Are There any Health Risks Associated with Sleep Apnea?

There are many health risks associated with sleep apnea.

When you are suffering from sleep apnea, airway becomes obstructed during sleep. When breathing is obstructed, the oxygen levels come down.

Therefore you wake up from sleep and start breathing again.

Snoring is the sign of sleep apnea.

Many people snore during the night without their knowledge. It is the bed partner who informs about your snoring.

Your quality of sleep and performance during the day is affected due to sleep apnea.

There are many life threatening problems due to sleep apnea. They are high blood pressure, depression, irritability, memory problems, heart attacks, and strokes. You may fall asleep at work place and while driving a car if you have sleep apnea.

If you are suffering with obstructive sleep apnea, you have an enlarged heart. The enlarged heart cannot pump the required oxygen to the body and brain. Therefore it can lead to heart attack and even death.

The enlarged heart problem can be treated. You can use oral appliances which will open the jaw allowing you to breathe and reduce the stress on the heart

If you have sleep apnea, you could be at risk for a heart arrhythmia, finds Saint Louis University researchers. They presented the findings at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago.

Researchers looked at 134 patients with coronary heart disease who hadn’t been diagnosed with a sleep disorder. In the patients who had a type of an irregular heartbeat called ventricular premature contraction, more than 40 percent also had severe sleep apnea — and didn’t realize it.

While most people with the mild version of arrhythmia will be just fine, in some people, it’s possible it can worsen during the night and lead to sudden death.

As there is less oxygen being pumped through the body in REM sleep than in other stages of sleep, this can bring on arrhythmia.

Motor Vehicle Accidents and Sleep Apnea

Research has shown that people with sleep apnea are up to nine times more likely to have an accident while driving than people without sleep apnea.

Due to sleep apnea, you may feel drowsy in the daytime. Due to the drowsiness in the daytime, you may do accidents while driving.
You can take CPAP therapy which involves wearing a nasal mask that delivers air and keeps airway open.

Researchers used a driving simulator to test the skills and reflexes of 36 people with sleep apnea (18 who were just beginning CPAP and a control group of 18 who were not being treated).

Participants performed the 20-minute driving test 1, 3, and 7 days into a two-week CPAP trial period; then CPAP was discontinued and all participants performed the test 1, 3, and 7 days later.

Within seven days after beginning CPAP, participants improved their reaction time and ability to keep the simulated car on the road. The control group’s scores did not improve, suggesting that the CPAP group’s improvements were not due to growing familiarity with the simulator.

After discontinuing CPAP, participants scores remained stable during days 1 and 3 but began to worsen by day 7. This finding suggests that CPAP improves driving ability rapidly and that the benefit is not lost after a few nights of missed treatments.

High Blood Pressure and Sleep Apnea

More than half of people with sleep apnea also have high blood pressure. If you have sleep apnea, your blood pressure levels do not fall during sleep. Using CPAP treatment, you can treat sleep apnea as well as reduce daytime and nighttime blood pressure.

Heart Problems and Sleep Apnea

Your heart rate tends to slow during periods of apnea and then rise rapidly when breathing resumes. Due to the low blood oxygen levels and high blood pressure, there is an increasing risk of coronary heart disease.

Left Ventricular Hypertrophy and Sleep Apnea

Researchers have long suspected the link between sleep apnea and left ventricular hypertrophy (a thickening of the muscular wall of the left ventricle that occurs when the heart must work harder to pump blood).

Indeed, a recent study found that 88% of the participants with sleep apnea had left ventricular hypertrophy. The researchers used ultrasound to measure heart size in 25 people with severe sleep apnea.

After six months, all patients who complied with CPAP therapy had a significant reduction in left ventricular hypertrophy, which is linked to cardiac-related death.

Heart Failure and Sleep Apnea

As oxygen levels fall down due to sleep apnea, heart failure occurs and one study suggests that as many as 37% of people with heart failure also have sleep apnea.

A recent study suggests that treating sleep apnea have a beneficial effect on heart failure. Researchers assigned 24 people with heart failure and sleep apnea either to continue their current medical therapy or to add CPAP therapy to their treatment regimen.

After one month, the CPAP group had significant improvements in daytime blood pressures, heart rate, and heart functioning. The researchers suggest that untreated sleep apnea may prevent the heart from resting at night, placing abnormal stress on the heart.

Older adults with double the risk of stroke:

According to a new study, older adults with sleep apnea may face double the risk of stroke. Researchers found undiagnosed sleep apnea increased the risk of stroke by 2.5 times among the elderly.

More than 18 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, but many of them are undiagnosed.

In the study, published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers followed nearly 400 adults between the ages of 70 and 100 for six years. Each was evaluated for sleep apnea at the start of the study.

During the study period, 20 strokes were reported. Participants with previously undiagnosed severe sleep apnea were 2.5 times more likely to have a stroke, regardless of their other traditional stroke risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, and cholesterol levels.

For example, a 2005 study in middle-aged adults, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed those with sleep apnea were three times more likely to suffer a stroke.

If you have symptoms like restless sleep, morning headaches, loud snoring, gasping for breathe, overweight, difficulty concentrating and depression, take sleep test to find out whether you have sleep apnea or not.

A sleep test, called polysomnography is done to diagnose sleep apnea. An overnight test involves monitoring brain waves, muscle tension, eye movement, respiration, oxygen level in the blood and audio monitoring. (For snoring, gasping, etc.). The doctor also monitors your sleep patterns.

There are many health risks associated with sleep apnea. But there are many treatment options. You can opt for surgery to elevate the soft palate or to retain the tongue from falling back in the airway and blocking breathing.

If you have moderate apnea, then you can take CPAP therapy. A CPAP device is a mask that you should wear on the face at night. The CPAP forces air into your airway.