Sleep Disorders are very common. Waking up tired and being tired all day is definitely an epidemic of the age. Reducing sleep for school, job, family and life generally isn't good. The inability to rest regularly may need treatment. Sleep may be the universal building block for that body's capability to function.

Sleep problems tend to be more complex than lost hours counting sheep. Many medical disorders involve sleeplessness. Some of the main sleep problems are:

Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Bruxism or "teeth grinding"
Somnambulism or "sleep-walking"
Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) or "uncontrollable leg movement"
Rapid Eye Movement Behavior Disorder (RBD) or "acting out dreams while asleep"

Of sleeping disorders, sleep apnea affects around Twenty to thirty million Americans. Even sheer numbers such as these do not tell the entire story of methods bad sleep apnea has become.

Three main reasons for sleep apnea being the worst sleeping disorder is when it affects the mind, damages the heart and is dismissed as "no big deal".

1. Sleep Apnea Causes Temporary Brain Damage

Apnea affects the mind in many ways. Whenever a person's normal breathing pattern is interrupted while asleep, that person never falls asleep. Rest is perfect for your body but sleep is perfect for the brain. The mind reboots during sleep.

Imagine your computer running and running and running, unable to shut down, unable to repair and not able to defrag. It's really a matter of time until your computer breaks. A good thing about sleep apnea treatment with therapy for example CPAP, after a couple of weeks of deep sleep, the brain will be able to reset.

2. Sleep Apnea Causes Permanent Heart Damage

When a person has shallow or multiple non-breathing episodes while sleeping, blood oxygen levels drop. Blood carries oxygen to body tissues. In times of low blood oxygen levels, the heart pumps extra blood to make up for the loss. This could cause high blood pressure and irreversible changes to heart muscle.

One's heart is like any muscle in the body. The more it really works the larger it gets. One of the main reasons for heart failure and heart transplant is the heart becomes enlarged to some extent it no longer works because it should. An over worked heart is really a ticking time bomb but it is not the worst condition sleep apnea may cause.

sleep apnea

When a person spends hours lacking the necessary oxygen, blood oxygen levels drop lower and lower. See above, we know that. Sleep apnea can drop these levels so low it can trigger cardiac arrest. Even death.

Insufficient oxygen to heart tissue causes chest pain. Heart muscle stop from oxygen causes cardiac arrest. A heart attack while the body is shutting down to rest combined with a very low blood oxygen level will cause death. Not every time. Often the paramedics arrive to save the day.

3. Snoring is no problem. Right?

You snore. I snore. My uncle John snores. Everybody snores. No big deal...right? Snoring is typical but abnormal. Snoring indicates areas of the throat and mouth are reducing oxygen's path into the lungs. If you wake yourself up snoring or another person cannot sleep in your area from your snoring, it is just a few time before you develop full-blown medical conditions.

sleep apnea machine

Worst of all, many health conditions such as:

Stress
Moodiness
Chronic Chest Pain
Mental Deficiencies
High Blood Pressure
Weight Gain (in spite of clean diet with regular exercise)

are treated without any thought given to the chance that sleep apnea could be the cause of all of them.

Imagine being diagnosed with multiple medical problems, spending huge sums of money on doctor visits, treatments and medicines all because you have one easy, very treatable, medical problem. Sleep apnea truly is the for the worst situation sleep disorders.