What Is Sleep Apnea
From LoveToKnow Sleep
What is sleep apnea? It's a condition that affects millions of Americans. According to the American Sleep Apnea Association, apnea is a Greek word that literally translates to ‘without breath.’ Patients diagnosed with sleep apnea fall into one of three categories:
- Obstructive
- Central
- Mixed
Questions and Answers: What is Sleep Apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea, by far the most common, is caused by a physical obstruction such as the soft tissue of the throat collapsing. Central sleep apnea is a neurological problem where the brain fails to send the correct signals to continue breathing while sleeping. Mixed sleep apnea is a combination of the two.
Treatment for sleep apnea includes the use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and Bi-PAP (bilateral positive airway pressure) machines, CPAP masks, and in some cases, surgery. In young children, for example, obstructive sleep apnea may be treated by removing the tonsils, thus removing the soft tissue that collapses and causes the sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is a medical condition that can be onerous for partners or spouses as one of the main symptoms of sleep apnea is pronounced snoring including gasping and choking for air. Patients with sleep apnea have trouble going through the five stages of sleep, often rousing before arriving in the third stage and thus eliminating a large portion of their REM time.
Living with Sleep Apnea
Despite the wealth of information available on the Internet, most patients do not self-diagnose with sleep apnea. They complain to their doctor of different symptoms including:
- Pronounced daytime sleepiness
- Waking with a headache or sore throat or both
- Persistent, obnoxious snoring
- Episodes of gasping
- Frequent waking throughout the night (without ‘seeming’ cause)
- Inability to lose weight
- Frequent illness
The diagnosis of sleep apnea answers a lot of questions, but it also poses new ones:
- How to treat the apnea?
- How to adjust to a CPAP mask?
- How to avoid daytime naps?
- How to develop better sleep habits?
- Will sleep apnea treatment actually improve quality of life?
The short answer to most of these questions is yes, treatment can improve the quality of sleep and improve the quality of life, but it's not easy to adjust to and it requires a lifestyle commitment. Patients with sleep apnea will undergo two to three sleep studies during the course of their diagnosis and subsequent treatment options. Learning to sleep with a CPAP mask on the face is neither easy nor comfortable at first.
Improve Your Life
A person with sleep apnea will have to find the mask that fits and adjust to sleeping with it on the face. Three things for sleep apnea patients to remember are:
- Keep using the CPAP mask for at least 30 days before deciding whether the mask needs to be replaced by a different one.
- Develop positive sleep habits: go to bed at the same time each evening, avoid caffeine two hours before bed and don’t turn on the television.
- Exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet.
Sometimes, just repeating these steps over and over again can make a real difference in the experience of the sleep apnea patient. The first few nights of solid sleep will really pay off. Too often apnea patients become used to waking up groggy and nursing a headache. They rely on coffee and tea to pick them up and it can be disconcerting the first time you wake feeling fresh, energized.
What is sleep apnea? It's forgetting what a good night's rest feels like. It's forgetting that you can wake up without a headache. It’s forgetting that a sore throat is not how everyone starts their day. If you suspect you or someone you love has sleep apnea, contact your physician and get checked out. You may be doing yourself the best favor you’ve ever done and who doesn't want a good night's sleep?
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This page has been accessed 506 times. This page was last modified 00:19, 4 January 2010.
© 2006-2010 LoveToKnow Corp.
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