Have you ever woken up at night choking and realized that you "forgot" to breathe? Have you been battling out with your roommate or your wife because of your excessively loud snores? What you’re having may be sleep apnea symptoms, and you don’t want to take those for granted. Normal snoring is not harmful, but it's important to know when it becomes apnea. Severe snoring is enough to merit a trip to your doctor and doctors are taking apnea very seriously now.
Sleep apnea is basically the cessation of breathing during sleep due to your throat closing and not allowing you to sleep fully. In mild cases, breathing disruptions could occur five times in one hour while in more severe cases, these disruptions could occur up to fifty times in an hour.
The most telling sign of apnea is very severe sleepiness during the day, especially in the afternoon. This is not the lull we all get, but the can't stay awake tired you get after an all nighter. You know you have excessive sleepiness when you fall asleep in inappropriate times of the day such as while talking, eating, or even driving. This could have severe consequences, as you may get into motor vehicle accidents or poor performance at school or work. This is just but one of many sleep apnea symptoms.
Another warning sign for sleep apnea is loud snoring. A snore so loud that it wakes up the person sleeping beside you is a major sign of sleep apnea. Choking dreams are common in sleep apnea sufferers, because as they sleep they literally are choking. Because of the snoring and the open mouth sleeping it causes, you'll lose a lot of moisture to the air and hence get dry mouth. The have difficulty breathing through the nose so they tend to sleep with their mouths open.
Frequent wakings to either eat or hit the bathroom is common among apnea sufferers and the latenight eating can exacerbate the illness. Urination becomes frequent because of a certain hormone that is released when pressure on the heart is increased due to disruptions in breathing.
Heartburn, swelling of the legs, sweating, and chest pain are some other sleep apnea symptoms. Resltessness leads to more waking, more eating and more weight, which in turn makes the apnea worse Other symptoms would be waking up in the morning still feeling tired and usually having headaches. Some people tend to have problems in memory and concentration, and also experience personality changes. These can be from other conditions, but sleep is the easiest thing to check and diagnose.
A growing number of sufferers of apnea are seeking help. However, children could be affected by this condition, too. The age of the child when a parent suspects apnea is not a factor, but the symptoms might be different. Young children and toddlers get a lot of restlessness and wake more than usual. Symptoms for children who are 5 years and older include snoring, bed-wetting, poor performance in school, short attention span, and in some cases, growing slower than most kids their age.
Sleep apnea is a horrible condition to have, and it deprives us of our basic recharging mechanism. Find a good sleep doctor to check you out, especially a doctor certified to treat sleep disorders. If you think you do, you probably do.
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