Sleep apnea devices; Are they worth investing in?
If you are reading this with matchsticks propping up your eyelids like a Saturday morning cartoon then you may need to consider the possibility that you have sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is where soft tissue around the throat region closes the throat causing a sufferer to stop breathing potentially hundreds of times during the night; making them constantly wake up to clear the blockage in a half-awake state. This means that instead of getting 4 hours of REM sleep each night allowing them to feel well rested in the morning, they are constantly deprived of deep sleep. Key symptoms are loud snoring or gasping during the night along with constantly changing their body position.
Sleep apnea is hard to diagnose as the sufferer is asleep the whole time and it is normally their partner that tells them about it first after being repeatedly disturbed during the night. If living alone this sleep deprivation is normally noticed by the tiredness that it causes.
Some sufferers will start changing their mattress and bedding thinking that it will help them feel more refreshed in the morning. However, while this can have its own benefits it is a costly way of finding out that it didn’t fix the original issue. Thankfully, a sleep apnea device can quickly help assess the sleep of a potential sufferer without the need for lengthy overnight observations commonly conducted after a referral from their healthcare professional.
These devices can be as small as a smart watch with a finger blood oxygen monitor attached to it. These can be worn comfortably and allow users to assess their sleeping challenges with relative ease from home.
The benefits of sleep apnea devices
A sleep apnea device may be used to assess whether the user’s blood contains enough oxygen during the night. Any type of obstruction to the throat may inhibit oxygen transfer to the blood supply and hence impact the user’s normal body function. Data is recorded over the course of the user’s rest and used to assess additional data logged in context. For instance, sleep apnea can be worse for some sleeping positions than others depending on the sufferer’s condition. A home sleep apnea test needs to assess this and when combined with other analytics help to identify if a change in sleeping position by creating pillow barriers may help resolve the issue. A home sleep apnea test normally assesses this along with snoring or noise data from the patient to help understand when obstruction occurs.
The causes of sleep apnea make it difficult to diagnose
Many people that suffer from sleep apnea are typically either overweight, born with smaller diameter throats or born with larger soft tissue areas around the throat than some others. However, obstructive sleep apnea may also be caused through use of inflammatory drugs or alcohol along with viral infections such as tonsillitis being the cause of the issue.
Better to be safe than sorry
80% of sufferers of sleep apnea do not know they have the condition and where a home sleep apnea test can be useful for diagnosis as it helps also to identify other health challenges such as cardiovascular and heart disease related issues. Cardiologists and other medical professionals are currently being trained to spot sleep apnea as it has a strong correlation between cardiovascular disease. If one is diagnosed early, it is much easier to remedy the other and why a home sleep test (HST) can be useful to help a sufferer’s long-term health and reduce long term stays in hospital or costly prolonged medical treatment.
