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Signs of Sleep Apnea are often misdiagnosed and overlooked.

Sleep apnea is really a very common disorder that is masked by and confused with simple snoring. What actually happens is that you have small, but very detrimental interruptions of breathing during your night’s sleep, often several times a minute. 

With common symptoms sleep apnea can be confused with other more benign conditions, but living with sleep apnea is anything but benign.

The episodes are harmful for several reasons:

• They happen frequently, but just under waking consciousness. So you don’t wake up enough to know there is anything wrong, but your brain stays in an almost awake state for the better part of the night. You never get into deep sleep.
• Your blood oxygen level can fall precipitously, affecting not just restfulness the next day, but memory, bodily repair and as studies are bearing out, longevity.
• You don’t know it is happening, and then generally become extraordinarily fatigued for days on end.

So you awaken partially, but in the morning they will not be aware of the disturbances in their sleep.  The most common type of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apena (OSA), caused by relaxation of soft tissue in the back of the throat that blocks the passage of air.  Central sleep apnea (CSA) is caused by irregularities in the brain’s normal signals to breathe.  Most people with sleep apnea will have a combination of both types.  The hallmark symptom of the disorder is excessive daytime sleepiness.

Additional symptoms of sleep apnea include:

• restless sleep,
• loud snoring
• falling asleep during the day
• restless leg syndrome
• headaches
• irritability
• depression. 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Symptoms sleep apnea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.