Getting a good night sleep is essential for your well-being. However, many people don’t realize that they are often sleep-deprived because of breathing problems. Over 90 percent of people who snore are at risk for sleep disordered breathing, or sleep apnea.

According to the National Sleep Foundation research, about 18 million of adults are not getting enough sleep because of sleep apnea. Suffering with sleep deprivation will make you feel tired and groggy, which leads to poor productivity at work and even result in bad driving habits. Your bedmate can eventually get tired of your constant moving and breathing irregularities which can cause stress and strain on your relationship and lead to separate bedrooms.

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You could be suffering from sleep apnea and not even know it – since it happens only when you’re sleep. And if you live alone, it is even harder to detect..

The symptoms of sleep apnea

While there may be no visible symptoms of sleep apnea, feeling tired an worn out all day and falling asleep during the day are good indicators. This is because sleep apnea iliterally robs you of sleep as it can cause you to stop breathing — as many as 50 or a 100 times during the night. And these interruptions take their toll.

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Sleep apnea, the sleeping disorder characterized by pauses in breathing, is a fairly studied condition. For one, a number of sleep apnea treatment procedures are already available. The most common of which is the use of CPAP and CPAP mask – in Toronto and elsewhere.

What is CPAP? It stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure – a kind of pressure ideal in keeping the muscles in your throat from collapsing. As you can recall, sleep apnea (specifically the Obtrusive kind) is caused by a certain blockage in the air path. This blockage results from the relaxation of your throat muscles while you sleep.

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Efforts to discover what causes sleep apnea have been intense, and although the actual cause may not have been identified, researchers have discovered that sleep apnea (sleep apnoea) health problems can be serious.

There are several major risk factors for heart disease such as obesity, alcohol abuse, and smoking, but you might be surprised to find out that sleep apnea is also a major risk factor. Combine any of these factors, and the risk doubles for serious sleep apnoea health problems. For example, if you are obese and you suffer from sleep apnea, then your risk of heart problems increases.

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Sleep Apnea is a disorder that commonly affects more than 12 million people in the United States. While the exact cause of remains unclear, what’s known is that the site of obstruction in most patients is the soft palate, including the area at the base of the tongue.

During the day, muscles in the region keep the passage open and clear; but since there’s no bone or cartilage in this area to hold the airway open, when a person with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) falls asleep, the muscles relax and the airway collapses.

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When I was still a kid, my grandmother would say, “Do not sleep after a full dinner or else you will end up snoring.” I believed it then until I grew up and went to college where my biology teacher had a few other things to say. Sometimes people tend to relate a condition they have to something which science has determined as completely unrelated. This is the “old wive’s tale” and now I am here to dispel it for all of you.

Sleep apnea has three forms: The most common is called “Obstructive sleep apnea“. The second is “Brain related central sleep apnea” and the third is “Mixed sleep apnea”. Though they each have slight differences in their root causes, the effect is basically the same; sufferers stop breathing while sleeping. This is a serious matter and food intake before bedtime does not have anything to do with this! It is true that the wrong kind of foods may affect your sleep and you probably shouldn’t eat before bed but this is something completely different from what may cause snoring or sleep apnea! The stoppage in breathing is caused by an airway blockage due to the collapsing and closing of the tissue at the rear of the throat. This is followed by a loud snoring while the breath is being recovered.

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Obstructive sleep apnea or OSA is the most common type of sleep apnea.  Sleep apnea is one of the sleep disorders that can have serious effects on your health.  It has the symptoms of loud snoring and frequent breathing interruptions during sleep.

The following are the list of people who are at risk of obstructive sleep apnea:

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Apnea, in terms of the Greek word, is defined as “without breath.” This is exactly what happens to individuals who suffer from sleep apnea, which is a serious medical condition that causes the sufferer to completely stop breathing on more than one occasion throughout the night.

While it may be difficult to realize the symptoms of sleep apnea because they occur during sleep, it is possible if you know what to watch for. For instance, you may notice uncommon exhaustion throughout the day, a general feeling of fatigue, frequent or long-lasting headaches or irritability. These symptoms occur due to lack of sleep, which is caused by sleep apnea. In addition, if your spouse notices intense snoring or long pauses between breaths at night, you may be suffering from sleep apnea.

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One of the qualities that I see in patients that are highly successful at managing their sleep apnea condition is their ability to surround themselves with a team of trusted advisors. This can include a sleep doctor, a dentist, an ENT surgeon, a CPAP equipment specialist, and their medical doctor. Since there’s no comprehensive sleep apnea center that incorporates all these specialists such as what we have for cancer, this is the next best alternative.

Regardless of how you were diagnosed or which doctor you were diagnosed by, eventually, you’ll need to interact in the future with one or more of the above mentioned people. What I’ll describe below are the roles that each specialist can play and how to make the best use of their skills and expertise towards helping you achieve your dreams (literally).

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How can I tell if I have sleep apnea and how can I treat it?

Diagnosis

The typical patient with sleep apnea is an overweight middle-aged male with a neck size of more than 17 inches. However, the condition is also common in women and not all sufferers are overweight. Almost everybody who has sleep apnea is a snorer, often a very heavy snorer. Pauses in breathing during sleep are commonly noticed by a bed partner but this history is often lacking and up to five “events” per hour are considered normal.

One of the more consistent symptoms is “nonrestorative sleep” meaning that the patient wakes in the morning feeling unrefreshed no matter how much he slept during the night. Excessive daytime sleepiness is common in sleep apnea of any severity but some patients complain of fatigue rather than sleepiness. However, many patients with severe sleep apnea have no complaint of sleepiness or fatigue.

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