Home » Common Sleep Disorders » Sleep Apnea While sleep apnea is a very common sleep disorder, it is of those that can be very serious. In sleep apnea, your breathing gets very shallow or stops while sleeping. Each pause in breathing usually lasts 10 - 20 seconds or more. This occurs 20 to 30 times or more in an hour.

Most common kind of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea. During sleep, enough air cannot flow into your lungs through your mouth and nose even though you try to breathe. The amount of oxygen in your blood may also drop. Normal breathing starts again with loud snort or choking sound.

When your sleep is disturbed throughout the night, you feel very sleepy during the day. With sleep apnea, your sleep is not restful as:

• These episodes of breathing pauses occur many times.
• You may have many brief drops in the oxygen levels in your blood.
• You move out of deep sleep and into light sleep throughout the night, resulting in poor sleep quality.

People with sleep apnea have loud snoring. Some people with sleep apnea don’t know they snore. But not everyone who snores has sleep apnea.

• Sleep apnea happens more often in people who are overweight, but it is not as if thin people cannot have it.
• Most people don’t know they have sleep apnea. They don’t know that they are having problems breathing while they are sleeping.
• A bed partner and / or family member may notice the signs of sleep apnea first.

Untreated sleep apnea can increase the chance of having high blood pressure and even a heart attack or stroke. Untreated sleep apnea can also result in increased risk of diabetes and risk for work-related accidents and driving accidents.

Sleep apnea happens when the lungs do not get enough air while you are sleeping. The throat muscles keep your throat open hence air flows into your lungs. In obstructive sleep apnea, the throat collapses momentarily, causing breathing pauses. With pauses in breathing, the oxygen level in your blood may drop. The reasons are:

• The throat muscles and tongue relax abnormally
• Adenoids and tonsils are large
• In overweight people, the surplus soft tissue in the throat makes it harder to keep the throat area open.
• The head and neck shape in a bony structure make for smaller airway size in mouth and throat area.

With the throat often partly or fully or blocked during sleep, sufficient air does not flow into your lungs, even though you make the efforts to breathe. Your breathing may become hard and noisy and may stop for short periods of time (apneas).

Central apnea is a rare kind of sleep apnea that occurs when the brain area controlling breathing does not send the right signals to the breathing muscles. Snoring does not typically occur in central apnea.