Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Find Out How Sleep Apnea Impacts Your Health

By Thomas Wilson

If you or someone you know suffers from sleep apnea, its important for you to understand how it could affect your health. First you need to determine if your sleep apnea is a health risk to seek further treatment.

Sleep apnea is a serious condition that causes the airway to collapse. A loud snoring can be present which occurs more often in males who are overweight and other people with necks more than 17 inches in diameter.

Sleep Apnea and Sex

Sleep apnea can decrease your desire for sex and sexual arousal and cause less intense orgasms. After being treated for sleep apnea, patients have cited substantial improvements in their sex lives.

Daytime Sleepiness

Sleep apnea can also cause you be become sleepy during the day. Sleep can be interrupted as much as 20 to 30 times every night. Its possible for someone suffering from Sleep apnea to never get anymore than 10 minutes worth of sleep at a time during the 8 hour sleep period.

Sleep Apnea and Collisions

In a Canadian study of 800 patients with sleep apnea, the patients were almost five times more likely than drivers without sleep apnea to have head-on car accidents and accidents involving injuries. Even patients with mild sleep apnea had the same increased risk as patients with severe sleep apnea. If this is how sleep apnea impacts your health, you should seek treatment right away.

Sleep Apnea and Diabetes

Another way sleep apnea impacts your health is how it increases your risk of diabetes. Every time your airway collapses while you sleep, you stop breathing and your body suffers from low levels of oxygen in the blood.

Your bloodstream is hit with a surge of hormones as your brain tries to wake you. You awake and return to sleep and repeat this cycle until its time to start your day.

The surge of hormones and chemicals your brain orders your glands to secrete into your bloodstream when you stop breathing creates stress hormones that scientists believe affect the cells in your body that make insulin, a hormone related to diabetes.

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