What Is Sleep Apnea - Can you cure it?

Most people will be familiar with insomnia as a sleep disorder but far fewer people will have ever heard of sleep apnea. This is despite the fact that sleep apnea affects millions of people all over the world every single night. This condition occurs when a person stops breathing for several seconds while they're asleep; often for more than 10 seconds. This doesn't just happen once each night - it can happen dozens of times. Sometimes sleep apnea will actually wake the person up as the body panics and struggles for oxygen. More often people will remain asleep during the entire sleep apnea episode.

The end result of sleep apnea is always the same though. The person wakes up the next morning feeling fatigued; sometimes this can lead to chronic fatigue where the person is no longer able to work or function on a day-to-day basis. So even though a person is getting what is technically a full nights sleep they aren't getting quality sleeping time because their sleeping pattern is interrupted multiple times every night. It's the equivalent of somebody waking you every hour during the night; you'd wake up exhausted every morning. This is exactly what happens to people who suffer from sleep apnea; person will become fatigued, irritable, and drowsy during the day.

Sleep apnea is usually difficult to diagnose because the person is asleep when the problem is occuring. The only chance is that their partner might hear them having difficulty breathing. For others all they'll know is that they wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and even when they get back asleep they wake up extremely tired which confuses the heck out of them. It can sometimes take months or even years to get to the cause of a persons sleep apnea.

Actually treating sleep apnea can also be difficult because of the very nature of the condition. Different treatments may be used but their effectiveness can be difficult to judge without a third party observing the sleeping behavior of the affected person. The condition is usually diagnosed by a loved one observing the interrupted sleep pattern of the person. The loved one is also the person that observes the effects of the treatment and tells the doctor whether or not it is working. As you can see it's not a very cut-and-dry situation when it comes to sleep apnea treatment.

The good news! There are multiple options for treating sleep apnea but choosing the treatment that's best for the persons condition will depend on the type of sleep apnea that's affecting them and just how severe the sleep apnea is. Sometimes just changing the position you sleep in can be enough to eliminate the problem. Other people will need medical devices to keep them breathing during the night - a 33 year old friend of mine has to use one of these for his chronic sleep apnea. The device can even set off an alarm if he stops breathing during the night. At the extreme end of treatment there is the option of surgery but you're always better to look at the non-surgical and alternative treatments first.

Sleep apnea can be devastating in the amount of tiredness it can cause a sufferer but there are ways to treat it so don't lose hope!