They say sleep apnea is a disease that deprives us of oxygen and can even fly days of our lives while we sleep, it’s not just intense snoring that stops suddenly, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome affects nearly 5% of the population and is associated with an increased risk of developing certain diseases.
Many times, many of us consider ourselves “normal” certain physiological processes that are not actually even normal, let alone healthy. Some say that we all snore at night, especially men, and that this is not enough reason to go to the doctor, nor a reason to receive so much importance.
- Sleep apnea is a serious and more common disease than we think: it also affects men and women.
- And the consequences are severe.
It’s a mistake. Sleep apnea is a serious and even fatal disease for a very easy reason to understand: we face a condition in which breathing suddenly stops while we sleep. We stopped breathing for 5, 6 or 10 seconds. Before long, our body automatically restarts the breathing process without us nodding.
At first glance this may not be relevant to us, but it should be noted that this respiratory irregularity is sometimes repeated more than 20 times in an hour, the consequences are obvious, even more so if you think that this peculiarity occurs. night after night Sleep apnea syndrome is not harmless; Moreover, the idea that this condition only affects men is not correct: there are studies that show that the incidence of the disease in women is equal to that of men.
Those who suffer from it don’t realize it. It does not notice its noisy snoring, nor the sudden interruption of its breathing, the airways narrow causing a collapse, preventing the air from reaching the lungs, this means first of all that our body stops receiving oxygen, that the CO2 LEVEL in the blood increases and that there is a lack of oxygen in our brain for 7 or 10 seconds.
Soon, the person breathes again after a much stronger-than-normal snoring, such as someone who comes out of the water or catches his breath after drowning, however, and given the number of interruptions per hour, we can classify this disease into three categories: from highest to lowest severity:
There are several causes associated with sleep apnea syndrome, it is very common that we take into account the classic image of an obese and middle-aged man, this patient snores during the night and then wakes up exhausted and moodless to face his Good, I am not sure. It is important to say that there are many variants and that this disorder has different origins:
On the other hand, it is important to take into account a fact that we have already reported at the beginning of this article, sleep apnea affects both men and women, however, in the case of the latter, the incidence increases significantly, especially with the onset of menopause, when different metabolic changes contribute to the start of the problem.
The main effect of apnea is more than obvious: the person feels great tiredness during the day, as well as drowsiness. There are cases, when the condition is more severe, in which the patient feels totally unable to perform many activities, with extreme and disabling exhaustion.
Apnea treatments will undoubtedly depend on each patient’s health, the characteristics and cause of this sleep and breathing disorder, it will not be the same, for example, to treat a patient with hyperthyroidism and another with nasal septum problems and a smoker, or an obese child who already has this problem.
So, in general, these are the most common therapeutic approaches
Finally, and in the most severe cases, it is common to resort to surgery to promote proper night breathing, because as we see, each person will need a particular method of treatment to improve their sleep and, ultimately, their quality of life.
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