Essay On Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a common disorder in which you have many pauses in your current breathing while you sleep. The pauses last anywhere from a few seconds to minutes at a time and seem to occur more than 30 times an hour. Sleep apnea is usually an ongoing condition which disrupts your sleep and in turn makes you tired during the day because the quality of your sleep is poor. The most common type of sleep apnea is obstructive. This is where the airway collapses or becomes blocked during sleep, causing shallow breathing or pauses. (Mayo Clinic 2015) When breathing though the blockage, snoring is caused which is often mistaken and undiagnosed. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is often found with people that are overweight, but does not pertain only to

Polysomnography is a sleep study that records certain body functions as you sleep, or try to sleep. (NIH 2015) Usually it is done at a sleep center and measures airflow in and out of your lungs as you breathe, the level of oxygen in your blood, heart rate, eye movement, and brain waves. Polysomnography can also diagnose other sleep disorders such as narcolepsy and REM behavior disorder. Sleep studies are done to help diagnose the problem specifically to the patients needs. Usually done at sleep centers over night the first thing found is the total sleep time. This is taken note of and is a measure to find different types of tests. It is also tested for the efficiency of their rest by measuring how long it takes to fall asleep along with how one has felt after sleeping for a certain period of time. The next test that is measured is the stages of sleep a person has, normally 4 stages of deep dreamless sleep, non REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and a fifth of which is dreaming (REM). There are also many other tests done throughout the night but another important test done by the poysomnogram is looking at certain rhythms of the heart and if abnormalities are present. (NIH