Do you feel sleepy all the time? Do you snore? Are you suffering from high blood pressure? If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, then you might have Sleep Apnea Sleep Apnea is a state which involves pauses or decreases in breathing during sleep. Sometimes a person stops breathing. It is usually due to airway collapse. This collapse occurs in the nose and/or in the throat – anywhere from where air enters the nostrils to the back of the tongue. In the daytime, it is not a problem because there is good muscle-tone in the airway and the brain monitors breathing. But at night, the throat muscles become relaxed and the brain does not pay more attention to the airway. So on inhalation, the airway walls significantly narrows down and breathing stops.

Maryland Sleep Center

This is a problem because 1) The body must struggle to breathe and
2) The brain has to “wake up” to reopen the airway. These frequent awakenings disturb your nighttime sleep. You may not remember how many times this happened last night because such awakening times are so short. In fact, sometimes patients with sleep apnea can wake-up more than 20 times in an hour and think that they slept very well through the night. Since sleep must be continuous and consolidated in order to be restorative, a number of problems can occur with sleep apnea such as: daytime sleepiness, memory problems, difficulties in concentration, emotional problems, irritability and annoying, reaction time slowness.
Maryland Sleep Centers

There are also cardiovascular consequences of this constant “struggling to breathe.” This puts a strain on the heart and blood vessels, leading to increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.
Maryland Sleep Apnea
Finally, there are social problems to Sleep Apnea. Your snoring can disrupt the sleep of others. In fact, one study showed that when a person treats his/her sleep apnea, the sleep partner gets the equivalent of one hour more sleep per night. Sleep apnea is a disease and often gets worse with age.