What is sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is an involuntary cessation of breathing that occurs while the patient is asleep. The Greek word “apnea” literally means “without breath.” There are three types of sleep apnea: obstructive, central, and mixed. Of the three, obstructive sleep apnea, often called OSA for short, is the most common. Despite the difference in the root cause of each type, in all three, people with untreated sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, sometimes hundreds of times during the night and often for a minute or longer. In most cases the sleeper is unaware of these breath stoppages because they don’t trigger a full awakening.
Causes
Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of your throat relax too much to allow normal breathing. These muscles support structures including the back of the roof of your mouth (soft palate), the triangular piece of tissue hanging from the soft palate (uvula), the tonsils and the tongue.
When the muscles relax, your airway narrows or closes as you breathe in and breathing may be inadequate for 10 seconds or longer. This may lower the level of oxygen in your blood and cause a buildup of carbon dioxide.
Your brain senses this impaired breathing and briefly rouses you from sleep so that you can reopen your airway. This awakening is usually so brief that you don’t remember it.
You can awaken with shortness of breath that corrects itself quickly, within one or two deep breaths. You may make a snorting, choking or gasping sound.
This pattern can repeat itself five to 30 times or more each hour, all night long. These disruptions impair your ability to reach the desired deep, restful phases of sleep, and you’ll probably feel sleepy during your waking hours.
People with obstructive sleep apnea may not be aware that their sleep was interrupted. In fact, many people with this type of sleep apnea think they slept well all night.
Veepoo’s sleep apnea monitoring
Veepoo’s sleep apnea monitoring has these main functions, such as monitoring heart load, monitor physical activity, apnea count and apnea monitoring report. Take an example of apnea monitoring. if you the same situation as sleep apnea, and you bought Veepoo’s science sleep watch series. Wear this watch during sleep time and it will shows you how many times you stop breathing and how many seconds were you stop. I would become a report to be read after you wake up in the morning which is very convience for sleep apnea patients.
