If you or someone you know suffers from sleep apnea, its important for you to understand how it could affect your health. First you need to determine if your sleep apnea is a health risk to seek further treatment.
Sleep apnea is a serious disorder that collapses the airway of the sleep apnea sufferer. The condition is characterized by loud snoring and occurs most often in overweight males and other people whose necks are more than 17 inches in diameter.
Sleep Apnea and Sex
Sleep apnea can decrease your desire for sex and sexual arousal and cause less intense orgasms. After being treated for sleep apnea, patients have cited substantial improvements in their sex lives.
Daytime Drowsiness
Sleep apnea can also cause you be become sleepy during the day. Sleep can be interrupted as much as 20 to 30 times every night. Its possible for someone suffering from Sleep apnea to never get anymore than 10 minutes worth of sleep at a time during the 8 hour sleep period.
Sleep Apnea and Collisions
In a Canadian study of 800 patients with sleep apnea, the patients were almost five times more likely than drivers without sleep apnea to have head-on car accidents and accidents involving injuries. Even patients with mild sleep apnea had the same increased risk as patients with severe sleep apnea. If this is how sleep apnea impacts your health, you should seek treatment right away.
Sleep Apnea and Diabetes
Another way sleep apnea impacts your health is how it increases your risk of diabetes. Every time your airway collapses while you sleep, you stop breathing and your body suffers from low levels of oxygen in the blood.
Your bloodstream is hit with a surge of hormones as your brain tries to wake you. You awake and return to sleep and repeat this cycle until its time to start your day.
The surge of hormones and chemicals your brain orders your glands to secrete into your bloodstream when you stop breathing creates stress hormones that scientists believe affect the cells in your body that make insulin, a hormone related to diabetes.
Sleep Apnea Mouth Piece
If sleep apnea is suspected, your doctor can send you for a test known as a polysomnogram (PSG) which records various things while you sleep. It can help determine what form of sleep apnea you are suffering from, how severe a case it is, and what may be causing it.
There are a number of treatments that may be tried in order to find the best one for your particular situation. Different treatments will work for different people, often depending on their specific symptoms and how severe they are.
Treatment for sleep apnea can reduce and in many cases completely get rid of snoring which is one of the most common symptoms. Improving the snoring problem will help to decrease the number of apneic events over the course of a night, giving you a more restful sleep.
Treating sleep apnea will also have a positive effect during the day. Fatigue, drowsiness, lack of concentration, poor memory and irritability are all side effect of sleep apnea, and they will improve with the proper treatment.
Part of learning to deal with a sleep apnea problem is to make the necessary lifestyle changes to help improve it. This may include quitting smoking, losing weight, drinking less alcohol - especially later in the evening - and avoiding sleeping pills or sedatives to help you sleep.
In moderate to severe cases of sleep apnea, it may be necessary to wear a nose mask at night. This mask is part of a machine called a CPAP - continuous positive airway pressure - which helps to keep the throat open and improves the airflow when breathing.
In the worst cases of sleep apnea a mask may again be necessary, as part of a Bi-PAP machine (Bi-level positive airway pressure). This regulates airflow both into and out of the nose, at different levels of pressure.
Both Thomas Wilson & Rudy Watkins are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Thomas Wilson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Sleep Disorders, Dental Practice and Cellulite. Is your snoring keeping you or your family awake at night? Visit the Snoring Solutions site to learn more about how to stop snoring as well as more about the. Thomas Wilson's top article generates over 4400 views. Bookmark Thomas Wilson to your Favourites.
Rudy Watkins has sinced written about articles on various topics from Coffee Advantages, Sleep Apnea and Health. Rudy Watkins answers the question what is sleep apnea and writes about other related topics on the Apnea Guide website. Sign up for our free newsletter at http://www.apn. Rudy Watkins's top article generates over 6600 views. Bookmark Rudy Watkins to your Favourites.
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