A Pill That Keeps Your Throat Awake Could Transform Sleep Apnea Treatment
Ben Sullivan
The moment you fall asleep, your throat starts forgetting what it’s supposed to do. Not all at once. It’s a gradual withdrawal, a quieting of the neural signals that spend every waking hour keeping the muscles of your upper airway taut and open. In people with obstructive sleep apnea, that nightly retreat goes too far. The airway sags. It collapses. Breathing stops, the brain fires off an alarm, you half-rouse without knowing it, and then the whole cycle begins again, dozens, sometimes hundreds.