Sleep Apnea: A Sleeping Disorder

In the middle of every night, do you suddenly wake up choking and gasping for air? It can not be due to a nightmare every night. You definitely need to look into the matter as you might be suffering from a sleep disorder known as Sleep Apnea.

In the night, does your snoring often make your partner wake up? And in the mornings, are headaches and a dry mouth regular occurrences? As soon as you experience these symptoms, its time to see a doctor, you may be suffering from Sleep Apnea!

Sleep Apnea is a type of sleeping disorder. The word “apnea” is a Greek word, it’s meaning, “want of breath”. Sleep Apnea is a disorder that causes disruption of breathing during sleep. Your breathing either becomes slow or stops completely during sleep. The frequency of disruption can range up to 20 times in an hour. The duration of disruption can last up to 20 seconds, bringing you close to death.

Sleep Apnea devastates your sleeping routine. It also affects your body. There are three categories of sleep apnea. All three are equally lethal.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Obstructive Sleep Apnea is a widely prevalent type of sleep apnea. It’s caused when your airway gets obstructed due to relaxation of the muscles of the soft palate around the base of tongue. When the airway gets obstructed, it lowers the level of oxygen in the blood and leads to a condition known as hypoxia. It also elevates the blood pressure and increases stress on your heart. These conditions prevent the patient from entering into sound sleep. This makes a person suffer from lack of quality sleep. A person suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnea snores in the night and wakes up choking several times and tries desperately to sleep again.

Central Sleep Apnea
Central Sleep Apnea is not common. It is marked by a brain signal flaw. In Central Sleep Apnea, the brain’s signals instructing the body to breathe get flawed. As a result of this delayed signal to breathe, throat breathing, abdominal breathing and oral breathing cease simultaneously. Though the duration of interruption lasts a few seconds, it lowers the oxygen supply to blood and tissues significantly. A person suffering from central sleep apnea experiences high blood pressure, irregular heart beat and even heart stroke.

Mixed Sleep Apnea
Mixed Sleep Apnea is a condition characterized by a person experiencing the combination of symptoms of the two Sleep Apnea conditions— Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Central Sleep Apnea.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea is highly prevalent and common in people suffering from Sleep Apnea disorder. Let’s look deep into the symptoms, causes and treatments required for Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

Causes
There can be several causes that lead to the obstruction of your airway passage during sleep, leading to Obstructive Sleep Apnea. One of the major reasons is that your throat muscles and tongue relax and shrink excessively than normal.

If you are overweight, the soft tissue in your throat can become stiff and enlarged and causes obstruction in the airway passage. The other reasons could be increased size of your adenoids and tonsils, which further contribute in the disruption of flow of air.

Symptoms
The common symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea are choking and gasping for air several times in the night. Snoring loudly is also among a number of symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. If you suffer from Obstructive Sleep Apnea, you would experience sleepiness during the daytime as well. You would not be able to concentrate and would suffer from dry throat and headache in the mornings. Among other symptoms are rapid weight gain, lethargy, high blood pressure, and lack of concentration and even depression.

Treatments
There are many treatments available for Obstructive Sleep Apnea. The common ones are losing weight, avoiding alcohol consumption during the evening and sleeping on your side. Medical treatments include Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) and Oxygen Administration. Surgeries are also performed and tracheostomy is a surgery used in treatment of severe Sleep Apnea conditions.

If you feel you are displaying symptoms of sleep apnea you should visit your doctor immediately for formal diagnosis.

Tips For Battling Sleep Apnea Disorder For All Ages

You have been diagnosed with Sleep Apnea. This is likely a scary time in your life, and you might not fully understand what you need to do to improve your condition and continue living a productive life. While this diagnosis can be debilitating if not managed correctly, there are things you can do to continue living productively and sleeping well.

Try playing a wind instrument. Playing the trumpet or a similar musical instrument should help you strengthen your throat and help you control your breathing. Your upper airways should become stronger and remain open throughout the night, which would make the symptoms of sleep apnea disappear or at least reduce them.

Quit drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Both of these habits are known to make your airway's muscles relax. This will increase your snoring as well as other symptoms of sleep apnea. If you avoid these things, it may help your sleep apnea.

Improve your sleep apnea by slimming down a bit. Recent research showed dramatic improvements in overweight men who shed 25 pounds over a period of one year to reduce sleep apnea symptoms. In some cases, the weight loss resulted in a cure of sleep apnea where no further treatment of the condition was necessary.

If you have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and prescribed a CPAP, work hard to get in the habit of using it every time you sleep. While it can be a struggle to get used to sleeping with a mask on your face, your health and your life depend on it. Work with your sleep center to get everything adjusted just right so that you can use CPAP therapy with a minimal amount of discomfort.

Try your best to maintain a regular sleeping schedule. When your body gets into a customary sleeping cycle, you will find yourself getting a better night's sleep, and you will also be more relaxed. Several studies have shown that apnea episodes decrease when a person is not sleep deprived or stressed out.

Everyone who snores does not have sleep apnea. Conversely, everyone who has sleep apnea does not necessarily snore either. How do you know the difference? The biggest signs are how you feel during the course of a normal day. Snoring does not interfere with the sleep quality the same way that sleep apnea does. With snoring you are less likely to suffer from fatigue during the day.

Try using a device made to eliminate snoring. Snoring happens when the airways are mostly closed but air can come though, and apnea is when the airways are completely closed. It actually makes sense that your device can assist with the latter if it can help you with the former. Your sleep apnea can be curtailed some with the use of an anti-snoring aid.

Eliminate or reduce your alcohol consumption to reduce your sleep apnea episodes. The relaxation that results from alcohol use can cause you to breathe less deeply and may also increase the likelihood that your upper airway will collapse. If you can't refrain altogether from alcohol, make sure that you don't drink for at least 3 hours before bedtime.

If you are searching for ways to prevent sleep apnea, try sleeping on your side as back sleeping lets gravity take over. This causes your tongue and other soft tissues in your throat to drop, which could obstruct your airway. Try putting a tennis ball in the neck of your pajamas to discourage rolling onto your back. You could even stuff a pillow with tennis balls and wedge that behind your back.

Having a basic understanding of your Sleep Apnea condition can help you in many ways. By taking some time to review the information presented here, you will better prepare yourself to continue living productively and enjoying a great night sleep. This makes the condition less debilitating, and it helps you to enjoy a higher quality of life.