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O bstructive Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most common and advanced form of snoring caused by an obstruction of an individual’s airway.    

OSA is characterized as intermittent cessation of respiration during sleep for at least 10 seconds with concomitant decreased blood oxygen saturation, interrupted normal breathing pattern, and arousal from sleep.  Sleep apnea literally means “want of breath” in Greek.  OSA has been proven to have significant affects on your health, even if it only occurs occasionally.   

The New England Journal of Medicine, April 29, 1993 reported of the middle-aged adults, about 24% of men and 9% of women have 5 or more episodes of interrupted breathings per hour.  Some are difficult to detect because they may not demonstrate noticeable symptoms such as excessive daytime sleepiness or lethargy waking up.

In the United States alone, it is estimated that 11,845,000 people between the ages of 30-60 have obstructive sleep apnea.  Of the 31 million Americans who are 65 years and older, 46% or 7,440,000 of them have moderate or severe level of obstructive sleep apnea, reported by the National Commission on Sleep Disorder Research.

It’s interesting to note that the physical difference between OSA and simple snoring is only millimeters in the actual airway.  The consequences on your ability to get a good night’s rest, and as a result, your overall health are dramatic.

 Obstructive sleep apnea can stop a person from breathing for as long as 3 minutes and as frequent as 100 times per hour.  Typically the person is awakened by the body grasping for some air and is often accompanied with a loud snort.

Although the person’s sleep is broken up many times each hour, they are often unaware of anything except that they woke up feeling unrefreshed. 

An individual’s blood oxygen levels can drop significantly to less than 50% causing a state known as hypopnea.  This condition significantly impacts multiple parts of the body including:

• All the vital organs which become strained as they struggle to sustain their normal activities while oxygen deprived.
  

• Normal metabolism is impaired. 
  

• Glucose utilization in the cells of the body is diminished with respect to the presence of catacholamine, the chemical produced in the body as a consequence of reduced oxygen levels.  This chemical suppresses the sensitivity of insulin making it difficult for glucose to enter into the cells for energy.
  

• Increased cortisol levels stimulate glucose formation which floods the blood with more glucose, and
  

• As a result of reduced oxygen levels in the blood, the sympathetic nerve activity increased which excites the heart rate and raises blood pressure. 
  

These facts alone reveal why the health concerns of snoring can be grave.   Presently OSA apnea claims about 3,000 lives per year in the United States.  This estimate doesn’t even account for the thousands more deaths caused by complications resulting from OSA. 

Numerous studies have linked OSA as the underlying cause of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, automobile accident fatalities, excessive daytime sleepiness, loss of economic productivity, lack of libido, depression, and can even be the reason some relationships break up.