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Sleep > Sleep Apnea
Sleep Apnoea comes in two forms.
Obstructive and Central Sleep Apnoea. Apnoea
simply means a cessation of breathing- you
have stopped breathing like you normally do
during the day. These breathing pauses
generally come in two forms.
An apnoea is a total stop in your breathing.
An Hypopnoea is a partial stop which causes
you to loose normal blood oxygen saturation
and to briefly wake up.
Obstructive and Central Sleep
Apnoea have different reasons for occurring
but they have very similar effects on daytime
functioning. Both of these conditions can
only be reliably diagnosed through an
overnight sleep study in a sleep clinic.
Essentially this is what they
are:
Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) is a disorder
of breathing while you are asleep. It is
caused by a repeated blockage or narrowing of
your airways. The severity of your OSA is
usually expressed by the average number of
these blockages or narrowings per hour (the
Apnoea-Hypopnoea Index). These blockages/
narrowings cause your sleep to be fragmented
from normal and can cause blood oxygen
saturation drops during the night. During the
daytime this will leave you tired, grumpy,
less able to concentrate and prone to falling
asleep (People with OSA have more accidents
than other people). OSA probably causes high
blood pressure and may be linked to diseases
of the heart and possibly stroke.
People with moderate to severe
OSA are usually successfully treated with:
Continuous Positive Airway
Pressure (CPAP)- a small pump that keeps
the back of the throat open so you can
breath normally, CPAP has been proven to
be the most effective treatment for OSA
in most people.
Surgery -when something
unusually large is present in the back of
the airway and causing the blockage
removing it can fix the problem.
Oral Device which looks a
bit like a sports mouth guard and works by
holding the chin slightly forward to
reduce pressure on the airway while you
sleep. Also shown to be effective in some
people.
Weight Loss. Weight gain
usually makes OSA worse, on the other
hand loosing weight -if you are
overweight- will usually reduce the
severity of OSA. People with OSA should
also try to loose weight in conjunction
with one of the above treatments.
Central Sleep Apnoea (CSA).
Causes the same problems in your life as OSA
but is caused by something slightly
different. OSA and CSA are not totally
separate problems- people with CSA and OSA
share some nighttime characteristics. Some
people are neither CSA nor OSA but are
somewhere in the middle and have what are
referred to as Mixed Apnoeas.
Something in the brain-to-body
connection is not working as it should. In
OSA the throat muscles don't hold the airway
open enough when breathing starts. In CSA the
connection fails to tell the body to start
breathing at all. CSA is rarer than OSA and
thus is not quite so easy to study properly.
Treatment for CSA is very individual, it
depends on the subtype of CSA that you might
have and needs to be investigated by your
physician.
Other things that can make
OSA/CSA worse are alcohol, sedatives
(sleeping pills and the like) and always
sleeping on your back.
This
Information courtesy of
Nat Marshall
Search for apnea books and resources at;
For any sleep problem you may have Try Mystic Sleep
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