Monday, October 12, 2009

Sleep Apnea Symptoms

I probably should have written about this a long time ago but better late than never. How do you know if you have sleep apnea symptoms? It seems that more and more people every day are tested for this condition and they find out that they indeed have sleep apnea. Unfortunately there are still many who don’t have any idea that they may have it. They wake up every day tired and restless and just write it off as a bad night's sleep or maybe they think they are just a light sleeper, when in fact there is a much deeper problem.

What are the sleep apnea symptoms?

In my own case, I knew that there was a problem because my wife complained about my snoring and how it kept her up all night. It would get a little better when I slept on my side or on my stomach, but I didn’t find those sleep positions very comfortable. But what really did it for me was a friend at work talked about going to a sleep study and how he was fitted for a cpap machine. He told me that his wife complained about his snoring also and she suggested that he go to a doctor and see if there was anything that could be done. He described the sleep study, which was strange and the cpap, which really seemed strange at the time. I had heard very little about sleep apnea up to that time. Since my friend had some luck with it I decided to see a sleep doctor myself.

My GP suggested a pulmonologist, a lung doctor. Pulmonologists aren’t the only type of doctors who can be seen for sleep disorders. ENTs, neurologists, and primary care physicians can also care for sleep patients.

I described my sleeping patterns and I told him about how I snored. He told me that the type of snoring that I described was a symptom. He asked me how I felt in the morning, was I tired all the time, did I feel like I hadn’t slept? The answer was yes on both accounts.

The next thing that we talked about was weight, my weight. I am probably about 30 pounds overweight and he told me that sleep apnea is common in people who are overweight. That isn’t always the case but it is common to see overweight people with sleep apnea.

He then looked inside my mouth and saw that I had an enlarged tongue and a narrow throat; these are other problems of sleep apnea patients.

At this point the doctor decided that I needed a overnight sleep study for two reasons: one, to make sure I had sleep apnea; two, to see how bad my sleep apnea was.
Of course I had sleep apnea.

To recap my symptoms of sleep apnea are:
  • loud snoring
  • tired and restless in the morning
  • large tongue and narrow throat
  • being overweight

    There are other symptoms that I didn’t have such as headaches in the morning and I’m sure there are others that I have missed.

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1 comment:

  1. Hello, I found this website while I was looking for web sites related to sleep apnea symptoms.On the other hand, I have seen many of shift work side effects at some of my colleagues. Some have diabetes, others have ulcer, and others have excessive daytime sleepiness and loud snoring in the night.

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