Excessive daytime sleepiness is a common symptom in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.
- Excessive daytime sleepiness affects people with obstructive sleep apnea.
- Excessive daytime sleepiness affects people with obstructive sleep apnea. She cripples their sleep by taking their breath away while sleeping, which can be up to 100 times in a night.
- Excessive daytime sleepiness, which is to be differentiated from fatigue after a short night, would affect one in five French people,
- The consequences of this sleep disorder can be dramatic, with insomnia while driving, reduced work productivity and memory and concentration problems.
Being too tired during the day can be abnormal: if the reason is not too short a night the night before, it can be pathological. Excessive daytime sleepiness is one of the consequences of obstructive sleep apnea. It is linked to the action of the muscles of the throat, which relax during the night: the airways are blocked, breathing stops and sleep stops. A person with this disease can stop breathing up to 100 times in one night, for a duration ranging from 10 to 30 seconds.
Sleep two hours a night for seven days
According to theHealth Insurance, one French person in five is affected by excessive daytime sleepiness. Depending on the individual, the symptoms are different: feeling of being badly awake, difficulty getting up, involuntary falling asleep during the day, frequent and necessary naps, etc. This type of fatigue must be differentiated from that felt after a night that is too short: you would have to sleep two hours a night for seven consecutive days to experience the same level of fatigue as a person suffering from excessive daytime sleepiness.
Impact on quality of life
Those affected are prone to mood, concentration and memory disorders. It can also increase the risk of an accident: 38.2% of people with obstructive sleep apnea who suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness have already fallen asleep at the wheel. This irrepressible fatigue can also lead to making mistakes at work and reducing productivity.
How to take care of it?
Treating obstructive sleep apnea can help overcome excessive daytime sleepiness. This consists first of all in improving the hygiene of life: stopping smoking, losing weight if necessary, more alcohol before bedtime, more sleeping pills, etc. The most common treatment is the continuous positive pressure device: the patient breathes with a mask that sends air into the airways to clear them. Another solution is to wear braces to stretch the pharynx and prevent blockage of the airways. As a last resort, surgery can treat the disease. Ten percent of patients would continue to suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness despite continuous positive airway pressure therapy. It could be related to irreversible changes in the brain, related to interrupted sleep and breathing.
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