OSA occurs when the tongue and soft palate collapse onto the back of the throat and block the airway during your sleep. It restricts the flow of oxygen and causes like snoring or gasping.

OSA occurs when the tongue and soft palate collapse onto the back of the throat and block the airway during your sleep. It restricts the flow of oxygen and causes like snoring or gasping.

When your breathing pauses or becomes shallow during sleep, you’ll often move out of deep sleep and into light sleep.
As a result, the quality of your sleep is poor, which makes you tired during the day. Sleep apnea is a leading cause of excessive daytime sleepiness.

When your sleep is disrupted by sleep apnea, when you’re not breathing, the oxygen level in your body falls and excites receptors that alert the brain.
In response, the brain sends signals through the nervous system and essentially tells the blood vessels to “tighten up” in order to increase the flow of oxygen to the heart and the brain. Thus, your blood pressure goes up.

When you don’t get enough sleep, your level of ghrelin (feel hungry) goes up and your level of leptin (feel full) goes down, making you feel hungrier than when well-rested.
Also poor sleep and sleep deprivation may increase appetite. Because the psychological manifestations of fatigue, sleep and hunger are similar, we sometimes confuse them.

Breathing difficulties during sleep lead to frequent arousals with the development of impaired glucose control, the high-energy carbohydrate that cells use for fuel.
Also, sleep affects how your body reacts to insulin, the hormone that controls your blood glucose (sugar) level. Sleep deficiency results in a higher than normal blood sugar level, which may increase your risk for diabetes.

The more frequently people wake at night as a result, the higher the chances of developing depression.
When sleep is disrupted over and over, it can alter brain activity and neurochemicals that affect a person’s mood and thinking. It also can lead to emotional changes, clinical depression or anxiety.

When you stop breathing while you sleep, your heart rate drops and your involuntary reflexes make you startle into a micro-arousal, causing your heart rate to accelerate quickly and makes your blood pressure to rise. In addition, OSA can lead to repeated episodes of lower oxygen levels in the blood, increases in carbon dioxide levels, pressure changes in the chest, and increased inflammation markers in the body, all of which can wreak havoc on heart function.

When sleep apnea occurs, changes in pressures within the diaphragm and the chest cavity make conditions favorable for acid reflux.
It is also thought that an episode of apnea could alter digestive processes in a way that disrupts the function of the lower esophageal sphincter.

OSA creates a chronic inflammatory state that worsens or incites autoimmune disorders through the main pathways of intermittent hypoxia and sleep deprivation.
Researches show associations between sleep apnea autoimmune diseases:
– Patients with fibromyalgia have a tenfold increase in sleep-disordered breathing, including OSA.
– More than half of MS patients were found to have an elevated risk for OSA.