Sleep apnea is a condition that can go unnoticed for years, but in the meantime can have a significant impact on your daily life. That’s because the consequences – loss of concentration, being tired all the time, depression – are often sought in other causes, such as stress and taking on too much. Do you feel eternally tired, do you even wake up the neighbors and do you suffer from a short fuse? Then it’s time to take a closer look at your sleep.
What is Sleep Apnea?
Apnea is a condition that occurs during your sleep. Drowsiness and snoring are common symptoms, but not every snorer has apnea. Snoring is another word for the sound of the mucous membranes vibrating in the pharynx. When you inhale, air passes through your nose, throat, and trachea to your lungs. When soft tissues in the pharynx vibrate during breathing, the piercing, sawing sound is produced.
Snoring also causes a partial closure of the throat and as the muscles relax more and more – this happens especially in REM sleep and during the third stage of sleep – then this can cause total breathing stops (apnoea) or partial breathing stops (hypopnea). If these stops last 10 seconds or longer and follow each other in rapid succession, you can speak of sleep apnea or OSA. Each pause in breathing can be accompanied by a wake-up response, which prevents you from having a good, deep sleep. And that has profound consequences for some people.
The causes of sleep apnea
There are several causes of sleep apnea and often these are medical in nature. This concerns abnormalities in the shape of the trachea, nose or throat cavity or an abnormal position of the jaw. When you are referred to the hospital by your GP, you will therefore often end up with a multidisciplinary team consisting of an ENT specialist, neurologist and pulmonologist. Other causes of sleep apnea can include:
• Overweight
• Alcohol consumption
• Smoking
• Use of sleeping medication
Symptoms of sleep apnea
Diagnosing sleep apnea can still be quite a difficult process, in practice it sometimes takes 3.5 years after the first visit to the doctor before you are given the right tools. The symptoms are sometimes vague and you relate it more to work stress, busy-busy-busy, hormone fluctuations or simply getting older. The first person who thinks of sleep apnea is probably the person you share the bed with, because seeing your partner have frequent pauses in breathing is no fun at all.
Signs that you may have sleep apnea include:
• Loud snoring
• Always tired
• High bloodpressure
• Diabetes type 2
• Fall asleep during the day
• Morning headache
• Having to urinate a lot at night
• Concentration problems
• A short fuse
These complaints can cause you to feel unwell, get into trouble at work and distance yourself from your partner. So it has a significant impact on your life, without you even realizing it.
Do you want to know if you could have sleep apnea? A useful test is to complete the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), a questionnaire that hospitals also use. Complete the ESS questionnaire online here.
What can you do about sleep apnea?
When you have completed the ESS questionnaire and your score exceeds 10, you would do well to make an appointment with your GP. He can refer you to the hospital and often a sleep study, also called a polysomnography, will follow. During the night, the quality of your breathing and sleep is measured in the hospital or at home and apnea can be detected or ruled out in this way.
As mentioned earlier, apnea is a condition and self-medicating with apps, bits and special pillows makes little sense. Together with a doctor you can discuss whether it is smart to start losing weight in addition to the treatment, because obesity is often the main cause of sleep apnea.
In addition, take a critical look at your so-called sleep hygiene, or the use of the bedroom:
• Ban all screens from your bedroom and turn your alarm clock upside down (so with the possibly luminous out of sight)
• Minimize noise and light in the bedroom
• Do not sleep during the day
• Try to go to bed at the same time every day
• Avoid alcohol
• Do not exercise just before going to sleep
• And make sure you have regular sleeping rituals
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Treatments for apnea
Somnologists and sleep experts will examine which treatment will be most suitable for each patient. These 5 treatments are most common:
Position trainer: if you have light sleep apnea – these are 5 to 10 breath stops per hour – and you are a back sleeper, then a position trainer is recommended. You wear the device just below your chest and it emits a vibration when you roll onto your back, unless you are in a deep sleep. This is how you train yourself to sleep on your side.
MRA brace: this dental brace ensures that your lower jaw is slightly forward, so that more space is created in the pharynx. This is especially helpful with mild sleep apnea.
Sleeping mask: the best known and most successful way to reduce apnea is the CPAP sleeping mask. The mask blows air at high pressure through a hose and a (nasal) mask into the nose and throat and the high air pressure keeps the throat open so that breathing stops can no longer occur.
Tongue nerve stimulator: when a mask is not an option, implanting a tongue nerve stimulator can be a solution. It is a small pacemaker that is implanted under your collarbone and that you can operate yourself with a remote control. You turn it on during sleep and the tongue nerve receives a stimulus with every inhalation.
Surgery: a treatment that goes a little further than the above solution, but sometimes it is no different. This concerns operations in which, for example, the tonsils or the soft palate are removed or reduced in size and nasal congestion is resolved.
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2023-09-07 17:32:00
#sleep #apnea
