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Apnea: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Options



Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles that support the soft tissues in your throat, such as your tongue and soft palate, temporarily relax. When these muscles relax, your airway is narrowed or closed, and breathing is momentarily cut off.




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There are several types of sleep apnea, but the most common is obstructive sleep apnea. This type of apnea occurs when your throat muscles intermittently relax and block your airway during sleep. A noticeable sign of obstructive sleep apnea is snoring.


Treatments for obstructive sleep apnea are available. One treatment involves using a device that uses positive pressure to keep your airway open while you sleep. Another option is a mouthpiece to thrust your lower jaw forward during sleep. In some cases, surgery might be an option too.


Be sure to talk to your doctor if you snore loudly, especially if your snoring is interrupted by periods of silence. With obstructive sleep apnea, snoring usually is loudest when you sleep on your back, and it quiets when you turn on your side.


Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of your throat relax too much to allow normal breathing. These muscles support structures including the back of the roof of your mouth (soft palate), the triangular piece of tissue hanging from the soft palate (uvula), the tonsils and the tongue.


Daytime fatigue and sleepiness. Because of a lack of restorative sleep at night, people with obstructive sleep apnea often have severe daytime drowsiness, fatigue and irritability. They might have difficulty concentrating and find themselves falling asleep at work, while watching TV or even when driving. This can put them at higher risk of work-related accidents.


Cardiovascular problems. Sudden drops in blood oxygen levels that occur during obstructive sleep apnea increase blood pressure and strain the cardiovascular system. Many people with obstructive sleep apnea develop high blood pressure (hypertension), which can increase the risk of heart disease.


Obstructive sleep apnea increases the risk of abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias), which can lower blood pressure. If there's underlying heart disease, these repeated multiple episodes of arrhythmias could lead to sudden death.


Complications with medications and surgery. Obstructive sleep apnea is also a concern with certain medications and general anesthesia. These medications, such as sedatives, narcotic analgesics and general anesthetics, relax your upper airway and can worsen your obstructive sleep apnea.


If you have obstructive sleep apnea, having major surgery, especially after being sedated and lying on your back, can worsen breathing problems. People with obstructive sleep apnea might be more prone to complications after surgery.


Obstructive sleep apnea might be a risk factor for COVID-19. People with obstructive sleep apnea have been found to be at higher risk for developing a severe form of COVID-19 and needing hospital treatment than those who don't have obstructive sleep apnea.


Loud snoring can indicate a potentially serious problem, but not everyone who has sleep apnea snores. Talk to your health care provider if you have symptoms of sleep apnea. Ask your provider about any sleep problem that leaves you fatigued, sleepy and irritable.


This type of sleep apnea happens when the muscles in the back of the throat relax. These muscles support the soft palate, the triangular piece of tissue hanging from the soft palate called the uvula, the tonsils, the side walls of the throat and the tongue.


This less common form of sleep apnea occurs when your brain fails to send signals to your breathing muscles. This means that you make no effort to breathe for a short period. You might awaken with shortness of breath or have a difficult time getting to sleep or staying asleep.


Daytime fatigue. The repeated awakenings associated with sleep apnea make typical, restorative sleep impossible, in turn making severe daytime drowsiness, fatigue and irritability likely.


You might have trouble concentrating and find yourself falling asleep at work, while watching TV or even when driving. People with sleep apnea have an increased risk of motor vehicle and workplace accidents.


Complications with medicines and surgery. Obstructive sleep apnea is also a concern with certain medicines and general anesthesia. People with sleep apnea might be more likely to have complications after major surgery because they're prone to breathing problems, especially when sedated and lying on their backs.


Fatigue. The repeated awakening associated with sleep apnea makes typical, restorative sleep impossible. People with central sleep apnea often have severe fatigue, daytime drowsiness and irritability.


Sleep apnea is a common condition in which your breathing stops and restarts many times while you sleep. This can prevent your body from getting enough oxygen. You may want to talk to your healthcare provider about sleep apnea if someone tells you that you snore or gasp during sleep, or if you experience other symptoms of poor-quality sleep, such as excessive daytime sleepiness.


To diagnose sleep apnea, your provider may have you do a sleep study. Breathing devices such as continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) machines and lifestyle changes are common sleep apnea treatments. If these treatments do not work, surgery may be recommended to correct the problem that is causing your sleep apnea. If your sleep apnea is not diagnosed or treated, you may not get enough good quality sleep. This can lead to trouble concentrating, making decisions, remembering things, or controlling your behavior. Sleep apnea is also linked to serious health problems.


There are many approaches to treating sleep apnea, depending on the specific type of sleep apnea and how severe it is. While none of these is a cure, they can help prevent apnea events or reduce how often they happen or how severe they are.


Positive airway pressure is a method that uses a specialized device to increase the air pressure inside of your airway while you inhale. This method can treat obstructive, central and mixed sleep apneas.


Obstructive sleep apnea happens when soft tissue in your head or neck, especially around your mouth and jaw, press downward on your windpipe. Special mouthpiece devices can help hold your jaw and tongue in a position that keeps pressure off your windpipe. Dentists and sleep medicine specialists often work together to make these for people who need them.


A similar kind of nerve stimulation is also possible with central sleep apnea. This type of stimulation affects the phrenic nerves. This pair of nerves connect your spinal cord to the diaphragm, a layer of muscle underneath your lungs that controls your ability to inhale and exhale. Stimulating the phrenic nerve causes those muscles to flex, helping you breathe.


In addition to positive airway pressure, adaptive ventilation and phrenic nerve stimulators, there are some medications that may help central sleep apnea. Some examples of these medications include hypnotic (sleep-promoting) medications, respiratory-stimulating drugs and more. However, none of these medications are formally approved or definitively accepted for this use.


People who have sleep apnea should avoid heavy drinking, and frequent use of sleeping pills or other drugs (recreational and otherwise) that cause heavy sedation. These can make sleep apnea worse. Your healthcare provider can talk to you about drugs that can cause that and how you can avoid the effects.


If you suspect you or a loved one has sleep apnea, you might be able to help a healthcare provider diagnose it. Video and audio recordings of a person sleeping, especially where the provider can hear breathing, can give a provider key evidence they need to speed up the diagnostic process.


The time it takes to recover or feel better after treatment for sleep apnea depends on the treatments themselves. Some people will feel better almost immediately, while others may need three to six months of consistent nightly treatment to see the full benefits. Your healthcare provider can tell you more about the timeline for your recovery and when you should expect to feel better.


The outlook for sleep apnea depends on many factors. The severity and type of sleep apnea make a difference. However, adhering to treatment is usually the biggest determining factor in how this condition affects your life.


The most common type is obstructive sleep apnea. It causes your airway to collapse or become blocked during sleep. Normal breathing starts again with a snort or choking sound. People with sleep apnea often snore loudly. However, not everyone who snores has sleep apnea.


When your sleep is interrupted throughout the night, you can be drowsy during the day. People with sleep apnea are at higher risk for car crashes, work-related accidents, and other medical problems. If you have it, it is important to get treatment. Lifestyle changes, mouthpieces, surgery, and breathing devices can treat sleep apnea in many people.


Apnea, BrE: apnoea,[1] is the temporal cessation of breathing. During apnea, there is no movement of the muscles of inhalation,[citation needed] and the volume of the lungs initially remains unchanged. Depending on how blocked the airways are (patency), there may or may not be a flow of gas between the lungs and the environment, but if there's sufficient flow, gas exchange within the lungs and cellular respiration wouldn't be severely affected. Voluntarily doing this is called holding one's breath.Apnea may first be diagnosed in childhood, and it is recommended to consult an ENT specialist, allergist or sleep physician to discuss symptoms when noticed; malformation and/or malfunctioning of the upper airways may be observed by an orthodontist.[2] 2ff7e9595c


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