Unfortunately many people within the Cincinnati Ohio area, as well as many people around the world, suffer from sleep apnea. There are no shortages of significant side effects that come from this condition. Not only can it affect your sleep, it can affect the sleep of your spouse or partner and it can also be linked to a wide variety of different health concerns.
If you have woken up in the middle of the night unable to breathe or gasping for air, you snore heavily or you have notice that your sleeping is greatly disturbed , you need to consider the possibility that you have sleep apnea. Of course, this isn’t something you’ll be able to diagnose on your own.
The first thing you want to do if you suspect sleep apnea is visit if physician for a formal diagnosis. Your primary care physician may diagnose you with sleep apnea, however, in most cases your doctor will refer you to a Sleep Apnea Cincinnati OH specialist in order to make the final diagnosis.
Once you’ve been diagnosed with sleep apnea, then it is a matter of what treatments are going to work best for you to either reduce or eliminate the effects of sleep apnea. In some cases, it may be as simple as losing weight. People who drink a great deal of alcohol, smoke cigarettes and are overweight can see a remarkable decrease and sometimes a complete elimination of sleep apnea were they to get healthy.
In other instances, your condition may require the help of certain devices such as a CPAP device, which keeps your airways open throughout the night, or an EPAP, which is an alternative for people who can’t work with a CPAP machine. In more severe cases, surgery to remove excess tissue may be recommended.
Not only can sleep apnea make you extremely drowsy throughout the day from a lack of quality sleep, but sleep apnea has also been linked to serious conditions such as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, heart attacks, diabetes and many more.
If you think that you or your spouse or partner has sleep apnea, it’s important that it be diagnosed and that a treatment plan is put in place in order to reduce or eliminate sleep apnea.
