

Medical science has been working overtime to find a solution, from in-depth studies of hypoxia – how the body reacts to lack of oxygen – to new types of surgeries and appliances for treating the condition. This prevalence is also found globally: nearly a billion people around the world suffer from mild-to-severe sleep apnoea, according to a 2019 study. “They fail to link sleep apnoea with its many serious comorbidities,” says a report commissioned by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which estimates that it affects 12% of US adults – but 80% go undiagnosed. One study found that people with severe sleep apnoea were, all told, three times as likely to die during an 18-year period as those without.īut, as with smoking during the first decades after it was discovered to be lethal, there’s a disconnect between the harm that the condition causes and the public’s perception of it as a threat. It also fuels absenteeism, and people with apnoea are fired from their jobs more frequently than those without.
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A 2015 study of drivers in Sweden found that those with sleep apnoea are 2.5 times more likely to have an accident than those without. Lack of sleep also causes inattention that can lead to traffic accidents.
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Then there’s the exhaustion of never having a full night’s sleep, which is associated with memory loss, anxiety and depression. There’s also growing evidence that the condition affects glucose metabolism and promotes insulin resistance – leading to type 2 diabetes – and encourages weight gain. In the mid-1990s, the US National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research estimated that 38,000 Americans were dying every year of heart disease worsened by apnoea. Fluctuating oxygen levels also cause plaque to build up in the arteries, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke. This can happen hundreds of times a night, and the ill-effects are many and severe.Īpnoea puts strain on the heart, as it races to pump blood more quickly to compensate for the lack of oxygen. You then stir, gasping, trying to breathe.

With sleep apnoea, your air supply is continually interrupted, causing blood oxygen levels to plummet. The result is obstructive sleep apnoea – from the Greek ápnoia, or "breathless". But if your throat muscles relax too much, your airway collapses and is blocked. During these, most major muscle groups ease significantly. Tension in your muscles mostly stays the same as when you are awake – except during REM phases, which account for up to a quarter of your sleep. It’s made up of different phases, and as you move through them, your breathing, blood pressure and body temperature will all fall and rise. Sleep is marked by dynamic changes throughout the body.

Driving the car, my head would dip and then I would catch myself. During the day, I was so tired my knees would buckle.
