Sleep Apnea Clinic

What is Sleep Apnea?

Sleep Apnea is a condition that causes you to stop breathing several times while you sleep. To protect you when this happens, your brain wakes you up, just about enough so you can resume breathing again. As a result you don’t get the restful, healthy sleep your body needs.

If it goes untreated, Sleep Apnea can cause serious health complications. But if it’s diagnosed and managed with adherence to your prescribed treatment, it can be mitigated, and even avert the risk of more serious complications.

Types of Sleep Apnea
  • Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA is the most common type and it happens when the throat muscles relax while sleeping.
  • Central Sleep Apnea occurs when the brain does not send proper signals to the muscles that control breathing.
  • Complex Sleep Apnea Syndrome, also known as Treatment-emergent Central Sleep Apnea, occurs when someone has both Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Central Sleep Apnea
Symptoms of Sleep Apnea

The most common symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Central Sleep Apnea often overlap and can include:

  • Loud snoring
  • Unusual breathing patterns while sleeping
  • Difficulty staying asleep
  • Waking up feeling short of breath or like you’re choking
  • Fatigue
  • Daytime sleepiness
  • Mood changes like irritability, depression or anxiety
  • Difficulty concentrating, memory loss
  • Headaches, especially after you wake up
  • Insomnia
  • Night sweats
  • Sexual dysfunction
Symptoms-of-Sleep
Risk-Factors
Risk Factors

Although Sleep Apnea can affect anyone, even children, some factors can increase risk:

  • Being male
  • Being older
  • Excess weight or obesity
  • A narrowed airway
  • Family history
  • Alcohol, sedative or tranquilizer use
  • Nasal congestion
  • Medical conditions like congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and more can increase risk
Central Sleep Apnea
  • Being older
  • Being Male
  • Heart disorders
  • Using narcotic pain medication
  • Stroke
How Sleep Apnea disrupts your sleep cycle?

As you sleep, your brain continually monitors your body’s functioning and adjusts your breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and more. With Sleep Apnea, low breathing (hypopnea) or the interruption of normal breathing (apnea) can cause your blood oxygen levels to drop. This triggers your brain to reflexively wake you up just enough to start breathing again and resume your sleep cycle.

When Sleep Apnea is severe, these interruptions occur more often. The severity of Sleep Apnea is gauged by an Apnea/Hypopnea Index (AHI) that measures the average number of hourly apnea or hypopnea events. Sleep Apnea is diagnosed through a Sleep Study and can be categorized as mild, moderate or severe.

Mild Sleep Apnea is characterized by an AHI of between 5 and 15 events per hour. Moderate Sleep Apnea indicates AHI of 15 to 29 events per hour. Severe Sleep Apnea is diagnosed by an AHI of over 30 events an hour.

Sleep Study for Sleep Apnea Diagnosis

The best way to diagnose Sleep Apnea and other sleep disorders is through a Sleep Study. Also known as Polysomnography, it is a comprehensive test that records your brain waves, the oxygen level in your blood, heart rate and breathing pattern, as well as eye and limb movements during sleep.

Why is a sleep study done?

At Total Health, doctor may recommend you a sleep study if you have:

  • Sleep Apnea or other related breathing disorders
  • Periodic limb movement disorder: conditions such as restless legs syndrome
  • Narcolepsy: overwhelming daytime drowsiness
  • REM sleep behavior disorder: this disorder involves acting out dreams as you sleep
  • Unexplained chronic insomnia: if you consistently have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep
  • Chronic snoring
  • Symptoms of tiredness
sleep-study
What to expect from a home Sleep Study test?

Total Health offers the sleep study at the convenience of your home. With a home Sleep Study you get to sleep in the comfort of your home and avoid traveling to an unfamiliar setting.

Once you are recommended for a sleep study, our technologist would visit your home in the evening to connect sleep device on your body. The device is worn overnight to monitor breathing, oxygen level, brain activity, cardiac activity and your body movement using simple sensors applied to the skin’s surface.

At the end of your study, you can return the equipment to our facility and results will be ready within 24-48 hours.

Book your sleep study today