Millions of people snore. However, some of those people have a condition that is causing harm to their health every night they spend snoring. That’s because the root cause of their snoring probably is obstructive sleep apnea which can cause undue stress on their body and lead to poor function of crucial bodily functions such as the cardiovascular system.
What is sleep apnea? It’s a sleep disorder in which a person’s breathing stops and restarts repeatedly throughout the night. When their breathing stops, the oxygen levels in the person’s blood begin to drop quickly. While still asleep, the person begins to struggle to breathe. Finally, the body may choke and gasp and they will partially wake up. They take a deep breath or two and fall back to sleep, only to repeat the process seconds or minutes later. This pattern is repeated over and over causing them to wake dozens of times a night. It’s impossible to get a good night’s sleep when this is happening all night.
The gasping, choking struggle to breathe is the most severe manifestation of sleep apnea. Other individuals may not show such an obvious and severe symptom. The evidence that sleep apnea treatment is needed is a measurement of the person’s oxygen levels during sleep. Using a nighttime monitoring device, it can be determined how often and how seriously the person’s oxygen levels fall during sleep. Depending on how many times they fall per hour, the person’s level of sleep apnea can be diagnosed and the right treatment can be recommended.
