Sleep Apnea Can Pose Serious Threats to You and Others if It’s Not Diagnosed and Treated

Because the primarysymptoms of sleep apnea— the pauses in breathing and the gasping and snoring that can accompany them — occur during sleep, manypeople with sleep apneamay not even realize it’s happening.

Great — if you don’t even know you’re experiencing symptoms they can’t bother you, right? Wrong. That’s definitely not the case when it comes tosleep apnea.

Sleep apnea, particularly when the disorder goes undiagnosed or untreated, has been linked to a wide-array of health problems, such ascardiovascular disease, diabetes, and evenglaucoma, and it may also increase your risk of death. Additionally, the fatigue you may experience — thanks to continuously being woken up during the night — can lead to accidents that could pose a threat to you or others around you.

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“It’s a huge public health challenge,” saysRonald Chervin, MD, director of thebob ios下载 Centers and professor of sleep medicine and of neurology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Here’s why those small pauses in breathing that happen because of sleep apnea can lead to some serious complications if you ignore the problem.

When those pauses in breathing happen, the oxygen levels in your blood drop, which triggers your brain to increase your heart rate and blood pressure (the fight-or-flight stress response) to wake you up, so you start breathing again. You likely don’t notice it happening, but these chronic cycles of accelerated heart rate and increased blood pressure increase inflammation throughout the body.

And that’s a problem because chronic inflammation can contribute to buildup of plaque in the arteries (atherosclerosis), which can strain the cardiovascular system and increase therisk of heart attackor stroke. Chronic inflammation can also damage thepancreasand cause type 2 diabetes.

“There’s good evidence that havingobstructive sleep apneaputs you at increased risk for high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and death,” saysJames Rowley, MD, professor of medicine and division chief of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

Though for other complications that have been linked to sleep apnea, it’s still unclear whether having sleep apnea puts you at a higher risk for the condition, or if sleep apnea is actually a result of having the underlying condition, explains says Chervin. “It’s not clear which is causing which,” he says. This is the case for complications, such as asthma and metabolic syndrome.

Regardless of causes, the list of health conditions you should be aware of that can be related to sleep apnea include:

• Metabolic SyndromeThiscluster of risk factors, including high blood pressure, abnormalcholesterol levels, elevated blood sugar, and excess body fat, which increase your risk for heart disease and diabetes, can be related to sleep apnea.
• Heart DiseaseAtrial fibrillation, heart attack, andheart failureare associated with sleep apnea.

  

• High Blood Pressure
• Stroke
• Type 2 Diabetes
• GlaucomaDecreased oxygen to the optic nerve due to sleep apnea results in nerve damage, which scientists believe may increaseglaucoma risk, according to a review published in the September–December 2016 issue of theOman Journal of Ophthalmology

  

• Pregnancy ComplicationsPregnancy complications, such asgestational diabetes, gestational high blood pressure, andpreeclampsia亚柯,可能与睡眠呼吸暂停有关rding to research published in January 2017 in the journalObstetrics and Gynecology.

  

• AsthmaResearch has shown that prevalence of asthma is high among people who have sleep apnea, and that the relationship also goes the other way — many sleep apnea patients are likely to experienceasthma symptoms, according to a review published in June 2017 in the journalScientific Reports.

  

• Liver DamageResearch has found that sleep apnea can worsennonalcoholic fatty liver diseasein adults and adolescents, and the severity of theliver diseasewas linked to the severity of the sleep apnea, according to data published in September 2016 in theJournal of Hepatology.

  

Sleep apnea that is undiagnosed or untreated can also put you at greater risk for neurocognitive problems and have detrimental effects on your mood. Because sleep apnea chronically prevents you from havingbob ios下载 , it can lead to problems, such as:

• Daytime sleepiness and fatigue
• Attention problems
• Inability to concentrate
• Problems with memory
• Irritability
• Depression
• Decreasedsex drive, per MedlinePlus

  

• Poor school performance (in children with sleep apnea)

Don’t forget that sleep apnea also frequently causes people with the condition to snore or make gasping noises during their sleep, which can affect — and disturb — their partner’s sleep, too. So consider sleep deprivation in partners a potential complication of sleep apnea, too, which can strain your partner’s health and your relationship.

由于生理、认知和psychological damage this sleep disorder can cause over time when it isn’t properly treated, undiagnosed sleep apnea can take a toll on your well-being, and increase your risk for death. Sleep apnea that is untreated is a ticking time bomb that may not go off after one or two nights, but over time the damage the condition causes can be deadly, Dr. Rowley explains.

Finally, beyond the complications that undiagnosed and untreated sleep apnea can pose to your health and well-being (and that of your sleep partner), it can also be a public health threat.

Drivers who have untreated sleep apnea can be a danger to themselves as well as anyone else they encounter on the road. Truck drivers, who are on the road making long, monotonous trips and often driving at night can pose a particular risk.

“Plus, there’s a high prevalence of sleep apnea in long haul truck drivers,” Chervin says. Some possible reasons include the fact that these drivers tend to be middle-aged men, are sedentary, eat out (usually unhealthy fast food), and tend to have poor sleep habits to begin with because of their work schedules (which can contribute to weight gain), Chervin says.