Sleep Apnea is one common sleep problem that can lead to potentially serious issues. Here your breathing is getting interrupted while sleeping. The dangerous part here is that if this is untreated, it can lead to problems like heart diseases and type 2 diabetes. This can affect anyone from toddlers to children to adults. The symptoms can differ age-wise.
Factors causing sleep apnea
- Overweight individuals
- Men are at more risk than women
- Older aged people
- Family history
- Some inbuilt problem in your upper airways
- Allergies or any other conditions leading to nasal congestion
- Enlarged tonsils which affect the older children
- Unhealthy lifestyle like smoking
Central Sleep Apnea is usually caused when the brain fails to send signals to the muscles to breathe regularly. Whereas obstructive sleep apnea is caused when your airways collapse or get obstructed during nighttime while sleeping.
Symptoms
A Sleep Apnea Specialist is one the right person who can help you manage the symptoms. The following symptoms are the ones that your doctor will look out for:
- Loud snoring
- Stopping your breath while sleeping
- Having a sore throat when you get up
- Not getting enough sleep
- Concentrating and attention problems
- Frequent urination during the nighttime
- Irritability
- Feeling sleepy during the daytime.
The following symptoms may lead to a higher risk of blood pressure, heart problems, obesity, and diabetes. It might be difficult to treat any chronic illness too during this time. For this, your doctor will help you study your sleep pattern to understand the symptoms well.
Diagnosis
If you have any of these warning signs, it is recommended that you see your doctor immediately. He might perform some sleep study or polysomnogram. This test will help monitor some things like brain waves, the oxygen level in the blood, eye movement, and breathing. It will also look out for snoring and gasping sound during sleep.
If you have seen any of these symptoms in yourself or your loved ones then you need to visit the specialist immediately. After the diagnosis, he will start with the sleep apnea treatment. At Orion Dental Specialties, you will get a good dentist here who can help with this sleep problem too. They are the best here in Cypress Texas helping people lead a healthy and beautiful life.
Treatment
One of the best treatments here is sleep apnea therapy. They use a continuous positive airway pressure therapy (CPAP) machine. This machine includes a mask that fits your mouth and your nose and is attached to the motor through a tube. The air is blown through the tube into your mouth to increase the air pressure in your throat so that the airway doesn’t get obstructed while breathing.
Other than this the following precautions need to be taken:
- Avoid sleeping on your back
- Lower your weight in case of overweight
- Say no to alcohol or any medications that cause drowsiness
- For nasal congestion consider using medications or nasal spray
- Avoid smoking
- For mild cases, make use of a dental appliance or mouthpiece that can work for this.
Kindly do not ignore any of these symptoms whether it is in kids or adults as this might lead to serious health issues.
