Is Sleep Apnea Really a Dangerous Problem?

Sleep apnea is a condition in which people stop breathing for 10 to 30 seconds while sleeping.

This occurs repeatedly and you cannot get enough sleep in the night.

Sleep Apnea is defined as interruption of breathes during sleep.

Why breathing is interrupted during sleep?

The throat muscles which are open in the wakefulness relax during sleep. The upper airway is closed while asleep, the uvula and soft palette collapses on the back wall of the airway. Then the tongue falls backward, collapsing on the back wall of the upper way.

The throat is partially closed and enough air cannot flow into your lungs through your nose or mouth even if you try to breathe. Therefore breathing is obstructed and this condition is obstructive sleep apnea.

This obstructive sleep apnea may last up to 2 minutes. When this happens, the amount of oxygen in the blood is reduced. This episode continues until you wake up from sleep for breathing.

When, you wake up the muscle tone of the tongue and airway increases. This increase in tone reduces the obstruction and terminates the episode.

Again you fall back to sleep and this condition may be repeated hundreds of times and arousal occurs throughout the night but you don’t have the idea that it is happening. Due to the multiple arousals, you may feel drowsy and tired in the morning.

What causes the interruption of breathe?

Interruption of breathing occurs when your tonsils and adenoids are large. It may also occur when your throat muscles and tongue relax more than normal. When you are obese, the extra soft tissues in your throat narrow the airway when you are asleep.

The nasal passages, palate, tongue and pharyngeal tissues can all contribute to narrowing of the airway.

How can you identify that you have Sleep Apnea?

As some of the symptoms occur during sleep, your bed partner identifies the symptoms. If you are snoring loudly or gasping for breathe when sleeping, or frequent arousals, or if you have restless sleep then your partner informs you about the symptoms.

The other symptoms include excessive daytime sleepiness, morning headaches, feeling tired, dry mouth, falling asleep while driving, depression, decreased memory and irritability.

If you are suffering with sleep apnea, you often wake up feeling that you did not go to sleep at all, feels drowsy, inattentive throughout the day.

If you have long-term untreated sleep apnea, you experience higher blood pressure from the condition, as well as an increased risk of stroke or heart attack. You may be experiencing higher risk of an automobile accident due to the constant drowsiness and lack of concentration.

If you think that you have sleep apnea, then, diagnose the condition in a sleep lab by overnight sleep study. A test known as polysomnography is conducted to study your sleeping patterns and the doctor monitors your sleeping in a computer.

How death can occur from Sleep Apnea?

The tongue falls back into the throat collapsing the upper airway and you can’t breathe. When airway blocks happens, the lungs try harder to breath and the heart beats more rapidly to get oxygen to all parts of the body.

However, there’s no oxygen getting into the lungs and to the body so the heart beats faster until it can’t take the fast pace anymore. You then have a heart attack.

Therefore the uncontrolled apnea leads to higher risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes and probably death. The National Institutes of Health estimate more than 12 million people in the United States have obstructive sleep apnea.

The new research, published in New England Journal of Medicine, involved 112 Minnesota residents, diagnosed with sleep apnea, who died suddenly of heart-related causes. The result is compared with general population with similar backgrounds who did not have sleep apnea.

Researchers found that more than half the sleep apnea sufferers died between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. In the general population, this was the time people were least likely to die of cardiac-related problems.

By contrast, however, the number of deaths among sleep apnea sufferers was significantly lower between 6 a.m. and noon than among members of the general population.

What the study suggests is that people are dying at night because they have sleep apnea, and that means the condition should be treated far more aggressively, said Douglas Bradley, director of the Sleep Research Laboratory at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.

“If sleep apnea is causing these deaths in the middle of the night, then treating it may be able to prevent those deaths,” Dr. Bradley said.

Problem is, the vast majority of people with sleep apnea are not being treated because their condition has not been diagnosed.

“The literature suggests up to 80 per cent of people with sleep apnea don’t have a clue what’s going on, said JeffreyLipsitz, medical director of the Sleep Disorders Centre of Metropolitan Toronto.

He said a diagnosis of sleep apnea requires a sleep study. If the sleep apnea is diagnosed, there are many treatment options such as surgery, oral appliances.

The surgical treatments include UPPP, LAUP, and Somnoplasty etc. The oral appliance includes CPAP which stands for continuous positive airway pressure. It contains a mask through which air is pushed in to the airway. This is an effective treatment.

After diagnosing with sleep apnea, you should take the treatment as soon as possible to prevent the death from heart attacks, blood pressure and strokes because the untreated sleep apnea may lead to the risk of these diseases.