How to Identify Sleep Apnea Symptoms

Posted By EightNine On 24th April 2011

Although sleep apnea is quite common most people who have the condition don’t realize it. This can be dangerous since there are some serious health and safety risks to having the problem undiagnosed. The challenge with diagnosing it is that the sleep apnea symptoms are hard to spot and can be easily confused with other conditions. The result is that many people are not getting the treatment that they need. This is why it is important to be able to identify sleep apnea symptoms so that you can get treatment if you do have the condition.

The only way to clearly spot sleep apnea symptoms is to have somebody watch you sleep. This is why if your doctor suspects that you may have the condition you will be sent to a sleep clinic. This will allow them to monitor you while you sleep. What they are looking for is periods where you stop breathing during your sleep. These will normally be brief but they will occur fairly regularly. In most cases you will wake up gasping during these periods so if you have a partner they will likely be able to spot it as well. In general you won’t completely wake up out of your slumber so you probably won’t remember that it has happened so it is hard to recognize the problem on your own.

Since you are constantly being awakened while you sleep when you stop breathing another of the sleep apnea symptoms is feeling tired during the day. Since you are not able to get a really deep sleep you don’t get fully refreshed at night. That means that no matter how long you sleep for you never feel fully rested. This leads to a feeling of sleepiness during the day. Not only is this a sleep apnea symptom it is also a safety issue since that sleepiness can lead to accidents.

Far and away the most common of the sleep apnea symptoms, at least that people recognize is snoring. People who have the condition are usually very loud and chronic snorers. This is because their tongue blocks their airway while they are sleeping. While snoring is an important symptom it is important to realize that not everybody who snores has sleep apnea. There are even some people who have the condition and don’t snore. Therefore you are going to want to look for additional symptoms before you decide that you have sleep apnea.

Most people who have sleep apnea are overweight so this is something else that you can look for. Again this is not really something that you can use to make a definitive diagnosis, there are lots of overweight people who don’t have apnea and there are skinny people who do. Nevertheless it is another sleep apnea symptom that you can use to help you make a diagnosis. You just have to make sure that there are other symptoms present as well before you decide that you have a problem.

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