How To Manage Your Sleep Apnea And The Importance Of Doing So
Sleep apnea is a common, potentially dangerous sleep disorder. It causes you to temporarily stop breathing during sleep — typically multiple times a night — triggering you to wake up so you can resume breathing. These repeated sleep interruptions can cause severe daytime drowsiness and fatigue.
The primary symptoms of sleep apnea, such as snoring, pauses in breathing, and gasping for air, happen while you’re sleeping, which is why many people with this sleep disorder don’t even realize they have it, especially if they don’t struggle much with daytime sleepiness.
Although sleep apnea might seem more like a nuisance, it can have serious implications for your health without treatment.
Because of this, Keviene Rutherford, MD, and the rest of our team at Rutherford Medical Center in Alpharetta, Georgia, want you to better understand how sleep apnea affects your body and how to effectively manage it.
The negative effects of untreated sleep apnea
Allowing your sleep apnea to go undiagnosed and untreated may lead to the following health complications:
High blood pressure
When you continually wake up at night, your body gets stressed and your hormones go into overdrive, causing a spike in blood pressure. The repeated oxygen deficit in your blood when you stop breathing makes matters worse.
Heart disease
Sleep apnea disrupts how your body takes in oxygen, and it keeps your brain from being able to properly distribute blood to your heart and arteries, increasing your risk of heart attacks and congestive heart failure.
Stroke
Because sleep apnea reduces oxygen flow to your brain, it increases your risk for ischemic strokes, which happen when a blood vessel to your brain becomes blocked.
Type 2 diabetes
While there isn’t a concrete cause-and-effect link between sleep apnea and Type 2 diabetes, studies have shown that interrupted sleep can cause insulin resistance, a risk factor for developing the condition.
Metabolic syndrome
Having sleep apnea increases your risk for metabolic syndrome, which happens when you have a cluster of conditions such as high cholesterol, elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure, and excess fat around your waist.
How to manage your sleep apnea
Because sleep apnea can impact your health in such profound ways, it’s important to seek prompt and effective treatment for it.
If your sleep apnea is mild, simple lifestyle changes may be enough to manage it. These include quitting tobacco usage, changing your sleeping position, losing weight, and treating any allergies that could be swelling your airways.
In advanced sleep apnea cases, more aggressive treatment might be necessary. The typical first line of treatment for serious sleep apnea is a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine. However, many people find this treatment loud, cumbersome, and not very user-friendly.
At Rutherford Medical Center, we offer laser treatment to treat severe sleep apnea. This procedure allows us to remove some of the soft tissues from your throat, helping to keep your airways open and reduce sleep apnea symptoms.
Get expert sleep apnea treatment today
For sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment, look no further than our team at Rutherford Medical Center. Schedule an appointment by calling our office or booking online.