What are the Dangers of Severe Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing stops and starts repeatedly. If you snore loudly and feel tired even after sleeping all night, you may have

obstructive sleep apnea

. This can cause severe daytime sleepiness, fatigue, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and even falling asleep at work, while watching TV, or while driving. These symptoms can put people with severe sleep apnea at risk of work-related accidents.Obstructive sleep apnea is a serious sleep disorder that involves breathing stopping and starting repeatedly while you sleep.

It can cause loud snoring, tiredness during the day, or more serious problems such as heart problems or high blood pressure. Your snoring tends to be louder when you sleep on your back and calms down when you stand on your side. Your doctor will want to rule out any other possible causes of your symptoms before diagnosing you with sleep apnea.Reboxetine, a drug used to treat depression, has been found to help alleviate sleep apnea. However, experts are concerned about the drug's side effects.

Because the most common and telltale symptoms of sleep apnoea occur during sleep, many people may not even realize that they're experiencing symptoms, so they aren't diagnosed or treated.Episodes of sleep apnea can wreak havoc on the sleep cycle and prevent the person with sleep apnea from reaching the deep, relaxing phases of sleep. Each type of sleep apnea is characterized by many of the same characteristic symptoms, but the mechanism (or cause) of sleep apnea is somewhat different from type to type. Snoring doesn't necessarily indicate something that could be serious, and not everyone who snores has obstructive sleep apnea.Your doctor will perform a physical exam to check for signs of other conditions that may increase your risk of sleep apnea (such as obesity, narrowed upper airway, dilated tonsils, or dilated neck circumference). Research indicates that cases of obstructive sleep apnea have increased significantly over the past two decades.If left untreated, severe obstructive sleep apnea can have serious and life-threatening consequences.

A study that focused on about 1500 Wisconsin government workers during a period that began in 1989 “showed that people with more respiratory abnormalities at night were five times more likely to die of cancer than people without this sleep disorder”, The New York Times reported.Ignoring this common sleep disorder increases your risk of having many other health problems and could be endangering other people. It is important to get diagnosed and treated for severe obstructive sleep apnea in order to avoid these risks.