These Ways You Can Deal With Sleep Apnea
Adequate rest is essential to ensure a good quality of life and to ensure your own endurance. Today, however, we can identify a few disorders that lead to intermittent and inadequate sleep, and ultimately also affect a person’s overall well-being. Therefore, we need to know how sleep apnea can be prevented and treated.
Sleep apnea is one of the disorders affecting the quality of sleep that , fortunately, can be treated and even cured thanks to modern medicine and healthy lifestyle changes. The first step to a relaxing and healthy sleep is to know what sleep apnea is and how we can face and treat the causes of sleep apnea.
What is the disorder of sleep apnea?
During rest, our breathing slows down, achieving a steady and continuous rhythm designed to transfer oxygen to the body so that it allows it to perform all its functions properly even during rest. Sleep apnea is caused by an interruption of this breathing rhythm, which can be interrupted for a second or even a minute, while preventing oxygen from entering the brain in the normal way.
At first, a person does not even realize that he has stopped breathing. However, as sleep apnea worsens, respiratory arrhythmias lead to a break in rest, causing a person with sleep apnea to wake up several times during the same night. This in turn alters the previously normal sleep cycle and also leads to adverse health consequences.
There are two different types of sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when there is abnormal tissue growth around the airways or throat, causing the airways to constrict and the pressure caused by inhalation to momentarily block the inflow of air.
Obstructive sleep apnea is easy to detect because the person suffering from it usually snores. It can be mild, moderate, or difficult depending on how many times a person stops breathing during rest. In general, a severe case is considered to be sleep apnea in which a person experiences respiratory arrests of more than 10 seconds at least 5 times per hour. In addition, human age has a significant effect on the development of obstructive sleep apnea.
The second type of sleep apnea is much more serious, as this disorder involves the central nervous system. In this type of sleep apnea, the respiratory center ceases to receive the vital command that the brain instructs us to breathe without even being aware of it. This situation, in turn, interrupts deep sleep and causes a person to wake up several times during the same night.
Factors predisposing to sleep apnea
As many can certainly already guess, certain factors increase the risk of a person suffering from sleep apnea. They are:
- Growing up: Apnea does not look at gender, although a large proportion of adults who suffer from sleep apnea are specifically men. In addition, we know that menopausal women are more likely to have sleep apnea than younger women.
- Obesity: It has been proven that being overweight increases the chance of sleep apnea by up to ten times that of a normal weight person. This probability increases according to the more severe the obesity a person suffers from. Being overweight is probably the most significant factor predisposing to sleep apnea, as according to statistics, as many as 50–70 per cent of Finns suffering from sleep apnea are overweight.
- Smoking or alcoholism: Both factors alter the functioning of the respiratory center and thus predispose not only to sleep apnea but also to other sleep disorders.
- Respiratory pathologies: In children, this factor is quite common, as in cases leading to childhood sleep apnea, the child’s pharynx or guitars are usually too large, making normal airflow more difficult or blocked. Childhood sleep apnea is not as common as in adults, but it still occurs in about 2 to 3 percent of children.
- Excessive use of sleeping pills or sedatives: These medicines may cause nervous system problems. Alternatively, you can try natural alternatives to these medications that do not cause nervous system dysfunction.
Some factors can worsen the symptoms of sleep apnea. These include, for example, excessive work, stress, exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide, heart disease or stroke, as well as high blood pressure and insufficient rest.
Symptoms of sleep apnea
The first sign of this disorder is usually the fatigue that a person with sleep apnea feels during the day. Constant awakening at night prevents a person from resting and relaxing, at which point fatigue and exhaustion begin to impair alertness and alertness at work, study, and other daily tasks. Fatigue can be so intense that in the worst case it can even lead to falling asleep in the middle of the day. This, in turn, turns out to be a dangerous situation, for example, when a person is driving a car or other vehicle.
Nocturnal respiratory arrest prevents oxygen from normally entering the body, so even shorter respiratory arrests can cause memory problems and nervousness. In addition, the symptoms of sleep apnea may be more severe and the patient may even experience nausea, hallucinations, and blurred vision. The patient may also experience mood swings or suffer from nocturnal arrhythmias and chest pain.
With these symptoms, the patient should always be referred to a doctor. In this way, the doctor can prescribe a series of different medical examinations to the patient to help him determine what kind of sleep apnea the patient is suffering from. In addition to physical examinations of the mouth and throat, in some cases, the doctor may also order special sleep tests on the patient.
Once the type and severity of the disorder have been determined, the doctor will prescribe treatment to the patient on a case-by-case basis. However, most of these treatments focus on changing the patient’s lifestyle.
What lifestyle changes contribute to the treatment of sleep apnea?
With the following healthy habits, we can face or at least alleviate sleep apnea:
- To avoid sleep apnea and shortness of breath, always try to sleep on your left side. This position helps both the heart to pump blood more efficiently and to widen the airways, allowing airflow to flow in and out better. This position also reduces or stops snoring completely.
- Avoid drinking alcohol for at least six hours before bedtime.
- Stop smoking.
- Reduce the use of sleeping pills; if you suffer from sleep disorders, you can try the following natural sleep-enhancing medications.
- Exercise regularly.
- Eat healthy.
- Lose weight and strive to maintain a healthy weight.
- Avoid watching TV, using a computer or mobile phone, and listening to loud music just before going to bed.
With these simple ways to improve sleep, it is possible to successfully cope with sleep apnea. Of course, when it comes to symptoms, it is essential that you always turn to your doctor first and follow his or her instructions so that you can enjoy both a relaxing sleep and a healthier life at the same time.
