(This article appeared in the Winter 2008-2009 issue of NYU Physician.)

To cure sleep apnea, an ancient instrument may be best medicine of all.

Puff-cheeked and red-faced, with beads of sweat across his forehead, Kazim Yildiz, 42, is steadily vibrating his lips, much like a baby blowing bubbles. He is playing a didgeridoo, believed to be the world’s oldest wind instrument. Traditionally crafted from a branch of a eucalyptus tree, the cylindrical wooden tube is indigenous to Australia, where it’s been used in traditional Aboriginal ceremonies for thousands of years.

Now, modern medicine has found a new use for this ancient artifact. With practice, the didgeridoo produces an eerie, reverberating bellow. But to those afflicted with sleep apnea—a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts—the sound is music to their ears.

“In people with sleep apnea, the airway intermittently collapses during sleep,” explains Dennis Hwang, M.D., a researcher in the Division of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine. “We believe that learning to play the instrument strengthens the muscles of the upper airway and reduces the airway collapsibility during sleep.”

Yildiz, an information technology expert at Merrill Lynch, is part of a 10-person study being conducted at NYU to determine whether playing the didgeridoo regularly can help to cure their disorder. Sleep apnea (Greek for “without breath”) affects as many as one in five middle-age adults, who literally stop breathing for moments while they are asleep. These stoppages cause the brain to wake up, which allows breathing to resume, but the pattern may leave him sleepy and irritable during the day. Loud snoring is a common symptom of sleep apnea, although not everyone who snores has the disorder.