Saturday, April 11, 2009

headaches and sleep apnea

Many sleep apnea patients have experienced severe headaches. Of course headaches are common among most people but there seems to be a correlation between lack of sleep and headaches, especially migraines.

Migraines are usually connected with the REM stage of sleep, which is the deepest sleep of the night and can occur 4 or 5 times. There are things that happen chemically in the brain during this stage that gives us the energy and alertness that we need to function through out the day. Since sleep apnea patients don't go into REM their brains are deprived of these chemical changes causing migraines.

Another cause of headaches is the lack of oxygen that sleep apnea patients experience on a nightly basis. Cluster headaches occur on one side of the head and usually during the last 2 hours of the night. There is also nasal problems and eye tearing with cluster headaches.

Feel free to comment and please subscribe to my RSS Feed
Thanks

3 comments:

  1. Decreasing level of oxygen prsence in the blood is by far the more probable reason of such types of headaches.It also happens after a full day's tyring work when a person did not get enough oxygen enriched deep breathing. Nice post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i have headaches every waking moment every day for over 5 years. stoped work over year ago, had mri and ct. mri said nothing wrong other than bulge in c5/6 ct revealed crystal cysts on both maxillary specialist said no need to remove this would be cause?? having spinal treatment for bad posture now(adjustment) but other day said to him it always so bad in morning and i'm sure i stopping breathing in sleep as stayed with mates and they all say same thing "sounds like i gasping to survive few times in sleep" he now thinks i may have sleep apnea. can this be my everyday cause of contant headaches that knowbody has ever found??

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stuart,
    Tell your doctor about how your sleeping seems to stop and ask him if a sleep study would be appropriate for you
    good luck

    ReplyDelete