SLEEP APNEA

There is a growing awareness in healthcare that aberrant sleep patterns and mouth breathing can and often do affect our health negatively.  This condition is typically slow to build, long standing and often missed as the cause of your ailment.  The term used is Sleep Apnea or Air-way Centered Disorder.

You begin to wake not as refreshed as you once did and you begin to fatigue more quickly during the day.  These symptoms are often blamed as “getting older”, stress, you can come up with multiple reasons.  This then results in the race from specialist to specialist to find the cause.  Usually, ending in no known cause and your condition escalates.

On average, you inhale and exhale approximately 18 times a minute at rest.  If that is compromised you are functioning with less oxygen per minute.  Eventually, symptoms begin to show.  Hopefully, treatment is applied before disease has been established.  You may also take notice if you are breathing more often through the mouth rather than the nose.  

Common Symptoms of sleep apnea: headaches, snoring, difficult sleep, back, neck and jaw pain, obesity and a draw toward an unhealthy diet.  The diet draw is due to the need for a quick fix of energy which is often short lived and leaves much residue.  Those residues ultimately, without going into a physiology class, lead to weight gain.  The danger cycle is then established.

If this sounds familiar, you may benefit from a consult and exam.  We, you and I, will determine the cause and if we can help.  Part of your treatment may include other specialists as well.  We will add to your team and find a collaboration to put you on track and get you off that merry-go-round.