Full power?
Got a link?
same, my fat ass is ultra curious
I just made a test with one of the AI: It seems there is some evidence in there, sounds like mainly you are strengthening the muscles around your throat with that technique and this then can reduce sleap apnea a little bit.
I don’t mean to be rude, but what kind of personal reasons might stop a person from breathing into a straw at night
Probably summoning a fish demon.
Made me laugh. Thank you.
They objected to the Paper Straw Mandate
A very good reason. I refuse to use paper straws. They are disgusting (it feels like sucking on a piece of printer paper).
Don't get me wrong. I try to remove plastics in all areas of my life as well (because of microplastics), but can't they coat the surface in some biodegradable polymer like PHA/PBS?
Or if this is too expensive coat it with some beeswax at the very least...
Try bamboo straws, they work very well and are as green as it gets.
Aluminum straw is the clear and superior alternative
Reminds me of that guy who started drinking water upside down to train his swallow muscles and cure his chronic heartburn.
Did it work?
There's some science on training those muscles, even without upside down drinking. "Dry swallowing" while on an incline seems to do the trick just fine.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9550520/
Thank you for posting this! I will give it a shot.
In Japan, I learned to drink water upside down to stop hiccups. Works for me, whereas drinking normally doesn't.
How do you get your body to be upside down?
You bend over and curl your head towards your body.
I saw a documentary where a vocal coach used a similar technique to help metal singers sing in a way that didn't destroy their throat and vocal chords
I do death metal growling at karaoke sometimes. It makes a nice change after the umpteenth Abba or Pink Pony Club rendition.
There is a technique to it. You have to sing from the chest not the throat.
Seems related to our aquatic mammal past.
Is the weight loss just from sleeping better and therefore making better food choices?
Underrated question
Personally, when I have not slept well and need to be productive in a day, I’m much more likely to want to load up on sugar and unhealthy food
I’m the same way. Getting good sleep is my best predictor of whether I’ll blow a weight loss attempt or skip exercise.
Almost certainly plays a role. Also increased activity levels due to better less fatigue.
Certainly is not defeating thermodynamics, assuming calorie absorption is not disrupted somehow it's likely the above.
My Dr explained to me that proper sleep is important for the body to "reset" chemical balances and metabolism. It is still calories in vs out, but you are more likely to store the calories than burn them due to the "metabolic system" being out of whack due to poor sleep.
My didgeridoo teacher had the class practice at home continuously blowing air through a straw - it still took me almost half a year to reliably be able to do circular breathing.
I have read a few references that humming or ‘ohming’ help sinus health and breathing so I guess it makes sense playing the didgeridoo would help also. Blowing bubbles through a straw won’t cause vibration, so probably in itself won’t help.
Someone really needs to properly do the science on this
I (presumably like the majority) assumed that sleep apnea was at least partially caused by weight gain, but if there is weight gain caused by sleep apnea it’s going to give doctors some new tools
I had textbook symptoms of sleep apnea with a BMI of 19, before I was diagnosed. The sleep tech told me bluntly that plenty of slim people, even children, develop sleep apnea.
Obesity increases the chance of developing sleep apnea, yes. But sleep apnea also increases the chance of becoming obese. It is not just a simple unidirectional cause and effect.
There is plenty of proper science on this. Weight gain does not cause obstructive sleep apnea until you get into extremes (e.g. huge necked bodybuilders or people with so much fat on their chest that they physically struggle to move it to breathe). Sleep apnea makes it harder to lose weight and easier to gain weight. Having sleep apnea and being heavier can make sleep apnea worse. Losing weight quickly can make sleep apnea worse when you lose muscle mass along side fat (e.g. on ozempic).
There are plenty of tools for doctors to treat sleep apnea. The problem is that they refuse to use them. Many people on CPAP would benefit greatly from being on BiPAP instead, but doctors commonly refuse to prescribe it. Some cases of sleep apnea can be treated using positional therapy (typically side sleeping), but there's no prescription for that. Some cases can be solved by exercising throat muscles (with or without a didgeridoo), but there's no prescription for that either, and there are virtually zero speech/physical therapists who focus on that. There are some surgeries that can really benefit some patients, but most sleep labs and ENTs refuse to even to even perform a proper sleep endoscopy.
Not sure why the other reply got downvoted to death. Commenter is right. The same motor seems to power resmed CPAP and resmed BiPAP. Haven't tried jailbreaking my own yet, but maybe I should give that a go.
At least in the US my understanding is insurers don't generally support BiPAP because it's more expensive. Surgery costs more, has extended recovery time, is more risky, and is less effective at the broader population level; if it works, it may not work forever. For a lot of people, CPAP is good enough, and so it's currently the standard.
BiPAP is only more expensive for artificial reasons. It's the same hardware just with a different algorithm. CPAP machines are around €/$500, BiPAP can be more than twice as much. But if you take into account that they last 5-10 years, and that my local hospital charges my insurance €90/month for leasing a CPAP device, it quickly becomes apparent how much of a cash grab that is.
Patient care should be at the top of the list, especially for something as important as sleep. But saving a few bucks in the short term seems to be more important. But people with improperly treated sleep apnea still suffer many of the same effects of people who aren't treated at all.
For BiPAP i could buy that.
For surgery, it turns out there are higher rates of it being the improper treatment and partial or full failure, and you still might need CPAP anyways. And that’s on top of the fairly standard and obvious preference for non invasive treatments in general.
I will say a fairly non invasive surgery that is much easier to consider is fixing a deviated septum; it probably won’t fix your apnea, but it being deviated is probably not helping.
I share your concerns about surgery. The way I understand it, the difficulty lies in choosing the right surgery (or surgeries) for the right patient. The supposed gold-standard diagnostic approach is a drug induced sleep endoscopy, where an ENT looks at your airway while you sleep. The problem is that being sedated is not the same as being asleep. It's possible to do this "right", but that is much more time consuming than just shooting people up with propofol and scoping them while they're knocked out.
One thing to keep in mind is that surgery might still be useful even if it doesn't get you off CPAP: being able to use lower CPAP pressures could increase comfort and adherence.
I've been putting off my own septoplasty because it all sounds extremely unpleasant, so yeah.
The idea people aren't doing 'proper science' on this is a spectacular level of oblivious. There's nothing in here that I haven't at some point had a discussion about with my sleep doc in the last 20 years (well, not specifically a didgeridoo, but circular breathing and other types of breath exercises, including 'straw breathing'). Yes, some people do loose weight when they get their apnea under control, among other health benefits. That also is not new, and it's not some sort of miracle insight that noone has considered.
CPAP machines are essentially a hose that has you breathe into water.
this is incorrect lol. the water is just to help with humidity, to prevent a dry mouth and sinuses. all resumed cpap machines for example can be used without the water tank as long as you have the backplate.
the water in the tank is heated to increase the humidity of the air circulating.
cpap machines work by increasing the air pressure on breath-ins and help open your airways by keeping your genioglossus tensor veli palatini muscles engaged.
Kind of, yeah. When I first got onto CPAP I was worried that it would cause my muscles to atrophy over time because it makes the inhale so much easier. But the pressure is still there on the exhale, which is exactly like breathing out through a straw into water (with 5-20cm water on top of the straw, depending on the CPAP pressure).
Would you happen to have more information about this online group? Would love to join it!
Sounds like a semi-occluded vocal tract exercise, something that singers will do to strengthen the vocal folds and reduce tension.
My voice teacher had me blow air into water with a straw. Felt good and had some therapeutic effect on my vocal chords. Apparently the technique had been developed by a Finnish speech and voice therapist. Here is some background: https://www.laxvox.com/history/
I started playing didgeridoo 10 years ago for precisely this reason. Sleep apnea already cured by weight loss, but I knew by air pathways were prone to it, and I never wanted it to come back.
It worked
It took me 1-2 years to learn circular breathing, but even just learning to play for 15 seconds on one breath can give the "oxygen high" from breathing so much.
You can't get "oxygen high" from breathing normal air. The O2 levels will always stay the same unless you stop breathing for a while. What will make you feel weird in the head when breathing too fast is the reduction of CO2 in your blood.
So, if you breathe in an intensive manner for a few minutes, oxygen percentage in the blood won't change?
No it would stay at pretty much 100% (as is normal). But co2 goes down, which lessens the ability of oxygen to come out of the blood. That's why you get dizzy when hyperventilating
If you've ever done the wim hof breathing method, it is a very intense experience.
Basically hyperventilation + long breath holds. Probably similar to what free divers do without the mammalian dive reflex due to the cold water. Or like a dangerous game kids used to do when I was in school where you hyperventilate and then have someone press on your chest until you pass out.
But anyway, I'm not sure if the science would back it up, but Wim Hof describes it as over oxygenating the blood and then stopping and letting CO2 ramp up or something. Whether it is significantly dropping the CO2 or increasing oxygen during the hyperventilation phase, isn't it kind of the same thing? Adjusting the ratio.
Anecdotally, when I was doing it regularly I seemed to not get sick at all.
Nope. The blood is already fully saturated with oxygen (in a healthy-ish person) at rest. Even intensely breathing pure o2 can't give you a saturation higher than 100%.
Blood oxygen saturation is always near 100% in a healthy person. 95% is the low end of normal. Dropping to 90% is considered hypoxemia, and 80% is a medical emergency. So there really shouldn’t be any room to increase it significantly.
In many people a momentary drop to the 80s or even below is not an emergency or anything close to it. Not saying that it is good. Someone that is awake, sitting up, and struggling to breathe should be considered an emergency regardless of oxygen levels (and in this situation 80% would be very concerning).
EDIT: your comment is otherwise entirely correct, particularly at sea level.
90% you should really be traveling to see someone. At least an urgent care, if not an ER.
One a friend and I hooked ourselves up to continuous pulse oximetry and had a contest to get the lowest recorded oxygen level. We tried everything we could think of, from just holding our breath to end-expiratory breath holding to hyperventilating to clear O2 (I used to do some recreational free-diving) beforehand to exercising (jumping jacks)...
Neither of us could get it below 98%, and this was at a mile of elevation (UNMH in Albuquerque).
It is pretty easy if you use the Wim Hof method. Breathe deep and fast for a few minutes, to the point where you get dizzy or feel weird sensations. Then exhale and stop breathing while being fully relaxed. I've done this while hooked to a pulse oximeter and it takes quite a while before O2 actually starts dropping (especially because the effect can be delayed in your limbs), but once it starts you'll pretty quickly run into the regime where a normal oxi will start an alarm because O2 is too low. You can even go below 85% without losing consciousness, because your limbs will desaturate faster than your brain. It's also not uncomfortable, because rising CO2 is what causes breathing reflex, but you dropped its levels far below the threshold by hyperventilating first.
Interesting. As I noted above (though typo O2 -> CO2), I used the same technique you describe, which I learned in free diving, and was not able to get below 98%, at altitude.
I'm quite sure no freediving instructor would ever teach you this particular method, because it is a surefire way to die underwater on your first attempt. Free diving breathing techniques usually revolve around lowering your heart rate, not lowering CO2. Wim Hof trainers will also tell you to never to use this method when near water.
As for the specifics that may have prevented you from doing what you wanted: If you breathe too shallow or too slow, you won't clear enough CO2. In freediving this is normal (even wanted), but for Wim Hof practice it means you didn't do it right. You really have to breathe so deep and fast that you enter an uncomfortable zone. It's not unlike physical exercise, except it's mostly mental.
> I'm quite sure no freediving instructor would ever teach you this particular method, because it is a surefire way to die underwater on your first attempt
Definitely no instructor involved, just a dumb 20 year-old living in Puerto Rico. It admittedly was dangerous, but I am living evidence that it was far from a "surefire" way to die. It was one of a hundred ways in which I put my life at risk during my 20s. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> As for the specifics that may have prevented you from doing what you wanted: If you breathe too shallow or too slow, you won't clear enough CO2.
I'm confident I was doing it sufficiently well to accomplish a longer period of breath holding than I otherwise would have been able to sustain, as evidenced by having done so (in addition to the usual symptoms of lightheadedness, confusion, loss of vision, near-syncope -- yes I agree quite uncomfortable). I know people on HN love to idolize Wim Hof, but in this context minute ventilation is not that difficult of a concept; I'm usually able to estimate the response in a paralyzed patient's PCO2 fairly well when making changes to their tidal volume and rate.
I didn't search for too long, but here's at least one relevant document, in which otherwise untrained subjects were able to achieve a substantial reduction in CO2 (17.4 vs 29.0) with a mere 15 seconds of hyperventilation, leading to an extra 23 seconds of breath holding prior to involuntary breathing moments. The peripheral O2 sat nadir in the hyperventilation group appears to have been identical to the non-hyperventilation group after the first trial (Fig 8b, looks like ~94%) and was only statistically significantly lower on trials 2-5: <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10363065/>
I got a pulse oximeter during COVID and was able to get my O2 levels to spike down to 64% using Wim Hof breathing (for less than a second, ofc).
Can’t claim to know for sure, but I’d assume some kind of measurement limitations: the resolution and upper/lower limits of pulse ox are probably calibrated to some medical need, not to detect changes beyond what’s medically necessary
This was using equipment in the emergency department of our state's only L1 trauma center and comprehensive stroke center; I presume it was decent as far as medical monitoring equipment goes.
I once took a didgeridoo course and played for quite a while after that. One weekend of 2×3 hours of didgeridoo playing, and my nose was incredibly clear. Like never before and never again since.
By the way, you can practice circular breathing very well in the shower. Take water in your mouth and breathe in through your nose while simultaneously spraying the water out through your lips.
Double Reed instruments have also been shown to have a positive effect for those suffering from sleep apnoea. It seems due to the higher air pressure needed to play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_reed
Presumably quadruple reed instruments (that require even more air pressure to play) would be even better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruple_reed
I couldn't find a CPAP mask that worked for me, even after 6 months of trying across 4 different masks.
Then I read studies showing oropharyngeal exercises can help treat sleep apnea. Originally I used https://snoregym.com/ for that, but then I switched to simply chewing gum once a day (being careful to chew on both sides of my mouth roughly equally), and also chewing my food a bit longer.
It totally cured my sleep apnea.
What was your severity of sleep apnea? Do you mind sharing your AHI?
Have you tested it with a polysomnography?
I think my favourite part of the study is that the control group is just the class wait list.
Unfortunately this study doesn’t control for luck.
Unrelated to the health aspects, but if you like electronic music and the Didgeridoo check out Aphex Twin's album "Digeridoo". It's so good.
Always my first thought when reading/hearing the word.
And also the mandatory "Treaty, Yeah!":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPmDLR_M50M
?Yothi Yindi? I listened to this song a bit back in the early nineties but it sounds a bit dated now. (Ironically the traditional instruments sound a lot better than the synths.)
Didgeridoo (when played properly) can sound great. Like the bagpipes there are a lot of people who can barely play, but go out busking.
If you like psy electronic music, there is 'The Mystic Didgeridoo':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbhhLhb3zc8
The carnyx is the nearest traditional western European equivalent. There is a guy who plays it called John Kenny who I don't rate. Abraham Cupeiro, on the other hand, is amazing. See here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhwWihyylPg
You may like Tribal Need's Genetic Modification Of Sound. Ricardo Moretti is also busking with a Roland Juno synth, looper and didgeridoo. I saw him in Berlin a couple of times in the early 2010s.
https://tribalneed.bandcamp.com/album/genetic-modification-o...
A more recent live performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9LHiL2ETh0
This is more Trance than Techno, but Highlight Tribe use the Didge in a very aggressive way as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcvAwqi4krE
There seems to be a typing mistake. The embouchure should have diameter of 2.8-3.2 centimeters, not millimeters. Perhaps that can be done DIY from an PVC pipe with an hot air gun or a gas burner to soften and shape the end.
"Participants received a standardised acrylic plastic didgeridoo that was developed by the instructor in collaboration with Creacryl GmbH (Ebmatingen, Zurich, Switzerland, and costs €80 (£43; $94), fig 1). The didgeridoo is 130 cm long with a diameter of 4 cm and an elliptical embouchure with a diameter of 2.8-3.2 mm. Acrylic didgeridoos are easier for beginners to learn on than conventional wooden didgeridoos."
Yeah that should be 2.8-3.3cm for sure.
For added fun, two tubes of roughly that size that air seal fit one inside the other makes for a slide didgeribone.
addendum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1d7Eztj7Eg
"Perhaps that can be done DIY from an PVC pipe with an hot air gun or a gas burner to soften and shape the end."
When I used to make my own PVC didgeridoos, I would melt candle wax and then dip one end repeatedly into the wax to build up wax layers until it had the desired thickness and shape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiqEhJJqtbc
I had excellent results using a large section of black bamboo, though I forget the exact taxonomy (lako?). I meticulously beat out the segment walls, then with a rasp fastened to a long stick, filed down the ridges. After sanding, I finished it with oil based stain, which necessitated it living outdoors for a while. In the end it proved a fine primitive instrument. I gifted it to someone and miss it. I can attest to the therapeutic effects of mastering the didge.
PVC works, but the acoustics do seem superior with actual plant material. Certainly the feel.
Update: I used beeswax for the gob hole.
Twenty years ago my neighbor, a retired surgeon, made me a PVC didgeridoo and did the wax buildup thing - I still mostly play that didgeridoo. Years later my wife bought me a traditional heavy didgeridoo from Australia, but it doesn’t play as well; still, when I played at a friend’s wedding I used the Australian one because it looks better :-)
Someone mixed up their oboe and didgeridoo instructions
Unrelated to the content of this submission, but trying to visit this link in Firefox takes me into an endless recaptcha loop, whereas visiting in Chrome took me to the site without any captcha.
Sorry to hear that! You must be using an unapproved browser.
Please contact your nearest Cloudflare ChildProtect™ agency to request a one year license to browse the internet. You will be asked to provide a government ID card or equivalent.
Wondering what sort of plugins you've got on the Firefox side. If they're stripping out headers, for instance, it's a good way to make yourself look like a bot.
I've only got "Firefox Multi-Account Containers" and "Privacy Badger". I tried reloading with Privacy Badger disabled, still the same behaviour. Works in Safari and Chrome with no issues at all!
So I fired up Developer Tools to see what was happening...and the site just loaded. I am so confused.
Firefox on android with ublock origin didn't hit any captchas. I wonder what triggers them?
Last thing I need for my sleep through my thin walls is a neighbor with a didgeridoo.
Might help fall asleep, like a white noise machine :)
I don’t think they’re suggesting you do it like a sleeping pill and play some didgeridoo right before bed. Rather, it’s about regular practice like with any other instrument.
These two https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBGZoBYaLY must be best dorm neighbours ever then.
That's fairly cool.
I probably couldn't listen to that on a regular, but I enjoyed it.
Thanks!
30% of Americans have reflux, which is associated with obstructive sleep apnea.
Check out the papers on Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) and bridge swallowing.
I'm actually trying this right now for my moderate sleep apnea.
I had an AHI of 17 a few years ago and then I had deviated septum surgery and taught myself how to breathe through my mouth using mouth tape.
And had a love-hate relationship with CPAP and finally got consistent with it in the past year.
And now I found a new sleep medicine doctor who agreed to help me try out this claim in the study. (Previous sleep doctor had no interest in helping me with that).
So we took another sleep test and AHI is still about 17. I'm doing the didgeridoo for 3 months for 15 minutes a day, using the air didge, which is adjustable but I'm using it in the lowest tone which is A.
And we are going to test again after the 3 months is up!
Your CPAP should already be able to tell you how many AHI you have.
It costs less and you get more data, every night, instead of just 2 samples.
I remember a violin player back in my youth Orchestra days who always wanted to sleep in the same room as woodwond players (3 people in every room) because "string players snore".
The captcha on this site is irritating.
Original paper: https://www.bmj.com/content/332/7536/266
Thank you, I was completely unable to access that page with my current browser settings.
Yes, it is almost as if the current administration doens't want people to acces medical information.
Didgeridoo specifically?, or any instrument that requires circular breathing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_breathing
the study was conducted using a didgeridoo but the circular breathing seems to be the important mechanism. No studies have been conducted on other instruments that require or benefit from it.
I doubt many of them actually figured out how to circular breathe after one lesson. Source: have been playing sax for 20 years, tried learning it many times, still no good.
Aulos it is then!
Circular breathing is easiest to accomplish on the didgeridoo. This is because of several reasons: optimal back-pressure (hits the sweet spot between lack of resistance on a flute and too much of it on an oboe, for example), loose embouchure (relaxed lips make it easier to puff up the cheeks) and single drone focus (no distracting fingerings required).
I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect (probably stronger) to humming, which is known to dramatically (15-20x) increase the release of beneficial nitrous oxide in the nasal passages.
> I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect…
My gut says that there are some interesting discoveries waiting around the intersections of frequency of vibration, individual resonant frequency, and duration
would oboe be more effective then, albeit harder to will-power yourself into mastering?
Possibly yes when it comes to air pressure, but the learning curve will be steeper. But not when it comes to the generated vibrations, and my bet is the latter are more important.
Yeah I dunno if I believe this, I played trombone when I was a kid... I didn't get sleep apnea until like 10 years ago. Unless it somehow takes like 30 years to develop, it seems implausible.
n=25, self report AND only players with partners. I think there’s merit to using muscular musculature to improve your sleep apnea but this doesn’t answer the question of why playing the instrument wasn’t preventative in the first place.
Because anatomy not consistently used declines in fitness?
And unused muscles start to significantly decline in your mid-forties. Maybe thirty years after playing trombone as a kid.
Brb, joining the brass band at the legion.
Because they didn’t play until the study began? The population was people who had signed up to learn how to play.
What are you saying? That you expected your childhood trombone playing would somehow protect you from sleep apnea forever? "Use it or lose it." Sleep apnea can certainly take 30 years to develop. Old age increases the chances of getting it. Menopause does too. Muscles get weaker.
CPAP user here, and "have you tried taking up the didgeridoo" is comfortably the best sentence I've ever read in a medical journal. The mask works fine — it's just that I go to bed every night looking like a minor Star Wars character, so I'm very open to alternatives. And from the other comments, the didgeridoo sounds like the boring tongue exercises in a trenchcoat: same throat muscles, except you might actually keep doing it. Which is the entire problem with the tongue exercises. Study was moderate apnea so I'm keeping the machine. But I am absolutely buying a didgeridoo and becoming insufferable about it. My household has been notified.
There are also various simple tongue and throat exercises that can improve your sleep apnea that would generally be better tolerated by your neighbors than playing a Didgeridoo, see for example...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNscQ3bGxNk
...along with various other videos on that person's youtube channel (he's an NHS Sleep and Ear Surgeon).
Of course, there are lots of underlying causes of sleep apnea that vary between people, so what helps one person may or may not be relevant for others. Seeing a doctor in the field should be your first step if you suspect you are suffering from sleep apnea.
Jokes on you, my neighbours already play the digeriedoo.
If your neighbour plays the banjo, invite them over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr3iI8gg2fo
Two wrongs can make a right.
45 seconds of didge, and then be puts it down!
Hope he sleeps well tonight!
Blame the song structure.
You'll hear Charlie McMahon going at it with continuous circular breathing for five to eight minutes or so on the early Gondwanaland albums (along with sliding length didgeridoo effects and 'singing' down tube).
Thx for linking that. Just … wow
Not really related, but worth repeating: there's an old saying, "A gentleman is one who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn't".
Some might, in fact, call it the Didgeridon't
There is another active study with a device called the DidgeriTU. Which is a mouth breathing appliance that you blow in. But fits in the palm of your hand. I'm interested to see the results of that one!
It sounds like an attention thing.
Attention is magic stuff. Putting it on part of your body can make it better. Withdrawing it can make it worse. I suspect that much disease stems from such neglect.
I used to have a chronically stuffed nose. Then I started doing a kind of meditation where I put my attention upon my nose. My nose opened up and I almost never get a stuffed nose anymore.
Are you saying that, in fact, attention is all you need?
Looks like there was no placebo group? Don't know what that could be, something silly like otamatone lessons.
A placebo didgeridoo, otherwise known as a didgeridon't
Now I want to hear about the possible effects of ukulele playing on scoliosis.
RTFA? "Participants in the control group remained on the waiting list for lessons"
That's not a placebo. A placebo would be learning to play some other instrument like a piano, that doesn't involve breath. I also RTFA and saw no mention of any meaningful control group. For all they know the effects would come from learning any instrument, or just going to regular classes, or...
I played with my didgeridoo 3 times a day for ten years and it cured my snoring. But I went blind.
What did-ger-eyes-doo?
Looking, just looking.
> The randomisation list was concealed from the recruiting physicians and the didgeridoo instructor in an administrative office otherwise not involved in the study. We used a central telephone service, which the didgeridoo instructor used to obtain group allocation.
Oh, did you make use of the central telephone service did you? You didn't send the list by carrier pigeons?