Studies have shown that sleep apnea can decrease life expectancy by several years. Sleep apnea is dangerous because if untreated, it leads to high blood pressure and is associated with an increased chance of heart attack, abnormal heart rhythms and heart failure. These patients also have poor breathing while awake, which causes them to have low oxygen and high carbon dioxide. In addition, some patients with obesity can develop a very rare form of sleep apnea called the obesity hypoventilation syndrome. Physicians are positive that this link exists, because when patients with sleep apnea lose weight, their sleep apnea improves. The causes of this are as varied as the patients who have it, but there is a definite link between sleep apnea and having extra body fat.
You can’t see adenoids – they are higher up in the throat.People who have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have periods of sleep that are interrupted by apneas, or pauses in breathing. You can see tonsils by looking into the mouth. Tonsils and adenoids are tissues in the back of the throat. You have a recessed chin (your chin tucks in).Ĭhildren are at higher risk of sleep apnea if they have large adenoids and tonsils.Your family has a history of obstructive sleep apnea.You have a large, thick neck (larger than 17 inches for men larger than 16 inches for women).Your risk is higher if you have a combination of these risk factors: Who's most at risk for obstructive sleep apnea?Īnyone of any age can get obstructive sleep apnea. There are three other types of sleep apnea: central sleep apnea, mixed or complex sleep apnea and sleep-hypoventiation syndrome. This website focuses on obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the most common type of sleep apnea. your throat muscles are too relaxed to hold your airway open.There are a few reasons why a person’s airway can partly or completely collapse during sleep: What can make a person’s airway collapse during sleep? The combination of both apnea events (pauses in breathing) and hyponea events (partly blocked breathing) is called obstructive sleep apnea-hyponea syndrome (OSAHS). You can’t get the restful sleep you need to be healthy. This means dozens or hundreds of interruptions of sleep. Most people have dozens or hundreds of sleep apnea events a night. This cycle can continue through the night: you breathe quietly you snore you have a pause in your breathing you gasp for breath and you start breathing again. You take in a big gasp of air and start breathing again. After a pause of 10-30 seconds or more, your brain realizes you haven’t been breathing, so it jolts you awake enough for you to take a breath. Your brain is telling you to breathe as usual, but you can’t take in a breath because your airway has closed off. (When doctos see this kind of drop in oxygen level due to a partially blocked airway in a sleep test, they call it a hypopnea.) If the blockage worsens this may affect the amount of air that can enter your lungs and your oxygen level can drop. This is a sign that your airway is partly blocked. The air in your airway (breathing tube) flows easily to your lungs. If you have obstructive sleep apnea, you probably repeat this cycle while you sleep:įirst, you may sleep quietly and breathe normally. Obstructive sleep apnea stops you from breathing normally at night. How obstructive sleep apnea affects your breathing Thankfully, there are excellent treatments for obstructive sleep apnea. People with untreated obstructive sleep apnea have an increased risk of motor vehicle crashes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and early death. If it’s not treated, sleep apnea can lead to daytime sleepiness, and reduced cognitive function.
Obstructive sleep apnea stops you from having the restful sleep you need to stay healthy. People with obstructive sleep apnea can stop breathing dozens or hundreds of times each night leading to sleep disruption and low levels of oxygen. These breathing pauses – called apneas or apnea events – last for 10 to 30 seconds, maybe longer. Obstructive sleep apnea (also called OSA or obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome) means you have short pauses in your breathing when you sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea is a serious breathing problem that interrupts your sleep.
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