Diagnosis And Symptoms Of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA)

One of the major side effects of regular nocturnal snoring results in many people is sleep apnea. It is defined as the cessation of regular airflow while asleep due to an obstruction in the respiratory track. These pauses in normal breathing become a clinical issue when the pauses become frequent and longer than 10 seconds. Usually, it is considered a health hazard if the pauses are more than 10 times within an hour.
The real reason why obstructive sleep apnea happens only during sleep and no pauses when you are awake is due to lack of muscle tone when the body completely relaxes during sleep. When you are awake, the muscles are tight and toned, thus, there is no snoring or pauses in breathing but the muscles relax and lose the ability to keep the tongue from falling back in or the pharynx to block the breathing passages.
Major symptoms of sleep apnea
The reason that you wake up with a snort, gasping for breath is the automatic response to the brain's command to start breathing again. If you have frequent episodes of gasping for breath and waking up to breathe, you need to get yourself evaluated for it. The frequent waking up sessions is another reason that you might be feeling drowsy all day long. And you might just not feel drowsy but the constant sleep deprivations builds over time leading to restlessness, irritability and heightened mood swings that not just affect your own personal feelings but affects the whole family and your partner. That is why it is your bed partner who notices the frequent changes in breathing or the family members that are disturbed by the snoring.
Some of the first symptoms that are noticeable about Obstructive Sleep apnea includes heavy and loud snoring with pauses, short temper, headaches in the morning, mood swings, anxiety, irritability, daytime drowsiness, low libido, sleep deprivation resulting in fatigue. But you need to remember that just because you snore is not a viable reason to develop sleep apnea. However, you may have a few of these symptoms but those with sleep apnea will have most of these symptoms all the time.
Sleep Apnea Diagnosis
The spectrum of sleep apnea is high. There are ways to diagnose it and the most common is the AHI index or the apnea/hypoanpea index. Pauses of breathing less than 10 per hour are not usually associated with a medical issue but to start with you have to undergo tests at a sleep laboratory. You'll need to spend a night where different equipment will monitor the quality of sleep and the number of times you wake up. Based on the results, a specific treatment plan will be formulated. But before the treatment plan is made, you'll be required to undergo the polysomnography test which includes ECG, EEG, EMG and mouth and nasal airflow examination. But it is only done in serious cases otherwise nursing observation and pulse oximetry is done to diagnose.

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