Most people don’t usually think of exercise as something that can improve their oral health, yet research has shown that it can. According to new research in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, it may lower your risk of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), too.
Yes, really.
To investigate the relationship between physical activity and apnea, researchers used data from over 155,000 Canadian men and women in the Ontario Health Study – an ongoing long-term study to help researchers better understand the environmental, lifestyle, and genetic factors that drive chronic disease. Roughly 7% of participants had already been diagnosed with OSA.
Analysis showed that total physical activity, vigorous activity, and walking all were associated with a lower prevalence of sleep apnea. Even as little as a 20-minute daily walk or an 8-minute burst of intense exercise was found to lower apnea risk by 10%.
What’s really interesting is that the effect appeared to be independent of other risk factors such as body mass index (BMI). In other words, it wasn’t that the more active participants were any less obese necessarily. (Obesity is one risk factor for OSA.) It was the exercise itself that mattered.
And this lines up with earlier research, some of which was discussed in a new review of the science in npj Biological Timing and Sleep. For instance,
An epidemiological study of 1521 adults from the Wisconsin sleep cohort indicated that exercise is linked to a lower occurrence of sleep-disordered breathing. The findings showed that not all exercise-sleep-disordered breathing associations could be explained by BMI adjustments, hinting at exercise’s potential to influence sleep-disordered breathing through mechanisms beyond weight loss.
Other studies, the authors went on to note, have “demonstrated that exercise could reduce OSA severity based on the apnea–hypopnea index by up to 50%, independent of weight loss effects.” While exercise wasn’t found to be as effective as CPAP or surgery, “its impact is comparable to other surgical treatments and similar to a 10% body weight reduction.”
That’s pretty profound, to say the least!
Yet we still don’t know exactly why exercise should have this effect. One possibility is that it may strengthen the upper airway muscles and improve cardiovascular health. (In fact, some evidence suggests that upper-airway strengthening activities such as didgeridoo playing or singing can have a positive effect on OSA.) Or it may have to do with how exercise reduces inflammation. Or its impact on breath control. No doubt there are scientists working on finding answers even as we speak.
In the meantime, the fact that we know that an exercise/apnea relationship exists could provide a little extra motivation to get up and move more.
This hardly means that you need to become a gym rat or start training as if you were going to run the OC Marathon (or even the Disneyland Half Marathon, for that matter). Start just by finding ways to get more movement through your regular daily activities – walking short distances instead of driving or parking a little further out than you normally would; taking the stairs instead of the elevator; doing some basic chair exercises while you watch TV or scroll through your phone in the evening.
Small changes add up and can help make movement feel less like just another chore, more like a part of the natural flow of your day.
But also think about physical activities you could add to the mix and actually enjoy. Maybe that’s dancing or gardening; swimming or taking your dog for longer walks; beach volleyball or shooting hoops. Ultimately, the choice is yours based on your interest and the time you can make available for fun self-care activities. You’re much more likely to stick with those than a regimented “exercise plan” that feels like a burden.
Here are a a couple good resources we found to help inspire ideas for getting more movement into each day: