When sleep is a death trap
Most of us enjoy our sleeping hours, but for sleep apnea sufferers it's a death trap.
FEATURE
For most of us, sleep is restorative. Our sore muscles from the previous day’s workout feel brand new and we feel totally rested and ready to tackle the day ahead with optimism. However for sleep apnea sufferers, sleeping is a harrowing experience they face every night with the prospect of death staring them in the face every few seconds.
Dangerous sleep ahead
So what is sleep apnea? It is a serious sleep disorder where one’s breathing stops short for about three seconds to a few minutes at different intervals throughout the night. Each pause in breathing is called an apnea, taken from the Greek word ‘breathless’. Apnea can occur five to 30 minutes in an hour, bringing you pretty close to death’s door every time you settle down for the night. Breathing starts again with a loud snort or chocking sound but not after greatly depriving your organs of its crucial supply of oxygen.
There are two kinds of clinical sleep apnea — Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA that occurs when throat muscles relax and block the passageway and Central Sleep Apnea or CSA that occurs when your brain doesn’t send proper signals to the muscles that control breathing. Either way, sleeping becomes a deadly game you engage in against your will every night.
What local stats show
According to the Ministry of Health Malaysia, sleep apnea can affect anyone at any age, even kids.
One survey carried out at Hospital Kuala Terengganu showed that 14.5% of the kids there snored, the first sign that one is a potential sleep apnea sufferer. In 2007, researchers at University of Malaya estimated that nine per cent of middle-aged men and four per cent of middle-aged women were OSA sufferers.
Add to this the statistics from a joint study by the Sleep Disorder Society Malaysia and the Road Safety Department recently that showed 30 per cent of 300 bus drivers in the country had sleep apnea, with eight per cent of them categorised as chronic. Those are scary numbers considering passengers’ lives are in the hands of drivers who have short attention spans, low degree of alertness and slow reflexes, all dangerous effects of continued interrupted sleep.
Are ‘you’ one of them?
Sleep apnea sufferers generally experience the following:
- fatigue
- moodiness
- depression
- tendency to react violently in stressful situations
- short attention spans
- difficulty in processing information
- slower reaction time
- vision problems
- kidney disease
- fatty liver disease
Researchers in Japan found that slight changes in the size and position of the pharynx at the back of the throat drastically upped your chances of having sleep apnea. If you have a large neck, tongue, or tonsils, or a narrow airway your chances of suffering from sleep apnea is increased, more so if you are overweight since the tissues in your throat are enlarged.
If you suspect you suffer from sleep apnea, see your doctor for a referral to a sleep specialist so you can get a formal sleep study done.
Remedies for sleeping normal again
A breathing mask is the most common medical treatment for sleep apnea. There are two kinds – a CPAP mask or Continuous Positive Airway Pressure mask or the APAP mask otherwise known as the Automatic Positive Airway Pressure device. These masks ‘splint’ your airway open during sleep by means of a flow of pressurized air into the throat. Made of plastic, the mask is connected by a flexible tube to a small bedside CPAP machine. The CPAP machine generates the required air pressure to keep your airways open during sleep.
If you absolutely cannot see yourself wearing a mask, you could try strengthening the muscles around your upper airway by practising a series of tongue and throat exercises for 30 minutes a day. Your sleep specialist should be able to suggest some suitable exercises. If this is out of the question too, there’s always surgery. Your doctor will tell you straight up it’s a last-resort option when all else fails. Besides costing a pretty penny, it’s awfully painful too.