Symptoms and Side Effects of Sleep Apnea
A quality night of sleep is important to a healthy lifestyle. But a common sleep disorder known as sleep apnea can prevent you from getting the restful sleep you need and deserve.
Side effects of sleep apnea include:
- Daytime drowsiness
- Stress
- Fatigue
- Moodiness
- Difficulty concentrating
- Memory loss, and more…
Other more serious side effects of sleep apnea include accidents at work or while driving, high blood pressure, heart problems, and risk of premature. What’s more, untreated sleep apnea doesn’t just endanger yourhealth. It can also endanger your partner’s health. Since one of the most common signs of sleep apnea is snoring, you could be preventing your partner from getting the kind of sleep they need, resulting in similar side effects for them. All of which means that if you regularly experience any of these symptoms, it’s time to find out if you have sleep apnea.
The reason that patients with sleep apnea experience all these symptoms is that they actually stop breathing while they sleep. This prompts the brain to send out a signal waking the patient up so they can breathe. Sometimes that just means moving from a deep stage of sleep to a lighter stage of sleep, but in other cases you may wake up completely. But even if you don’t, you still aren’t getting the kind of sleep you need to feel rested during the day.
So, what causes sleep apnea? We’ll talk more about that in our next post. For now, if any of these symptoms look familiar, give Dr. Wade’s Frisco office a call to schedule a consultation appointment. Dr. Wade and her teamat Stonebriar Smile Design serve patients from Frisco, Plano, McKinney, Allen, Dallas, The Colony, and surrounding areas.
