What is Obstructive Sleep Apnea?
Sleep Apnea is an involuntary pause of breathing during the sleep for 10 seconds at least. Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is the most common type of sleep apnea1
What happens during the night?
It is caused by an obstruction of the airway in the throat2 when the muscles relax during sleep.
The air flow is obstructed or reduced, causing the vibrations that result in snoring as the air passes through. This reduced air flow during sleep causes a lack of oxygen. The brain will notice this lack of oxygen and will respond with a sudden awakening to restore the breathe. Most of the time, the individual is not aware of these “microarousals” that do not last long.
This may happen a few times a night, or in more severe cases, several tens of times per hour. The repeated occurence of abnormally frequent interruptions of breathing during the night breaks up the sleep pattern so that it is no longer restorative.
Most of the time, the individual is not aware of it
What does Sleep Apnea mean concretely and how does it work?
Let’s discover everything you need to know in this short video:
References
1 The World Health Organization. Chronic respiratory diseases www.who.int/gard/publications/chronic_respiratory_diseases.pdf viewed 05/21/2015
2 Rules for Scoring Respiratory Events in Sleep: Update of the 2007 AASM Manual for Scoring of Sleep and Associated Events – Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, Vol. 8, No. 5, 2012