Obstructive Sleep Apnea: An Overview

Obstructive sleep apnea(OSA) is without a doubt a major sleep condition, if left without treatment it can lead to a wide variety of health related problems such as high blood pressure levels, daytime weariness and cardiovascular complications. It develops when your breathing passages become obstructed for a time period of 10 secs or longer, each pause in respiration is named an apnea which actually means "want of breath" in ancient greek.



There are generally a number of different warning signs which may indicate you experience from obstructive sleep apnea, the most well-known are; day time drowsiness, noisy long-term loud night breathing, pauses in breathing whilst asleep, nighttime urination, waking up with a dried out and uncomfortable throat, insomnia & morning severe headaches. Once treated the majority of of these symptoms will cease to exist.





In the course of sleep your throat, uvula and tongue muscle tissues relax. In individuals with OSA this can cause your airways to become very narrow or even completely obstructed and reduce the quantity of oxygen your body is able to obtain. Your brain notices this abrupt change in blood o2 lvls & it responds by sending brain waves to your heart to increase blood pressure (which generally helps increase blood oxygen levels), when blood oxygen lvls still don’t improve your brain changes strategies & wakes itself up. This causes the uvula, throat and tongue muscles to tighten up and the air tract are then cleared and regular breathing can resume till another apnea episode begins again.





Although OSA is a serious healthcare issue, it’s totally manageable. The majority of physicians & sleep specialists suggest three primary courses of action, each and every one more severe compared to the last. The 1st is to make some life style changes; by losing fat an individual can increase the dimensions of the respiratory tract as this eliminates the additional fat layers in the windpipe. The second choice is to purchase & use a sleep apnea machine, these work by using air flow to keep your breathing passages open whilst an individual sleep. They are extremely successful; regrettably at this time there are a few negative aspects. One being the price of buying one (particularly when a great deal of insurance organizations do not cover it), the other issue is that they are extremely noisy & patients frequently struggle to fall asleep while using the machine. The last option and really the final resort is to have sleep apnea surgical treatment. The majority of sleep experts don’t suggest this option because it involves going under a general anesthetic and then removing part or even all of the uvula and some soft tissue at the roof of the mouth.



The treatment of OSA is necessary in order to improve the quality of sleep and quality of life of a patient, it’s also necessary to prevent the following complications: day time fatigue (because the body is unable to achieve the regenerative stages of sleep because of constant awakenings people frequently feel extremely tired even when they think they got a great night’s sleep), cardiovascular problems (over 50% of individuals with OSA develop high blood pressure) and sleep deprived partners (loud heavy snoring is associated with OSA).