What Is Sleep Apnea?

Sleep Apnea is a serious and common sleeping disorder which causes people to stop breathing for 10 to 30 seconds or more while you sleep. Sleep Apnea can also cause very shallow breaths as well.

Every night a sufferer may have up to 400 stoppages in breathing. Sometimes these periods of not breathing may result in you waking from a deep sleep and sometimes you will start normal breathing again with choking or loud snorting sounds.

Now sleep apnea can be a problem if you are waking up all night and not getting enough sleep. It can affect you during the day making you feel tired and sleepy throughout the day. This can greatly affect things like driving your car. It is very risky to drive if you are a sleep apnea sufferer. Research has shown that you are 2-5 times more likely to have a motor vehicle accident if you are a sleep apnea sufferer.

Research has also linked sleep apnea to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and impotence. Having many trips to the toilet to urinate could also be linked to sleep apnea.

Who gets sleep apnea?

Apnea is commonly found in overweight middle aged males, especially those with larger necks. But it can be found in people of all ages. Slim people may find that they have a narrow airway which is the likely cause of their condition. For women the occurrence of sleep apnea increases after menopause, and in children it is mostly a result of enlarged tonsils or adenoids.

What are the main types of sleep apnea?

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea. This is the most common form where your throat muscles relax there by narrowing the airway and momentarily stopping breathing which will result in loud snoring.

• Central Sleep Apnea. This form of Apnea results from when the brain fails to send the right signals to the muscles that are controlling your breathing.

• Complex Sleep Apnea. This disorder is a combination of the other two types of apnea.
What are the symptoms of sleep apnea?

• Loud Snoring. The most common form of sleep apnea is from a blockage to the airway which is generally caused by having too much tissue at the back of the throat. The loud snoring is a result of when your brain wakes you enough to get you to start breathing again, resulting in your first breath being very large, this in turn makes the tissue vibrate causing the loud snoring.

• Extensive Daytime Tiredness. Being continually woken up through the night to breathe by your brain gives you very poor quality of sleep. This will result in you being tired at the end of a night’s sleep. You may not realize this is happening as your brains will only wake you up enough just to start breathing, and you will often not be aware that this has taken place.

 
Other symptoms sleep apnea can cause.

• Morning Headaches
• Cardiovascular disease
• Intolerance
• Depression

Sleep Apnea Treatments

There are many choices for a sleep apnea treatment available today, as there are for so many sleep disorders.

• Losing Weight. Like so many other health issues losing weight can make a big impact on sleep apnea.

•  Alcohol, cigarettes and sleeping medication should be avoided as well as they make it more likely that during sleep your airways will collapse.

•  Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. The CPAP is used by obstructive sleep apnea sufferers in their home. It works by delivering a stream of compressed air into your airway so you have unobstructed breathing. It will also alleviate loud snoring.

• However than can be some side effects with using a CPAP machine, as you need to wear a face mask, you may suffer nose irritations, irritation on the skin of your face and even sore eyes and headaches.

• CPAP treatment is not a cure for sleep apnea, just a treatment which will allow you a proper sleep. The moment you stop using the machine is the moment you will be a sufferer again.

•  Airway Surgery. In very bad cases of sleep apnea having lower airway surgery or soft palate surgery may be their only real solution. However airway surgery is not without risk and sometimes these are not completely successful. You may need to try a few different treatments before success.

• Sleeping Position. Adjusting your sleeping position so you sleep on your side. If you sleep on your back it is easy for the soft tissue to obstruct your airway.