Obstructive Sleep Apnea - the Not-So-Silent Assassin

Posted on March 22, 2008
Filed Under Health

Note: This guest post was written by Dr. Rick Donald. Check out his websites: www.stopmysnoringnow.com and www.slimtone.com.au .

An effective treatment for snoring and sleep apneea.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (or O.S.A. for short) is about as bad as it gets. People may joke about it, but O.S.A. is certainly no laughing matter because it can kill you. And according to the Mayo Clinic, up to 1 in 4 Americans suffer from this deadly health concern. Now this is a really worrying statistic to say the least.

Unfortunately O.S.A. sufferers can be totally unaware of their condition until their sleeping partner or someone who sleeps within ear shot tells them. If this sounds like you, the only indicator that you may notice is feeling tired all the time during the day.

So what exactly is O.S.A.? It refers to a snoring complication where breathing totally stops during sleep for a period of 20 seconds or more. You can experience up to 300 of these apniac events each night. They severely reduce your body’s ability to oxygenate your blood, forcing your heart to pump harder than it should to maintain equilibrium.

Prolonged nightly apniac events can then cause an enlargement of your heart, with the probability of associated cardio-vascular disorders such as high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and irregular heart beat.

And what causes O.S.A.? It occurs when your tongue, uvula and soft palate collapse into the back of your throat when you sleep, blocking your airways so you can’t breath. As your airways narrow even further, you start to snore loudly, then your body violently gasps for air as breathing totally stops, and your nightly dice with death continues as the cycle repeats itself. No wonder O.S.A. sufferers wake feeling absolutely exhausted!

Most at risk are unfit, middle aged, overweight males who have a thick neck and pot belly. They often have a family history of the condition and may have a sluggish thyroid.

Now the good news is that O.S.A. is a manageable condition. If you feel that you do suffer from this worrying health concern, have it checked out first to determine if you need to use a CPAP breathing machine, then look at your diet and lifestyle choices before you waste time and money on any other stop snoring treatments.

It’s important here to always remember that you are what you eat. Whilst it’s unlikely that dietary and lifestyle changes will totally cure your O.S.A., they certainly have the power to overcome some of the contributing factors that may be causing or worsening your Sleep Apnea so that its incidence and frequency reduces.

To learn more about these beneficial food and drink combinations, click here.

Dr Rick Donald is the author of Essential Stop Snoring Secrets. To find out more information about his book, visit http://www.stopmysnoringnow.com/stopsnoring.html