Sleep apena (apnia, apnea) symptoms and treatment

Sleep apena is a disorder that affects more than 10 million US citizens. Sleep apnia is a potentially dangerous disorder if the symptoms of sleep apnea are not treated in time.

Sleep apena can be a very serious sleep disorder and dangerous if not diagnosed and treated. Patients with sleep apnea can stop breathing for up to a minute, sometimes longer, many times per nights sleep. The count can be up to 300 times in a night. These interrupts in your normal breathing can wake you up from the deep sleep and disrupt your normal sleeping pattern to the point where you get other problems in your daily life such as concentration problems or drousiness.

Sleep apena symptoms and risk groups

This is a sleeping disorder as common as being a diabetic, but sleep apnia is very much less known. People at risk of developing SA are those who are overweight, male and often over 45. This does not imply that the disease never occurs within any other groups - in fact it does, there is even a condition of sleep apnea in children. Many apena cases goes undetected though because the disease is so unknown and because the symptoms often are missed (because you are asleep!).

Sleep apnia (apnea) treatment 

There is treatment available and it has become much better since the 1980's when the only available treatment was a surgical procedure called tracheostomy. Today there is a range of treatments of SA available including CPAP machines, BiPAP, dental inserts and refined methods of snoring and apnea surgery.

If left untreated, SA can lead on to other complications of greater magnitude, such as impotency, cardiovascular problems, high blood pressure and others. The indirect symptoms / effects such as tiredness at work, in school or when driving can also be a problem. 

Sleep apena is best described as a series of interrupts in the breathing during sleep. These interrupts can be hundreds per night and they can last up to a minute or more in some cases. The interrupted breathing is due to the airways collapsing, which in turn is due to the relaxation of the breathing musculature when sleeping combined with too much tissue in some places, physical deformations, too large tounge etc - all things that now can be corrected to some extent with surgery.

Surgery is not the first treatment to resort to though, the most common treatment of sleep apnea and snoring problems is to use a CPAP machine to assist breathing during sleep, which seems to cure many of the symptoms of sleep apena (apnia).