In this guide you will learn complete and updated information about sleep apnia, a sleep disorder that affects at least 15-18 million American people , making it as common as obesity or asthma.
The first step is to show you what is sleep apnia and how can affects your health.
Then, you will read about how can be treated, from simple treatments to the most demanding.
What is sleep apnea?
To undestand better, please read this short story about a good friend of mine, Paul, and his sleeping problems:
Paul used to snore so loudly that his two children, who slept in bedroom one floor above their parent's room, could hear "a tractor passing nearby" in the middle of the night. "He had a very loud snoring, and then every so often he'd startle himself awake, choking and gasping for a breath," says his wife. Then she says he would fall back to sleep and repeat the process.
This video explains very well how a person with sleep apnea sleeps (you need to have the sound turned on):
Paul has sleep apnia. Let me describe what happen to him:
While he was asleep, the muscles of his throat starts to relax, and his throat becomes narrower and floppy. This is a normal process for everybody, but if the airway narrows too much, airflow becomes more turbulent. This makes the walls to the throat begin to vibrate, leading to the sound of snoring.
The more the airway narrows, the harder it is to breath normally and the greater the effort needed to breath. The name of this phenomenon is hypopnea. If the breath is stopped completely, then we have an apnea.
So, as breath size gets smaller, blood oxygen levels drop and carbon dioxide raise to high level. This causes Paul to awaken and gasp for air.
After several loud gasping, the blood oxygen and carbon dioxide levels return to normal and Paul falls back to sleep, only to repeat the pattern all over again. This pattern is expressed as an index, the
apnea index.
Some people with sleep apnia repeat this cycle pattern hundreds of times a night without even knowing what is happening. This repeated cycle makes sleep unrestful and results in excessive daytime sleepiness. Patients with
severe sleep apnea
can even die from it.
Many factors play into how often a person experiences sleep apnia episodes, such as:
sleep position
weight
if the person takes medications, smokes or has been drinking alcohol.
Not to mention that the drops in oxygen and the extra work required to breathe stress the heart and can lead to cardiovascular problems over the long term period. If you want to learn more about
side effects of sleep apnea click here.
- which occurs when the airway is not blocked, but the brain is sending wrong messages to the muscles to breathe because there is a problem with the nerves that control breathing.
Remember, before deciding on treatment for any type of sleep apnia, it is important to speak to your doctor to establish the cause. A thorough evaluation, including a
sleep study
, is required.
