How Obstructive Sleep Apnea Is Really Dangerous For Health?

What is Apnea?

Firstly, apnea is classified as a temporary interruption of breathing and especially while sleeping.

What is obstructive Sleep Apnea?

Now, coming to obstructive sleep apnea, it is a type of apnea happens when some obstruction completely or partially blocks your upper airway while sleeping. This makes you chest muscle and diaphragm work really hard to overcome the obstruction and pull air back into the lungs. Breathing usually resumes with a body jerk, loud noise, or gasp.

Individuals suffering from this type of apnea are not aware of this pebble, even after awakening. It is often recognized as a sleep problem by others, who see you closely, your unusual behavior at night.

What happens under this condition?

Under this condition, your breath becomes shallow or you may even stop breathing for some time.  This happens can many times for people those, who are suffering from this problem during the night.

Why the lack of oxygen is harmful? – Bad effects of obstructive Sleep Apnea

This condition can also reduce the flow of oxygen to all the vital organs of the body and can lead to irregular heart blood pumping.

The lack of oxygen to your body has many long-term negative effects. This includes-

·         Heart disease

·         Stroke

·         High blood pressure

·         Diabetes

·         Depression

Some common symptoms for obstructive Sleep Apnea

·         Talk to your family doctor about this, if notice any of these below listed symptoms

·         Sore throat or dry mouth, when you wake up from your sleep

·         Daytime fatigue or sleepiness

·         Irritating and uncontrollable head in the morning

·         Sweating during night

·         Depression and trouble concentrating

·         Snoring while sleeping

·         Waking up suddenly with a choking like felling

·         Feeling lazy to get up in the morning

·         If you sharing your bed with someone, he or she will probably notice this before you do.

Symptoms for children

The symptoms are different for small children and they are mentioned below.

·         Regular bedwetting

·         Sweating heavily at night

·         Choking while sleeping

·         Learning disorder

·         Teeth grinding

·         Uneasiness in bed

·         Problem sitting for long at school

·         Unusual sleep positions

Causes of obstructive Sleep Apnea

It is believed that obstructive Sleep Apnea happens because of brain surgery, old age and decreased muscle tone.

The decreased muscle tone is usually caused by regular intake of alcohol, drugs, or it can also be caused by a neurological disorder.

Long term snoring can be dangerous

Snoring is basically termed as the vibration of the soft tissues of the upper airways. And, increased soft tissue around the airway (can also be due to obesity) give rise to narrowed airways.

There is also one theory which says that long-term snoring induce local nerve lesions in the pharynx, in the same way as long-term exposure to vibrations does to all parts of your body.

It is a potential serious life-threatening sleep disorder, so don’t ignore or turn a blind on it, consult a doctor as soon as possible. A sleep apnea physician can diagnose obstructive Sleep Apnea using a home sleep test or in-lab common test.

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