Did you know how sleep apnea affects your daily life? Sleep apnea may seem like any other sleeping problem. Sleep apnea occurs when your breathing pauses repeatedly which disrupts your sleep cycle. If left untreated, it may lead to severe health conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart problems, cancer, etc. So, learn about sleep apnea’s effects on life and how to manage sleep apnea to lower the risk of those health conditions. Visit the best Mental Health Clinic in Brooklyn at Doral Health & Wellness or log on to www.doralhw.org

What are the effects sleep apnea causes on life?

Sleep apnea can affect your health if you leave the condition untreated. It includes:

1. Excessive Daytime sleepiness:

One of the most common health effects of sleep apnea is excessive sleepiness and tiredness during the daytime. It also affects your mood, thinking, and concentration. It may increase your risk of workplace injuries and accidents. A study even shows that sleep apnea can double the risk of motor vehicle accidents.

2. Heart problems and strokes:

Sleep apnea can increase your risk of heart problems and stroke. It happens because when you stop breathing, oxygen levels drop in your body, to counter this problem your circulatory system starts to circulate more oxygen by increasing your blood pressure. Over time it can lead to heart problems or strokes.

Usually, sleep apnea is associated with these heart and circulatory problems which include:

• Atherosclerosis: This occurs when plaque starts to build up in your arteries which partially or completely blocks the arteries and hinders the blood flow.
• Heart attack: It occurs when atherosclerosis plaque ruptures. Blood clots and blocked blood flow lead heart muscle to die.
• Heart failure: When your heart gets too weak to pump blood properly and is not able to fill up enough blood to pump.
• Stroke and transient ischemic attract: When the inner walls of arteries get damaged or block the blood flow to the brain which makes brain cells die, can lead to stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA)

All these heart problems are severe and need immediate medical attention.

3. Type 2 diabetes:

Sleep apnea along with obesity can increase your risk of type 2 diabetes and more than half of people with type 2 diabetes suffer from sleep apnea. Similarly, obesity can increase the risk of both conditions.

Although studies haven’t shown any cause and effect between sleep apnea and type 2 diabetes, they believe it may happen because when you are not able to sleep properly, your body increases your blood sugar levels and does not allow cells to use insulin as they should, with this insulin resistance it leads to diabetes over time.

4. Obesity:

Obesity is believed to be the main contributor to sleep apnea and other major related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and fatty liver disease. However, that is not always the case.

When you have poor sleep, it disrupts the appetite hormones (such as ghrelin and leptin). Ghrelin can make you hungry, and leptin makes you feel satisfied after eating. Sleep apnea can increase ghrelin production and decrease leptin production which increases your craving to eat carbs and sweets at night which leads to weight gain.

Additionally, when you feel tired in the daytime, you might eat food to get energy to work efficiently which leads to weight gain.

5. Mental problems:

Sleep apnea also leads to certain mental health problems such as depression, brain fog, and memory loss. Poor sleep quality is the main reason for all these problems. It makes you tired, distracted, forgetful, slow to react, and disrupts thinking throughout the day which goes hand-in-hand with untreated sleep apnea.

Research shows that memory slips usually occur when someone has sleep-disordered breathing conditions like obstructive sleep apnea. To prevent this, you should get treatment before it gets worse.

You may experience other health issues such as cancer, lower sex drive, COPD, fatty liver disease, etc.

Tips to manage sleep apnea

You can manage your sleep apnea by changing certain lifestyles which include:

• Losing weight: If you are overweight or obese then the risk of sleep apnea is higher, however, losing weight may reduce or eliminate the symptoms.
• Avoid alcohol: Avoid alcohol before bedtime or evening because it may relax the structures around your airways and lead to breathing pauses.
• Quit smoking: Smoking cigarettes or tobacco highly increases your risk of sleep apnea and makes it worse over time. So, it’s better to quit it.
• Improve bedtime habits: When you improve your bedtime habits, it automatically reduces the risk of sleep problems. Follow a consistent sleep-wake time, get enough sleep, avoid caffeine or alcohol in the evening, and avoid screen or blue light exposure at least 1 hour before sleep.

Sleep apnea can severely affect your daily life by increasing the risk of health problems. However, you can prevent these effects by making some lifestyle changes to manage your sleeping problem.

If your sleep problems do not improve with lifestyle changes, come to our mental health clinic in Brooklyn for professional help. Call us to get a free consultation.

Book your appointment with the best mental health professionals in Brooklyn where doctors and staff ensure you get the best results. Call us on +1-347-384-5690 to get a consultation. If you need help learning coping methods, register your information and make direct contact with our doctors and psychiatrists to learn those methods, log on to www.doralhw.org. Visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11212.