If you snore, take inordinate naps during the day, or experience any number of seemingly unrelated physical and emotional signs, you may need more than a warm glass of milk at bedtime. You may need a checkup for a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea, in which you quit breathing throughout sleep time.
“Sleep apnea is implicated in cardiovascular diseases, vascular diseases, endocrinological diseases like ,” says Dr. Won Lee, medical director of the Sleep and Breathing Disorder Center at at Dallas.
“The best way to think of it is this: When patients have sleep apnea, there’s a narrowing of airways, which causes no airflow and therefore no oxygen is delivered to the lungs. We see a significant drop in oxygen levels. Sometimes the levels may be in the 95 percent range and during an obstructive event, drop to 75. It causes the patients to wake up to open their airways. I have some who stop breathing 100 times per hour. I’m flabbergasted, blown away.”
Apnea, as well as other sleep disorders can be diagnosed in a sleep lab in your area, where patients spend one to two nights being observed by doctors. Treatment is often a nightly use of a machine supplying the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure).