Sleep Disorder

Good morning I am DR Rajput, Pulmonologist. I deal with the respiratory disease which include Asthma, COPD and sleep apnea. The sleep disorder, sleep apnea is very common these days. People snore and they do not know that they have a disease.

I am going to talk about, "Why do people snore and how it affects your health?"

You know the structure. We breath through nose and we eat through mouth. There is a pasaage in the neck behind the tongue where the food and the air we inhale pass through it. But when we sleep, our posture changes due to which muscles get relaxed and makes the passage narrow. Then the tongue drops and makes it further narrow. If you are over weight, due to the neck fat, the passage gets further narrow. So, when the air passes through the narrow passage, it produces snoring. The stage beyond snoring when the two valves in the neck meet each other, the air flow stops and cause Apnea. When the air flow stops, the oxygen level in the body goes down, the brain gets aroused and sends the signal to these muscles and then you ultimately snot and this snotting opens the passage a bit. So, this repeatedly occur in the night and this results in oxidative stress. BEcause 1/3rd of your life, you are sleeping, i.e, 8 hours out of 24 hours.

So, during sleep, if the air flow is less which is called Hypopnea, the air flow stops is called Apnea. This leads to Endothelial dysfunction, which leads to High blood pressure, diabetes, cardiac problems.

So, it is important to know about Sleep Apnea and its relation to lifestyle diseases like hypertension, diabetes, cardio vascular diseases.

The diagnosis is very simple these days which is Polysomnography. It is a sleep study in which we record the brain EEG, EOG, EMG, air flow, snoring, oxygen saturation ECG. This gives an index which is called Apnea Hypopnea Index. If the Index is more than 5 than you have to be treated.

The commonest treatment which is available these days is the CPAP Therapy. CPAP is a very simple therapy. There is a mask which fits on the nose and it is connected to a hose pipe to a machine. The machine gives pressure to the air and this pressure splints this air way and the air flow is maintained. Oxygenation maintains, snoring stops and oxidative stress dissapears. This helps in controlling blood pressure, the diabetes become normal and the risk of cardio vacular problems decreases.

Thank you very much for listening to me.

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