Oropharyngeal Exercises for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (Cochrane Review)

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a condition where the throat repeatedly narrows or collapses during sleep, interrupting breathing. The standard treatments — most famously the CPAP machine — work well but are hard for many people to tolerate night after night. This Cochrane review, the most rigorous tier of evidence synthesis, looked at whether strengthening the muscles of the tongue and throat could help.

Myofunctional therapy is essentially physiotherapy for the airway: a structured set of exercises that train the tongue, soft palate, and surrounding muscles to hold the airway open. The review collected and weighed the trials testing this approach, situating it among the other tools available rather than as a miracle cure.

This matters because it reframes the airway as something that can be trained, not just splinted open by a device. For a project focused on how the structures of the face and mouth shape breathing, the idea that muscle function itself can be rehabilitated is central — it shifts the conversation from managing symptoms to addressing the mechanics underneath them.