Sleep Apnea

What Is Sleep Apnea ?

Posted on 05. Dec, 2009 by admin in Do You Have Sleep Apnea ?

Sleep apnea (pronounced “AP-nee-uh”) is a breathing disorder that affects people while they sleep, usually without their knowing it. The most common symptom is loud, heavy snoring, which is often treated as a joke. But sleep apnea is no joking matter, for it can often result in heart problems, automobile accidents, strokes, and death. Sleep apnea is a potentially fatal disorder.

People with sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during a night’s sleep. [The word apnea comes from the Greek prefix a (“no”) and the Greek word pnoia (“breath”).] Breathing may stop 10, 20, or even 100 or more times per hour of sleep and may not start again for a minute or longer. As you can imagine, these sleep/breathing disruptions deprive the person of both sleep and oxygen.

This may not sound terribly serious. “So what?” you may think. “So the person is a little tired or sleepy during the day. What’s the problem?”

The problem is twofold. First, sleep apnea is a serious health hazard. Second, a stunning number of people have sleep apnea and don’t know it — between 20 million and 25 million Americans. In a recent study of 30- to 60-year-olds, 24 percent of the men and 9 percent of the women had signs of sleep apnea.

A disturbing study of a group of truckers showed that 87 percent had signs of sleep apnea.2 This is a tragedy in the making because people with untreated sleep apnea are at high risk of falling asleep at the wheel, and when a trucker dies behind the wheel, he sends an average of 4.3 innocent victims to their graves.

Unless it is properly treated, sleep apnea can cause:

1. Irregular heartbeat
2. High blood pressure
3. Enlargement of the heart
4. Increased risk of heart failure
5. Increased risk of stroke
6. Excessive sleepiness
7. Workplace and automobile accidents
8. Impotence
9. Uncontrollable weight gain
10. Psychological symptoms, such as irritability and depression
11. Deterioration of memory, alertness, and coordination
12. Death

Untreated sleep apnea can be progressive, worsening over the course of 10 or 20 years, until it presents a real threat to life.

Related posts:

1. Health Effects of Sleep Apnea : Automobile Accidents Automobile accidents are three times more common among people with untreated sleep apnea than in normal people. Nearly 20...
2. Health Effects of Sleep Apnea : Breathing, Circulation, and Heart Problems The cardiovascular (heart and circulatory system) and pulmonary (lung) effects of sleep apnea are very serious; over a period of...
3. Sleep Apnea Health Problems Can Be Serious Efforts to discover what causes sleep apnea have been intense, and although the actual cause may not have been identified,...

Tags: Sleep Apnea, snoring