Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Video Transcript

"Obstructive Sleep Apnea is a condition in which a person's airway closes for a number of reasons while they're sleeping, causing the body to startle itself awake in the absence of any breathing occurring. The word "apnea" comes from the Greek, literally meaning "no breathing." In Obstructive Sleep Apnea, when a person is relaxed and reclined when they're sleeping, the muscles in their throat relax, too. And, given a variety of other factors-the width of a person's neck; the overall diameter of their windpipe; soft palate issues; retrognathia, which is a jaw that's set back more, or sort of a diminished chin, is how that also might be said. These factors can contribute to the airway relaxing and closing during sleep, causing an apnea or a hypopnea, which is a decrease in breath. And because of this apnea or hypopnea, a person then wakes themself as a self-defense mechanism to avoid not breathing at all. A person can have anywhere to one hundred to two hundred of these a night. That would be considered a very severe case of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Even five to twenty awakenings a night, which would be considered a mild case of sleep apnea, is more than enough to disrupt a person's sleep and cause a number of issues during the day. Symptoms of sleep apnea are headache; dry mouth; a feeling of poor sleep-unrestedness. People report it as insomnia or daytime fatigue. It's not uncommon to have a person come to a sleep disorders office under those-a premise of something of that nature, and to, after a proper diagnostics, find out that it's Obstructive Sleep Apnea."