TIME – As a young physician in Sydney, Australia in 1979, Colin Sullivan conceived of an experiment to help people with nighttime breathing issues.
After several months of waiting for the right patient, he met a construction worker so tired from disrupted overnight sleep that he habitually dozed off on the scaffolding.
The man had sleep apnea—his airway was obstructed, which interrupted breathing at night, waking him repeatedly. But he refused Sullivan’s recommendation for surgery to create an opening in the neck, the only known treatment back then.
The day had come for Sullivan to try a contraption he’d invented, a “big swimming pool pipe attached to a blower,” as he describes it.
Through a mask, the device delivered air into the man’s nose, creating a slight increase in pressure that kept his airway open. He slept peacefully for the first time in years.
“It was an amazing result,” Sullivan says.
At the time, though, he “never imagined” there’d be such a need for his continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP machine. Rates of obesity, a major driver of sleep apnea, had just begun to rise. In today’s obesity epidemic, nearly a billion people worldwide have sleep apnea.
CPAP machines, Sullivan soon learned, have their limits. “Many people can’t use them,” he says. “There’s a lot of individuality with sleep apnea.” Advances are helping people use CPAP more effectively and providing alternatives. Here are the most promising approaches, according to experts.
Although CPAP machines work well for tens of millions, many other people struggle with them. Some of these challenges can be addressed with the right guidance and strategies.
“I’ve used CPAP for 16 years, and I never felt really well-rested,” says Emma Cooksey, a patient advocate …
