Anthony Rinando, who was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea in his teenage years, had to wait almost two decades to get a good night’s sleep.
“I tried everything. Snoring strips, sleeping with a tennis ball behind your back… I tried using different pillows,” Rinando, a 31-year-old New Yorker, told Fox News.
Sleep apnea is not just a snorer’s disorder, but a serious and sometimes fatal condition. It’s estimated that 22 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, a disorder that causes your breathing to stop or get very shallow while you sleep.
It occurs when the muscles in the back of the throat relax and the airway narrows or closes as one breathes in.
“This may lower the level of oxygen in your blood,” Mayo Clinic explains in its website. “Your brain senses this inability to breathe and briefly rouses you from sleep so that you can reopen your airway. This awakening is usually so brief that you don’t remember it.”