Can you sleep on your back without suffocating?

[Lefortitude]

is it normal to be able to sleep on your back without waking up from the gurgle when your muscles relax and your face muscles impinge on your airway?

I sleep like a baby - on my side.  When im exhausted and lay on my back, its not long before i find myself drifting in and out because im not breathing right.

BMI = 21 - ideal weight (150 lbs, 10% bf)

Total Arousal Index - 7.2 events/hour
Awakening Index - 4.2 events/hour
AHI - 5.2 to 3.5 in rem (events/hour)
Total respiratory disturbance index - 6 events/hour
Supine AHI - 7.5 events/hour
non-supine AHI - 4 events/hour


no thick upper musculature

Are you able to sleep on your back without apnea episodes?

[kavan]

If you have episodes, maybe get a sleep study where objective would be a prescription for an apnea machine. Modern ones have the little 'nose pillows' where no mask is needed.

[thedude]

I mean you can always sleep better. AHI of 5 is average in the same sense that an IQ of 100 is average. Who wants to be average? You won’t accomplish much with an IQ of 100 and you’ll never sleep great with an AHI of 5.

If you look at people with disorders that caused their jaws to grow too much, a lot of them only need like 5 hours of sleep a night. Look at someone like Tony Robbins or Jay Leno. They have absolutely huge jaws and both are on record saying they sleep 4-5 hours a night.

That’s why I think all these jaw surgeries with small advancements are lost opportunities. Literally 99% of the population cannot keep their airway fully open at night. It’s just a flaw with the human species. Just because you don’t have a clinical diagnosis of sleep apnea does not mean you will not sleep better with a jaw surgery with large advancement. My hunch is that nobody needs more than 5-6 hours of sleep a night. We just think we do because we all have sleep apnea. You have to be a literal freak of nature not to.