Sleep apnea refers to a potentially serious sleep disorder that involves irregular breathing pattern in the sleep.
‘Apnea’ is derived from a Greek word which means ‘without breath’.
Signs and symptoms of sleep apnea
Many a times the signs and symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea overlaps, thus it sometimes becomes difficult to identify which type of sleep apnea a person is suffering from. Some of the common symptoms include -
Snoring loudly
Hypersomnia especially during the day time
Headache in the morning
Insomnia – difficulty in sleeping at night
Waking up with a dry mouth or sore throat
Breathing cessations in sleep that is obvious
Shortness of breath with abrupt awakenings
In obstructive sleep apnea disruptive snoring is a more common symptom while in central sleep apnea shortness of breath with abrupt awakening is common.
Causes
Obstructive sleep apnea is the more common form which occurs when the muscles that support the soft tissues in the mouth relaxes. These muscles give support to the soft palate, inner portion of the tongue, uvula (triangular tissue hanging from soft palate) and the tonsils.
As a result when you breathe in the relaxed muscles causes the airway to get narrow or closed which cuts off the breathing momentarily. This causes low levels of oxygen in the blood and triggers the brain (which perceives this act as inability to breath) to briefly awake you from sleep to reopen your airways.
This period of awakening is so short that you won’t even tend to remember next morning. In fact many people are under the impression that they have a sound sleep in the night.
This brief awakening tends to correct the breathing pattern with one or two deep breaths, however this is rare and this pattern can repeat at least 20-30 times each hour all night giving a choking, gasping or snorting sound. This act disturbs the normal restful sleeping pattern and thus you may tend to sleep during the working hours next day. In case of central sleep apnea, (which is less common than obstructive sleep apnea) the brain fails to pass appropriate signals to the muscles which control breathing.
Heart disease is the most common cause for central sleep apnea and you may tend to wake up in the night by severe headache or shortness of breath. People who have central sleep apnea can clearly remember their awakenings in the night than people with obstructive sleep apnea.
