What is Sleep Apnea?
There are three types of sleep apnea: obstructive, central, and mixed. Of the three, obstructive is by far the most common. Despite the causative differences of each type, people with untreated obstructive sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep. This may happen hundreds of times during the night and can often last for a minute or longer. In central sleep apnea, the brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe. Mixed apnea is a combination of central and obstructive sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is an abnormal physical condition affecting the ability to breath during periods of sleep . In fact this disorder is defined by the interruption of normal breathing after a person who suffers from the condition falls asleep . Sufferers stop breathing for periods as short as twenty seconds to as long as two minutes after falling asleep. they only begin to breath again when the oxygen in their bloodstream decreases to the point of suffocation.
Sleep apnea is a disorder, which causes breathing to become shallow or to stop. There are two types of sleep apnea: obstructive and central. Central sleep apnea occurs when the brain fails to send appropriate signals to the breathing muscles that initiate respirations. Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the air cannot flow into or out of the person’s nose or mouth, although efforts to breathe continues. The main symptom of sleep apnea is snoring. Another symptom is gasping or choking sensations. Early recognition and treatment of sleep apnea is important and because it can be linked to heart disease, high blood pressure heart attack, type 2 diabetes, stroke and GERD. What is the test that is done for sleep apnea. The test done for sleep apnea is called a polysomnography. It is a procedure to record a series of body functions that occur while you sleep. This recording assists the doctor in the determination of the presence and severity of your sleep and what happens when you do sleep.
The Greek word “apnea” literally means “without breath.” People with untreated sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, sometimes hundreds of times during the night and often for a minute or longer. There are 3 types of sleep apnea, obstructive, central and mixed. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is caused by a blockage of the airway, usually when the soft tissue in the rear of the throat collapses and closes during sleep. In central sleep apnea, the airway is not blocked but the brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe. Mixed apnea, as the name implies, is a combination of the two. With each apnea event, the brain briefly arouses people with sleep apnea in order for them to resume breathing, but consequently sleep is extremely fragmented and of poor quality. Sleep apnea is very common, as common as adult diabetes, and affects more than 12 million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. Risk factors include being male, overweight and over the age of
