According to the American Sleep Apnea Association, sleep apnea may affect more than 20 million adults. There are a whole host of sleep apnoea treatments available these days. There are mouth pieces for sleep apnea, sleep apnea appliances, and there are even sleep apnea dentistry procedures available these days to help alleviate your symptoms and sometimes even fix the problem. Here are a few facts that you should know about the sleep apnoea treatments that are available to you so that you can get the problem taken care of as soon as possible.
Sleep apnea is a type of sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing or instances of shallow or infrequent breathing during sleep. Each pause in breathing, called an apnea, can last from at least ten seconds to several minutes, and may occur 5 to 30 times or more an hour. Similarly, each abnormally shallow breathing event is called a hypopnea. Sleep apnea is often diagnosed with an overnight sleep test called a polysomnogram, or sleep study.
Symptoms of sleep apnea may be present for years without being identified because of the fact that they are usually undetectable to the person suffering from the disorder. During the time that the sufferer has been undiagnosed, they may become conditioned to the daytime sleepiness and fatigue that is often associated with sleep disturbance.
Obstructive sleep apnea is the most common category of sleep disordered breathing. The muscle tone of the body ordinarily relaxes during sleep, and at the level of the throat the human airway is composed of collapsible walls of soft tissue which can obstruct breathing during sleep. Mild occasional sleep apnea, such as many people experience during an upper respiratory infection, may not be important, but chronic severe obstructive sleep apnea requires treatment to prevent low blood oxygen (hypoxemia), sleep deprivation, and other complications.
In pure central sleep apnea or Cheyne Stokes respiration, the brain’s respiratory control centers are imbalanced during sleep. Blood levels of carbon dioxide, and the neurological feedback mechanism that monitors them, do not react quickly enough to maintain an even respiratory rate, with the entire system cycling between apnea and hyperpnea, even during wakefulness. The sleeper stops breathing and then starts again. There is no effort made to breathe during the pause in breathing and there are no chest movements and no struggling. After the episode of apnea, breathing may be faster for a period of time, a compensatory mechanism to blow off retained waste gases and absorb more oxygen.
Sleep apnea can be a potentially serious disorder, so contact a doctor for a sleep apnea diagnosis so that you can begin sleep apnoea treatment immediately if you spot the warning signs. Check out this website for more.