I have severe obstructive sleep apnea -- am 6ft and 210. I wear a CPAP and now swear by it. A couple things to help those who try:
1) Make sure you have a CPAP machine with a water tank so the forced air is moist. For me, if the water runs out, that's when I wake up bc my nose dries.
2) Get a spray saline solution for your nose -- not Afrin or drugs (habit inducing) -- just simple and cheap Arm & Hammer Simply Saline.
3) Wear a shirt when you're in bed and put the hose under your shirt so it's hard to roll off.
4) Bonus -- sleep elevated.
Those are my best tips. If you can do the CPAP and suffer the awkwardness, you'll really feel so much better. First time it stuck, I woke up at 4:45 am fully rested and felt as if a heavy weight was lifted off me.
Best luck :)
Have you tried losing weight and if so, did that help?
My dad used a CPAP for many years and was quite the evangelist for them due to how significantly it improved his quality of life. At one point, when trying to nudge him toward weight loss and diet changes for type 2 diabetes, I mentioned it may also help with his sleep apnea. He was adamant that the type of sleep apnea he had would exist no matter what and weight loss wouldn't help... apparently his doctor told him this. Fast forward 5 years, he ends up in a program for his diabetes that put him on a pretty extreme elimination diet which led to him losing a pretty significant amount of weight. During that time he kept having to turn the pressure on the CPAP down, until eventually even the lowest setting was too strong and he was able to get off the CPAP completely. For over a decade he talked about how happy that CPAP made him, he almost seemed proud of it. However, he got pretty emotional when he found out he was able to get off of it. As much as it may help, it is still a burden to need a machine to sleep.
I know it's an N of one, but it shows it can help and is worth a shot. Even if it doesn't completely resolve the sleep apnea, there are so many other additional benefits.
After an alert from my Apple Watch and a few extremely rough nights of sleep when my weight hit an all time high, I scheduled a sleep study for myself. It's 2-3 months out still, so I plan to lose what I can while I wait to see how much it can help. Even the first 10 lbs was a significant help and stopped the truly awful sleep I had for a week or two.
I was diagnosed while skinny. I do have a fat and long tongue though.
The fatigue from sleep apnea makes it more difficult to have productive workouts.
It is well known that weight loss has more to do with caloric intake management than workout intensity
As for point 3, I've found that the especially silly looking one that works so that the tube "points out of your forehead" eliminates that problem in an even better way.