Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that causes obstruction of breathing during sleep. It can be due to either a physical obstruction, called obstructive sleep apnea, or a brain dysfunction, called central sleep apnea. Either way, the symptoms of sleep apnea are mostly the same.
Up to 90% of people who have symptoms of sleep apnea do not realize they wake up several times each night in order to start breathing again. This can be terrible by itself, but any one of those times they may simply never start breathing again.
Most people can’t remember waking up or not breathing. Being unable to tell they are not breathing while asleep, most people only ever think to be checked out when their bed partner either gets annoyed at their loud snoring, or gets worried by the silence from lack of breathing, or both.
While the two main symptoms of sleep apnea are loud snoring or periods with no sound at all, there are other symptoms, such as gasping or choking, waking up suddenly and violently, and daytime sleepiness even after sleeping all night. Once they know of their symptoms, the people who want to get checked out will undergo a one night stay at a sleep clinic under monitoring.
My father, for example, used to snore so loudly my mother was known to come into my room at night just to get some sleep. A room and a corridor away, we could still hear him faintly. Finally, after decades of nagging, my mother finally got my father to go in to a sleep clinic to see if anything could be done. One night in the clinic later, he was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, which is much more common as well as more easily fixed than central sleep apnea. The doctor recommended an operation to remove his tonsils, which were blocking his airway causing both the snoring and the cessation of breath, and I don’t think he has snored loudly since.
Unlike obstructive sleep apnea, central sleep apnea sufferers do not have a physical obstruction of their airway, therefore they tend not to snore. They have a neurological problem causing the brain to delay the signal to breathe while they are asleep.
Whether you suffer from obstructive sleep apnea or the more deadly central sleep apnea, the symptoms of sleep apnea and the net result of either disorder is oxygen deprivation due to the lack of breathing, and poor quality sleep due to the repeated episodes of awakening to restart breathing, resulting in daytime tiredness.
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