This disease leads to dangerous microsleep

This disease should not be underestimated: according to the Swiss Sleep Research Society, around 800,000 people are affected by sleep apnea in this country – that’s almost a tenth of the entire population. The problem: Almost 80 percent of cases go unnoticed. This makes them dangerous because of the possible consequences. prof. Dr. Nikolaus Netzer, head of the Hermann Buhl Hypoxia and Sleep Medicine Research Institute at Lenggries (D), emphasizes. “If you suffer from the symptoms listed or if your partner notices breathing pauses, an analysis of your own sleep is urgently needed. Otherwise, those affected are putting their health at risk.”

Sleep apnea causes affected people to breathe up to thirty times an hour at night because breathing stops repeatedly. This makes restful sleep impossible, which can have deadly consequences. In the short term, but also in the long term. Below we show you what they are.

As those affected have pauses in breathing at night, the oxygen content in the blood drops as a direct result of this. However, adequate oxygen is important: Because our body needs oxygen in every cell to function.

Chronic daytime fatigue, as a result of the described lack of oxygen and disturbed sleep, is particularly pronounced for apnea sufferers despite supposedly getting enough sleep. Affected people wake up feeling exhausted and cannot get rid of their tiredness all day long. Side effects can include headache and dizziness, muscle pain, nausea, increased hunger and irritability.

If you are constantly tired, you will also lose your performance. Most of those affected lack energy, are less resilient and also suffer from poor concentration and their memory may also be impaired. In the worst case, professional problems threaten.

Daytime fatigue can also occur at the wheel through micro-sleep. A Blick reader describes how this affected him. “Without an apnea mask, I couldn’t go from Rapperswil to Zurich without a break,” he says. Meanwhile, she was treated (more on that below). Sleep apnea is one of the top causes of accidents, sleep doctor Maritta Orth told “welt.de”. Those affected have two to seven times the risk of causing an accident than the average population. According to the “Medical Tribune,” a study in Boston also shows that 10 percent of accidents on U.S. roads can be attributed to people with sleep apnea.

In addition to the immediate consequences, untreated sleep apnea has a number of medium and long-term consequences. One of them is high blood pressure. This is because the body is under stress due to sleep disturbances and releases more adrenaline, which causes an increase in heart rate and blood pressure at night. This high blood pressure no longer drops during the day, which puts additional strain on the cardiovascular system. For comparison: in healthy people, blood pressure usually drops by 10 to 15 percent at night.

In patients with obstructive sleep apnea, the constant increase in blood pressure and the obvious lack of oxygen in the blood place a heavy burden on the heart and circulatory system. Diseases such as heart failure and heart attack are preferred in this way. The risk of atrial fibrillation (an arrhythmia) is also increased: About one-third of patients suffering from cardiac arrhythmias have sleep apnea that requires treatment, writes the Heart Foundation journal “HERZ heute.” Additionally, with obstructive sleep apnea, the risk of heart attack triples, while life expectancy is shortened by nearly a decade, according to CardioSecur.

For the same reason as cardiovascular risk, people with sleep apnea are also more likely to have a stroke – studies in the US and Sweden show it’s up to three times more likely. Causes are poor blood flow and deposits from narrowings in the carotid arteries, which can lead to occlusion of a vessel and eventually stroke. Sleep doctors from Yale University, USA, have studied that people with sleep apnea are twice as likely to have a stroke than people without the disease.

As this blog entry demonstrates, the link between sleep apnea and type 2 diabetes has been explored, among other things. The frequency of sleep-related respiratory disorders in diabetics is generally estimated at around 60 percent. The reason is stress affecting the body: this releases sugar reserves in the liver and also inhibits the action of the body’s own insulin. The result is a permanently high blood sugar level. Fatal: The two diseases affect each other and in a dual package also greatly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Its potential impact on mental health should not be underestimated. According to experts, depressive illnesses are almost always accompanied by sleep problems. The Lausanne HypnoLaus study proves this link. It’s all about the neurotransmitters serotonin and noradrenaline in the brain: If there are malfunctions in the nerve centers responsible for sleep disorders, this can have a devastating effect on the psyche. An Australian study published in the “Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine” highlights the extent to which the two diseases are related: More than two-thirds of those affected by sleep apnea suffer from depressed moods. In addition, the more pronounced the patient’s sleep apnea, the greater the likelihood of a depressed mood.

Solution: None of these results should be taken lightly under any circumstances, a doctor’s visit is indicated for all the symptoms mentioned. The good news is that you can do something against sleep apnea: There are now plenty of therapies that you can discuss with the doctors at ETH spin-off Sleepiz and then find out what works best for you.

And nowadays the disease can also be analyzed quickly and easily. While it was necessary to go to the sleep laboratory in the past, now sleep apnea can be easily scanned at home using the Sleepiz system, for example. The startup has developed a device that measures your sleep from the comfort of your own bed. Our overview below shows you exactly how this works.

• Device order: Click the button below to receive the desired device by mail.
• Sleep on screen: Put the device on the nightstand and turn it on before going to bed. Repeat this for the next two nights.
• Data transfer: Measurement data is transmitted automatically and securely via the cloud.
• Return the device: After three nights of measurement, you return the device to Sleepiz.
• Get report: You will then receive a detailed report of your results, which you can now discuss with your family doctor.

Source : Blick