I had mild to medium sleep apnea where for a couple years I was probably only sleeping 4-6 hours a night. One day I separated my shoulder playing football and the only way I could sleep was on my back, but this made the sleep apnea much worse and I was probably getting 3-5 hours for several months. I caved and went through the tedious process of getting insurance to cover a CPAP machine. It was awful though and I slept worse while using it.

Meanwhile, the orthopedist I had seen for my shoulder suggested I try to correct the hunch I've developed from sitting at desks so that my shoulder doesn't heal in an awkward position. I had been doing that and noticed that every once in a while, I would sleep perfectly fine and wake up fully rested. This made me suspect this was a fixable problem and not some permanent feature of my anatomy.

After ~6 months of exercising and stretching to fix my shoulder hunch, I could finally sleep through a night and today I get better sleep than I can remember having in many years, without the CPAP. If you think you have sleep apnea, I'd recommend checking out r/posture on Reddit to see if you might have poor posture first. It can be really difficult and uncomfortable to fix if it's been developing for ~10-15 years like mine, but it's so worth it and there are a lot of other nice health benefits that come with it.

Before CPAP, there was surgery, to remove part of the esophagus, and mouth guards, which moved the jaw forward, to increase airflow and reduce obstruction of the airway.