How long does sleep apnea last

Can Respir J. Gabbay IE, Lavie P. Age- and gender-related characteristics of obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep Breath. Effect of topical corticosteroids on allergic airway inflammation and disease severity in obstructive sleep apnoea. Clin Exp Allergy. Continuous positive airway pressure therapy in obstuctive sleep apnea: benefits and alternatives. Expert Rev Respir Med. Awad, MI and Kacker, A.

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Changing Risk Factors. Is It Snoring or Sleep Apnea? Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Related Articles. What Is Snoring? An Overview of Causes and Treatments.

Learn more. In particular, undiagnosed sleep apnea is directly tied to an increased risk in cardiovascular and metabolic health. The scariest part? You might not even know you have this very common problem.

Sleep apnea occurs in about 3 percent of normal weight individuals but affects over 20 percent of obese people, Jun says. In general, sleep apnea affects men more than women.

However, sleep apnea rates increase sharply in women after menopause. Sleep apnea is often linked to heart disease and metabolic issues like diabetes. There are two kinds of sleep apnea : obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea.

Central sleep apnea happens when the brain fails to send the right signals to your muscles to make you start breathing. This type is less common. Snoring is just the vibration sound created by airway resistance. You can snore loudly and not have sleep apnea, and you may even have sleep apnea without much snoring. People with sleep apnea might also suffer from unexplained fatigue and mood swings, because their breathing interruptions continually wake them and prevent them from settling into a deep, nourishing sleep.

The consequences can be significant, Jun says. Other sufferers might wake up with a dry mouth, since sleep apnea tends to make you breathe with an open mouth, drying out your saliva. Some awaken with a headache, which may be caused by low oxygen or high carbon dioxide levels during sleep. While central and obstructive sleep apneas share many symptoms — such as episodes of pauses in breathing, constant awakenings during the night, and extreme sleepiness during the day — central sleep apnea often affects people who have underlying illnesses, too, such as a brain infection or other conditions that affect the brainstem, notes the American Sleep Apnea Association.

Certain drugs, such as opioids or benzodiazepines , can also play a role in central sleep apnea. Your doctor may refer you to a sleep specialist for a diagnosis if he or she suspects central sleep apnea, which may involve an overnight sleep test to rule out obstructive sleep apnea or other sleep disorders , notes Mayo Clinic. The sleep specialist may also work with your cardiologist or order scans of your head and heart to rule out other contributing illnesses.

Treatment of central sleep apnea typically means addressing the medical problems that are causing the apnea in the first place — for instance, treating heart problems may improve central sleep apnea symptoms. Reducing the dose of medication can sometimes be helpful, and positive pressure ventilation can be helpful, too, using either CPAP or another type of ventilator, called bilevel positive airway pressure BiPAP , according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Doctors have more recently identified a third type of sleep apnea called complex sleep apnea, which is a combination of obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea. Since CPAP is usually quite effective in treating obstructive sleep apnea, its failure to alleviate symptoms would suggest the patient had central sleep apnea. The problem is that there is still a lot of debate among sleep medicine specialists about what exactly is going on in complex sleep apnea, or what the key characteristics that define it are.

In a study published in the journal Sleep Medicine Clinics , doctors conducted a review of patients referred to the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center over one month, as well as 20 patients diagnosed with central sleep apnea.

They found that 15 percent of all sleep apnea patients had complex sleep apnea. As many as 84 percent were found to have obstructive sleep apnea, and 0. Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. June Watson NF. August National Sleep Foundation.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Stanford Health Care.