What are the results or effects of sleep apnea on health?
What Happens When You Stop Breathing During Sleep?
If you have sleep apnea, you stop breathing during sleep, and the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood is upset.
This disproportion stimulates the brain to restart the breathing process.
Your brain signals you to wake up so that the muscles of the tongue and throat can increase the size of the airway. Next, carbon dioxide can escape, and oxygen can enter the airway.
So, these waking episodes are necessary to restart breathing (and to save your life), but you become sleep-deprived.
Keep in mind, sleep apnea has serious health consequences and can even be life-threatening. The main effects of sleep apnea are:
• sleep deprivation,
• oxygen deprivation.
Sleep deprivation
Both the person with sleep apnea and the bed partner suffer from sleep deprivation. Your bed partner may lose an hour of sleep each night from sleeping next to a person with sleep apnea.
Some trickle-down effects of sleep deprivation are:
• Daytime sleepiness
• A compromised immune system and slower healing
• Poor mental and emotional health
• Lack of smooth functioning of the body
• Decreased productivity
• A negative mood, irritability
• Low energy
• Unclear thinking, lack of concentration
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