Under normal conditions, during sleep, breathing is automatic with the free passage of air through the nose, pharynx and larynx, until you reach the trachea, bronchi and lungs. When the airways are patent, the passage of air is unobstructed and quietly. But when airway obstructions are created, you can generate vibration of the soft tissues that produce snoring, or, you can reach the complete airway closure for several minutes causing sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is associated with a variety of symptoms caused by the fact that sleep is disturbed and the body cannot rest: it increases drowsiness during the day, especially while watching television or at the movies, but in severe cases even while driving; it reduces the degree of attention and concentration ability. I am a major risk factor for a number of diseases or death, such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and hypertension (high blood pressure), and are responsible for traffic accidents caused by falling asleep.

Several factors can cause airway obstruction:

Nasal congestion, turbinate hypertrophy or abnormalities of the nasal septum, hypertrophy of the adenoids or tonsils, a rear position of the jaw or a very small jaw, tongue large, an increase in body weight with strong increase in neck circumference. Frequently, the rearmost part of the tongue comes into contact with the rear wall of the pharynx and with the soft palate creating such an obstruction.

For the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea is a need for examination called polysomnography. It is a procedure that is performed during sleep, and that is to monitor the patient by measuring the electroencephalogram, sleep stages, heart rate, rhythm and breathing movements, blood oxygenation, any breath sounds. These variables allow you to make a diagnosis of snoring, snoring that is, when they are not present sleep apnea, but are nocturnal respiratory sounds, or obstructive sleep apnea, when there are interruptions of breathing. Apnea can be mild, moderate, or severe, depending on their duration and reducing blood oxygenation. Usually, increasing the severity of the apnea is proportional to the increase of the symptoms it causes, especially daytime sleepiness, and increased incidence of related diseases.

To treat obstructive sleep apnea can intervene at different levels. First of all, you can take some measures to correct the general risk factors:

Limit intake of alcohol and sedative drugs, which by relaxing overly muscular tissues of the neck causing airway collapse.

In the case where apneas occur are when sleeping on the back, you can sew a tennis ball on the pajama, in correspondence of the back, in order to avoid that location.

For overweight patients, it is useful to significantly reduce body weight.

If there are obvious anomalies pertaining ENT (such as abnormalities of the nasal septum, turbinate hypertrophy, hypertrophy of the adenoids or tonsils) it is certainly a timely visit to the specialist to determine whether it is action to remove the obstruction.

It was scientifically demonstrated that sleep apnea is one of the major factors in producing road accidents, because it’s causing the drivers to fall asleep. As the symptoms are usually invisible, the better thing to do it to visit the Pulmonary and Sleep Consultants.

Also, you might want to learn more about sleep apnea here.

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