My Life and Sleep Apnea

For a lot of children getting enough sleep is a big problem. Getting the children to bed is also a very big problem for the parents especially as they get older. But it has to be dealt with because sleep is very important to emotional as well as physical growth. And children need a lot more sleep than adults . Believe it or not infants usually sleep up to 16 hours a day in 3 to 4 hour intervals. (I know that is hard to believe!). Whereas teenagers should get around 9 hours according to the American Sleep Disorder Association. I doubt if that happens either. As for how much sleep an adult needs is around 7 or hours depending on the person (and depending if you have children). Like you children can also have sleep disorders even the worse kind, sleep apnea, which can appear at any age. Sleep problems for children Sleep apnea can be found in infants as well as younger children. Blockage is usually due to enlarged tongues.  Bedwetting or nocturnal enuresis is probably the mo...

Sleep apnea is divided into obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea. Obstructive is caused by blockage of the airway and central apnea, which is less common, is caused when the brain doesn’t send signals to the muscles to breathe. As with most things there are different levels of severity of sleep apnea. With obstructive sleep apnea the range of severity can be determined by a sleep study that counts the number of apnea, or cessation of breathing, that occurs if the number isn’t high, and then your sleep apnea might be cured by an oral device or by just losing weight. It should also be noted that not all awakening are the same there are apneas and there are micro-arousals . What is a micro-arousal ? According to psychosomaticmedicine.org micro arousals are “a sudden transient cortical activation during sleep, but does not necessarily result in a behavioral awakening. The origin of an arousal is usually "cortical" but it can also be generated in response to sen...

It isn’t any secret that sleep apnea makes you feel irritable , unhappy, tired and depressed and it is no wonder because lack of sleep will cause these feeling with anyone whether they have sleep apnea or not. Usually with sleep apnea most people think about all the physical damage that is done to the body, such as heart disease, diabetes, poor circulation and countless other things that tear your body down. And that is understandable but you also to consider the damage of sleep deprivation and what it does to your emotional state of being. The stress and anxiety that is the result of sleep apnea can also lead to physical harm as well.    Emotional problems and sleep apnea    Depression – If you didn’t sleep or didn’t get any rest for many years you would probably be depressed too. It is common among sleep apnea patients.  Addiction – This is linked to depression because people often try to self medicate themselves out of problems with pills, sleepi...

A lot more goes on when you are sleeping then you would think. Instead of your body just hibernating for eight or so hours and then waking up, sleep performs many functions. As you probably know there are five stages of sleep that you routinely go through every night, not in any particular order. As you can imagine sleep apnea interrupts this process depriving you of the full affects of sleep, which are rest and important restoration of the brain and body, possibly the most important one the Rapid Eye Movement or REM . What is REM? According to  Free dictionary dot com “REM is a stage in the normal sleep cycle during which dreams occur and the body undergoes marked changes including rapid eye movement, loss of reflexes, and increased pulse rate and brain activity. It is also called paradoxical sleep.” A lot goes on during REM such as increased heart rate, brain activity and muscle relaxation. In this state dreaming occurs as well as memory and learning development...

Night after sleepless night of sleep apnea leads to long tired days that seem to never end. Your energy level is zapped and doing the smallest chore wears you out. In fact even laying in bed takes more energy with sleep apnea then if you had a completely peaceful night where you slept the whole way through. According to the University of Colorado researchers lying in bed with s leep apnea does in fact burn more energy than falling asleep . I know that doesn’t sound like much of a surprise but you do burn more calories that way. The research from the article suggests that it would be like walking 2 miles! Muscle repair and restoration occurs in what sleep stage? When we sleep at night our bodies go through 5 sleep stages . The stage that most people are aware of is REM or rapid eye movement which usually lasts 90 to 120 minutes a night. Unfortunately sleep apnea becomes worse during this most important sleep stage. While you can dream during any sleep stage, REM is usually the ti...

There are many illnesses and diseases that can be prevented by leading a healthy life of exercise and eating right. Of course sometimes that isn’t enough and you may require medication or other medical intervention. In the case of sleep apnea it is difficult to say that you can prevent it. Are the causes of sleep apnea something you can prevent or are you eventually going to have sleep apnea anyway ? Sleep apnea is caused by the blockage of the airway in the back of the throat thus causing you to wake up suddenly gasping for air. Why is there blockage in the back of the throat? It could excess tissue or it could an enlarged tongue or even the shape of your face may play a part in it. The excess tissue happens frequently because of the sleep apnea sufferer being overweight. That is not to say that every person who has sleep apnea is overweight but it is very common. What if you would lose the weight would you still have sleep apnea? You might but it wouldn’t be as bad as it was befo...

Just a few weeks ago I had a cold right around Christmas time. Colds are bad anytime but trying to deal with Christmas and all that it involves can be a handful. To top it off I have sleep apnea which becomes worse when my nose is stuffed up and I start to cough. When I went to bed I more or less just laid there and closed my eyes hoping that I would fall asleep. Eventually I did for a short while only to awake with my typical apnea snore . I thought about taking cold medicine but of course you have to be careful because most of that stuff makes you sleepy, which in turn m akes the sleep apnea even worse , if that is imaginable. What if you were using a cpap and you caught a cold? I didn’t use the cpap machine that long but during the time that I did use it I did have at least one cold and it was particularly unpleasant. On good days I never really felt comfortable with the air being pushed through my throat so when my throat was sore it was especially bad. Even with a humidifier ...