Sleep apnea can be treated and, in many cases, cured. For most cases, this involves the patient using a CPAP machine. The patient wears a mask, attached to a small unit, that regulates their air pressure. However, the cure that works at any given time may have to be adjusted over time — pressure increased or decreased, different type of mask given, and so on. Patients must work to first get a clear diagnosis, which — as the article states — includes consulting with their physician and submitting to two or more overnight sleep studies given by a registered polysomnographic technologist. Then, they must continue to follow up with the physician to make sure that the pressure and equipment is still best serving their specific diagnosis.

No, no kinds of medication would cause sleep apnea. Sleep apnea happens when someone’s breathing ceases during the night. No medication that you take would cause this to happen. Commonly, apnea results when a patient is overweight, as the airways cannot fight against the pressure of the person’s weight. Apnea can also result is a person simply has too much soft tissue in their airway; when the soft tissue relaxes, the airway is blocked. Other conditions that are concurrent with apnea include heart conditions and lung and respiratory disease. As the article implies, sleep apnea often occurs in conjunction with other diseases, so a correct diagnosis is extremely important.

Sleep apnea by in large is a natural process where the soft palate tissue collapses in the upper airway for short periods of time to collapse the airway partially or completely disrupting breathing and cause short periods of oxygen deprevation to the essential organs (brain, heart, etc). There are different types of sleep apnea. The most common and the most “naturally occurring” is obstructive sleep apnea caused by these tissues and is anatomical in origin. In some cases very powerful medications such as methadone can cause what is called central sleep apnea. In central sleep apnea the central nervous system does not tell the body to breath for short periods of time. So obstructive sleep apnea, the body is trying to breath but there is a obstruction in the airway that prevents it, i.e. soft palate tissue. In central sleep apnea the brain is not generating normal breathing patterns due to a medication like methadone, or a possible disease process.

There are treatments for sleep apnea but not neccessarily “cures”. CPAP or BiPAP therapy is the gold standard treatment. There are oral appliances and surgeries also available if a patient is intolerant to CPAP. Across the board, the most successful and the easiest for a physician to follow care of a patient would be the use of CPAP therapy.

Hope that helps clear up some confusion. I’ve been in the field of Sleep Medicine for quite a few years and get these questions all the time.