Q: I am almost sure that I’ve been dealing with sleep apnea for the last two or three years. Should I seek medical attention and potentially deal with being put on a CPAP machine? Or should I try to lose weight? What are the steps I should take with either choice?
Sleep apnea is a potentially serious medical condition that requires a proper diagnosis and a treatment plan. If you believe you might have this condition, bring it to your doctor’s attention right away.
There are about 22 million Americans who suffer from sleep apnea, and the most interesting part is that 80 percent of the cases of moderate or severe sleep apnea remain undiagnosed.
This condition occurs when the upper airway relaxes and collapses while you sleep and breathing can actually stop. The body then wakes itself up to breathe, which interferes with the normal restorative sleep cycle.
This can occur hundreds of times throughout the night, and many sleep apnea sufferers are not even aware that this is happening.
If left untreated, most patients with this condition will wake up feeling unrefreshed—no matter how many hours they thought they slept. This is because they are not getting the required amount of time in deep sleep due to these interruptions.
Therefore, if you have this condition, you are at increased risk for accidents on the road and at work. You may feel excessively sleepy in the afternoons, want to take a nap, or fall asleep while watching television or other similar activities.
In addition to being excessively sleepy, sleep apnea can put you at higher risk for other serious medical conditions such as high blood pressure, depression, strokes, heart disease and diabetes. Because sleep apnea disrupts how your body takes in oxygen, it makes it hard for your brain to control how blood flows in your arteries and brain itself.
So how do you know if you have this serious condition? Risk factors include being overweight or obese, having a large neck, and snoring. Although most sleep apnea patients do snore, not all snorers have sleep apnea.
Sometimes I find out about a patient’s sleep apnea from their bed partner. They may actually witness their partner stop breathing while sleeping, then gasping or choking repeatedly throughout the night.
It is crucial to diagnose this condition with an overnight sleep study where the patient is hooked up to a monitor to check for low oxygen and pauses in breathing while asleep. For those of you unwilling or unable to go to a sleep lab, talk to your doctor about getting a sleep study in the privacy of your own home. These tests are often covered by insurance.
Excess weight as well as substances taken at night that can decrease your respiratory efforts such as alcohol or sleeping pills can make sleep apnea worse. So losing weight and reducing these substances can help, but are not a guaranteed cure.
One treatment for the condition, as you mentioned in your question, is a device called CPAP, which pushes a continuous amount of pressured oxygen though your airway keeping it open and eliminating the obstruction.
The devices used to be cumbersome and challenging to wear, but now there have been major advances in their ease of use. Although these machines are still considered the gold-standard treatment, other options are mandibular devices and surgical procedures called pillars to keep the airway open while you sleep.
Diagnosing and treating sleep apnea can be so gratifying for both the doctor and the patient. I have innumerable stories of patients who after treatment tell me how their quality of life has improved immensely, and they are able to better engage in both work and family activities.
All that plus their blood pressure and their risk of heart attacks goes way down, which translates to a win-win situation for all involved! So please seek help right away.
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