You realize that you are exhausted all of the time, barely making it through your workday without nodding your head or guzzling down cups of coffee. You try to get to bed at a reasonable time, but it doesn’t make a difference in the morning — you still find it hard to keep your eyes open. It’s not good to feel this level of fatigue on a regular basis, which is why you need to ask a doctor if you have sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is a widespread problem that often goes undiagnosed because people assume it’s normal to be tired all day long. The disorder relates to a person’s inability to breathe consistently while they are sleeping.
The most prevalent and easily detectable version of the condition is obstructive sleep apnea — this is when your throat muscles relax too much and then block the airway for a moment, causing you to choke or gasp. The other version is central sleep apnea which happens when the brain stops signaling the body to breathe for ten to thirty seconds — this tends to be connected to other medical conditions like stroke, heart disorders or kidney problems.
The best way that people with obstructive or central sleep apnea can treat their conditions is to start continuous positive airway pressure therapy — a CPAP machine sends a controlled airflow through a tube and into a mask that covers your nose, mouth or both. The device is supposed to help your body get the oxygen that it needs and to keep your sleep from being interrupted.
Anyone with a diagnosis from a specialist should start CPAP therapy right away and head to ProfMed Healthcare Solutions to get the essentials. They have a wide selection of machines and masks that you can browse through to see if they suit you.
There are lightweight options for people that are worried about the mask feeling disruptive and straps that fit around the entire head for those that are anxious that they will fall off. There are lots of other questions and concerns that their trained representatives can address to make sure you get the sleep you need — if you are ever curious about where to go to buy CPAP supplies for your treatment, this is your best bet.
If you haven’t gotten a diagnosis yet, you should prepare yourself to go for a doctor’s appointment. Take stock of symptoms of sleep apnea like regular arousals in the night and frequent snoring that disturbs your bedmate or that can be heard through a door — it will be even better if you bring a doctor recorded evidence of these signs. Another common symptom that you may have noticed is extreme fatigue that impacts your work, driving or intimacy.
Sleep deprivation will negatively affect every aspect of your life, so it’s not something that you should brush off or put on the back-burner. When you start to notice that you struggle to get through the day, you need to seek help right away.