Doctors give advice for treating and diagnosing sleep apnea
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - Sleep apnea affects millions of Americans, and many may not know they have it. That’s why it’s important to know signs and symptoms, and make sure you’re getting treated if you have it.
Sleep apnea is a disorder where your body isn’t getting oxygen at night, whether it be from an obstruction by your tongue or throat, or by stopping breathing during sleep.
“When the air cannot pass through the obstruction, that means the air doesn’t go into the lungs, and as a result of that, you don’t get oxygen to the lungs either. That chronically oxygen deprived state essentially increases risk of a few more comorbidities,” said Dr. Rutwik Patel, pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine physician at CoxHealth.
Sleep apnea can cause a whole host of issues for a person, and increase your risks for other diseases.
“The chronic state of stress essentially, along with the low oxygen, increases your risk in the future. That’s what studies have showed, like 5-10 years down the line to have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, dementia, blood glucose control, blood pressure control, arrhythmia, and all cause mortality in general,” said Dr. Patel.
Symptoms can include frequent waking at night, morning headaches, constant fatigue, even snoring. If you have these, those are signs you should get tested.
“Usually, if you snore loud, or something like that, and if it really disrupts your sleep in the morning, if it disrupts your sleep, and you’re tired, the next day, you’re fatigued, you have too much daytime sleepiness during the day. These are typically the scenarios in which people get tested,” said Dr. Patel.
There are two ways to get tested for sleep apnea. You can either do an at-home sleep study or an in-lab sleep study.
“What we call a home sleep study, where we basically you come to the hospital, pick up the device, and you take it home with you and they have detailed instructions on how to hook yourself up and stuff like that. That is pretty much the more common form of testing for sleep apnea,” said Dr. Patel. “When we really want to be absolutely certain if you have sleep apnea or not, you do an in lab sleep study, where you actually come to the sleep center itself and sleep with supervision from sleep technologist during the night.”
The most common form for treating sleep apnea is a CPAP machine, where it blows air into your airways for you at night.
“Where basically you have a mask or a nasal mask or full face mask, which blows air. So remember what we said before that the issue is the obstruction. So with the mask would do the blowing of the air, because tongue is a muscle, it will just open the tongue like a flap, and now we have uninterrupted entry going into your lungs, and you prevent your episodes like you’re stopping breathing episodes of decreased breathing episodes with sleep apnea,” said Dr. Patel.
There’s other therapies for people who cannot tolerate a CPAP machine, like a mouth device that keeps your tongue out of the way, or a nerve control implant that can move your tongue in your sleep. Those are less common.
If you think you might have sleep apnea, it’s good to reach out to your doctor.
“If you do have any of the signs and symptoms, it’s important to like basically get tested for it because it’s so under-recognized and because it has so many other health implication that it can really improve your overall health way more than you think,” said Dr. Patel.
For more information on sleep apnea, you can visit here.
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