Everything you need to know about sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is a condition in which breathing stops for at least 10 seconds at least 15 times per hour during sleep. It’s often accompanied by loud snoring and is considered to be a major cause of exhaustion during the day. Short of your spouse guessing that you have the condition, daytime sleepiness is one of the biggest symptomatic tip-offs to sleep apnea. On the extreme end, sleep apnea can cause you to wake abruptly gasping for air. In some cases it does not wake you but continues to cause blood oxygen levels to decline – often significantly – throughout the night; suffocating the heart, the brain, and all of the body’s cells. Each spell sets off alarms (take a breath!) making it all but impossible to move beyond the very lightest stage of non­rapid eye movement sleep – forget about vivid dreaming! Studies of apnea demonstrate that it’s associated with dominance of the sympathetic nervous system, which places stress on the heart, too. 

The causes of sleep apnea are varied. It has a strong genetic component (if a parent has apnea, you have a 40 per cent chance of getting it), most likely due to inherited traits in the anatomy of the neck and pharynx that make it harder to keep the airway open during sleep. It’s more common in men and its frequency rises with age. Drinking alcohol and sleeping on your back can trigger the problem. By far the most common cause is obesity, which increases the risk of developing apnea by more than 1000 per cent! Excess body weight puts pressure on the throat and prevents it from opening enough to facilitate breathing. Up to 70 per cent of people with obesity have sleep apnea. Having an underactive (hypo)thyroid can be a hidden cause of sleep apnea, and when treated, sleep apnea often also clears.

What are the symptoms?

The symptoms of apnea are pretty far-ranging, from frequent awakening, daytime exhaustion, poor memory, and loud snoring (about 10 percent of habitual snorers have apnea). The health consequences can be devastating, including a significant increased risk of hypertension and heart attacks. For example, many people who have uncontrolled high blood pressure – for which medications seem not to work well – actually have sleep apnea as the cause. A continuous lack of oxygen during sleep can precipitate an acute heart attack. If you have any of the symptoms of apnea you should consider being evaluated by a sleep medicine specialist – hopefully before you have a heart attack.

Excerpted from The Source, copyright 2008 by Woodson Merrell. Used by permission of Random House Canada.
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