What health problems can sleep apnea cause? Questions like these are asked by sleep study specialist. Doctors that focus on the disorders that interrupted sleep cause.
There are several thousand people around the globe that have sleeping disorders that wreak havoc on their bodies. Causing disease, stress, and other accidents that affect the people around them. You can be one of these people experiencing symptoms and promoting unforeseen health conditions indirectly and not even realize it.
In this article, you will learn what problems in your health sleep apnea will cause or worsen and what steps you can take to make sure you stop these disorders from getting worse or manifesting.
With this in mind, let’s begin with an overview of what sleep apnea is and then merge into how you can recognize the way you’re feeling, common symptoms sleep apnea causes, and how you can get the help you need.
Do You Suffer from Sleep Apnea?
Getting the help, you need starts with knowing the answers to the questions you have. Ironically you may suffer from sleep apnea and pawn it off as just a poor night’s rest. The word apnea literally means without breath. As a result, sleep apnea is the loss of breathing as you sleep. Knowing this you can see how serious this condition is.
You can suffer from 1 of 3 kinds of apnea:
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea: This is when the muscles in your throat relax and your airway is obstructed (blocked) also called (OSA).
- Central Sleep Apnea: This is a disconnect between your brain and your nervous system that signals you to breathe as you sleep (CSA).
- Complex Sleep Apnea (Mixed): This form of sleep apnea is a combination of both OSA and CSA apnea disorders.
You can be suffering from one of these sleep disorders, you can stop breathing multiple times throughout the night. Consequently, the longer the apnea time lasts the more severe the case.
What about symptoms? How can you tell if sleep apnea is something you should worry about? In the next section, we briefly highlight some symptoms.
Do You Suffer from Sleep Apnea?
You might, and if you do this brief list will give you some evidence to move forward, in your research to get help. The symptoms can overlap between Central Sleep Apnea and Obstructive Sleep apnea. Keep in mind OSA is the most common predominately found in men.
Sleep Apnea Signs and Symptoms
- Difficulty staying focused or paying attention throughout the day.
- Waking up in the middle of the night, or from a nap gasping for air.
- Difficult time staying asleep or have insomnia.
- Morning headaches are often a reason of sleep apnea.
- Snoring excessively loud, interrupting partners or spouses from their rest.
- You are very irritable after you wake up.
- You have an extremely dry mouth when you wake up.
- Day time sleepiness is increased.
In this list we have given you a few of the most common symptoms, experiencing these symptoms is a sign you should see a sleep study specialist. The sleep study test At Sleep Better Columbus can gauge what your body is doing and select the best steps to take moving forward.
After all, the prevention of disease is just as important as maintenance.
Leading us into what sleep apnea can cause. The risk factors because of sleep apnea are high and a price you don’t want to pay. Let’s find out exactly what’s involved if sleep apnea goes untreated.
What Health Concerns Does Sleep Apnea Cause or Worsen?
Sleep apnea left untreated can affect anyone suffering from it. You are not exempt, if you have this chronic disorder and you ignore it, your health will deteriorate because of it. Being excessively overweight, a thick neck circumference, or an abnormally smaller airway are just a few risk factors associated with OSA.
Heart problems and high blood pressure – When you stop breathing your body is no longer receiving oxygen, this decrease in blood oxygen levels adds stress on your heart and causes it to increase your blood pressure OSA increases your chances of hypertension.
Liver problems – If you suffer from sleep apnea you can increase scarring on your liver.
A decrease in brain functions – Oxygen is essential for the brain, in an emergency a brain that is deprived of oxygen (Anoxia) for 60 seconds or more experiences brain damage. And will never be the same again. Adding that up over hundreds of nights of sleep with apnea paints a horrific picture. Loss of memory and other cognitive skills will suffer because of sleep apnea.
Type 2 Diabetes – Your risk for developing type 2 diabetes becomes higher, it’s been shown that sleep apnea reduces insulin resistance.
Cardiovascular Disease – Sleep apnea increases your risk or worsens cardiovascular disease. The fact is without oxygen in a constant flow, tissues of the body die. And the brain decides to only pump blood to the vital organs eliminating supply to those areas of the body that are less vital for sustaining life.
As you can see if you suffer from sleep disorders it doesn’t just give you a headache, it can and will affect your health over a lifetime.
In Conclusion
Fail to pay attention to how you feel and your sleeping patterns can severely impede your health, destroy a relationship and cause you to injure others because of lack of sleep if you’re operating a car or machinery at work. In this article you learned what sleep apnea is, and that there are three primary sleep disorders.
Secondly, you can see getting help is available to you through Sleep Better Columbus. Dr. Levy and the compassionate staff have been helping sufferers of sleep apnea and snoring for years with innovative and helpful technology.
