Inspire Sleep for Sleep Apnea

Understanding the Causes of Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a sleeping disorder that leads to sporadic breaks in breath or instances of hushed breathing while asleep. These pauses can last a few seconds to a few minutes and occur numerous times during the night.

There are two primary types wreaking havoc: obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and central sleep apnea (CSA). OSA is the most common type of sleep apnea; it strikes when the muscles stationed at the back of your throat fail to keep your windpipe open despite intense attempts to breathe. CSA, on its part, arises because of problems in how the brain communicates with those muscles having control over breathing.

Risk Factors for Sleep Apnea – Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

When it comes to the risk factors, both types of sleep apnea have their own reasons. For Obstructive Sleep Apnea, these could be:

1. Obesity

People carrying extra weight, especially with a high body mass index (BMI), often find themselves lugging around excess fat in the neck area. While sleeping, this extra mass could cramp up your airways, making regular breathing a little more difficult. This obstruction leads to episodes of apnea or hypopnea – when your breathing becomes shallow.

2. Age

As we collect more candles on our birthday cakes, our muscle tone starts losing its pep, even those muscles that keep the airways open. This makes it easier for airways to collapse while we’re catching some sleep – making middle-aged and older adults more susceptible to OSA.

3. Gender

Statistics point out that men are more likely to suffer from OSA than women. This could be a result of different fat distribution, hormonal shifts, or dissimilar airway constructions.

4. Family History

A family history of sleep apnea might indicate a genetic predisposition to the condition. This could involve inherited traits such as physical features that affect airway size and muscle tone.

5. Smoking

Those who smoke are more inclined to suffer from sleep apnea than their non-smoking counterparts. The damage? Inflammation and fluid retention in the airways due to smoking can block airflow.

6. Alcohol and Sedative Use

Alcohol and sedative use cause relaxation for muscles—airway control muscles included. A sip or pill, particularly before sleep, only increases the risk of airway obstruction during sleep.

Risk Factors for Sleep Apnea – Central Sleep Apnea (CSA)

For Central Sleep Apnea, the following risk factors are included:

1. Age

Similar to OSA, CSA harbors a bias towards older adults. It’s speculated that the age-related shifts in brain function that meddle with breathing control could be responsible.

2. Heart Disorders

People dealing with heart issues like congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation might not respond typically to lower oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. This irregularity can pave the way for CSA.

3. Stroke

When stroke strikes, it can interfere with those parts of your brain that keep tabs on your breathing rhythm—increasing the odds of CSA development for stroke survivors.

Complications of Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea, marked by frequent pauses in breathing when asleep, can bring about various health troubles. Some could be severe or even jeopardize lives. Let’s delve deeper into these ramifications:

1. Daytime Sleepiness

With sleep apnea causing people to wake up repeatedly throughout the night, they can feel like nodding off often during daytime hours – chronic drowsiness. This condition might make it tricky for them to focus, get work done effectively, or manage routine chores.

2. Increased Blood Pressure (Hypertension)

The disruption to the normal sleep rhythm and reduced oxygen levels in the blood caused by sleep apnea prompts your body into stress mode. This uneasy situation triggers hormone secretion that increases blood pressure levels.

3. Heart Disease

The lack of oxygen during those apnea episodes can cause cardiovascular issues, such as heart attacks, strokes, and even heart failure.

4. Type 2 Diabetes

Those wrestling with sleep apnea stand on shaky grounds when developing type 2 diabetes. Insomnia and shortness of breath threaten insulin sensitivity, opening the door to glucose intolerance. Both these factors are usual suspects leading up to diabetes.

5. Liver Problems

Sleep apnea has been associated with a greater likelihood of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This condition causes fat to pile up in your liver, sparking inflammation and potentially damaging it.

6. Sleep-Deprived Partners

Sleep apnea isn’t just rough for the person who has it – It can also throw a wrench in the lives of their bed buddies. Those thunderous snores with sleep apnea don’t make for peaceful nights, causing sleep deprivation and fostering relationship tensions and problems over time.

Inspire Sleep for Sleep Apnea | The Solution We Were Looking For

In addressing sleep apnea, various remedies are accessible. Gwinnett Sleep offers CPAP clinics and deploys sleep studies as solutions for this condition. They have a more holistic approach as well. Aside from CPAP therapy, they provide sleep consultation services and carry out in-office and at-home sleep studies so that patients can have a sound sleep without discomfort hindering their rest.

Inspire Sleep represents a lifeline for those struggling with obstructive sleep apnea who can’t stomach or see any benefits from continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP Machine) treatment. Essentially, it’s an implant that gets to work by poking the hypoglossal nerve, which controls the muscles in the tongue and critical airway muscles. This Sleep Apnea device is implanted through a simple surgical process to stay under the skin around your neck and chest. The entire operation is managed by a remote-steered mechanism that gets activated pre-bedtime, sending gentle vibrations to the hypoglossal nerve to keep that airway free while you’re dreaming away.

But how good is Inspire Sleep? Clinically speaking, numerous studies show that Inspire Sleep Apnea treatment holds its own by substantially decreasing both apnea and hypopnea incidents per hour and enhancing overall sleep quality, along with reducing daytime sleepiness! As a bonus, using Inspire therapy has improved lifestyle and reduced potential health risks linked with untouched sleep apnea, like cardiovascular disease.

Conclusion

Sleep apnea is an all too common night terror that can become a serious health nightmare if ignored. Knowing what puts you at risk and how ugly it could get is vital for catching it early on and treating it effectively. If you’re worried about yourself or a loved one snoring in your ear, consult a healthcare provider at Gwinnett Sleep to talk about symptoms and solutions.

FAQs

Exploding Head Syndrome While Awake

Whether you’ve been dealing with sleep disturbances for years or recently began experiencing troubling symptoms, the sleep disorder called exploding head syndrome (EHS) can be extremely frightening and disruptive. While the cause is still largely unknown, and little medical research has been conducted on it, current theories offer some insight into what may trigger EHS episodes – find out more here.

What is exploding head syndrome?

Exploding head syndrome was initially described in 1876; however, it was not officially classified as a sleep disorder until 2005. EHS is considered parasomnia, a disruptive type of sleep disorder in the same category as sleepwalking and sleep terrors. 

While it may sound like the title of a sci-fi movie, exploding head syndrome is an actual medical condition that causes loud noises in your head when falling asleep or waking up. These noises range from scary imaginary explosions to claps, bangs, roars, screeches, gunfire sounds, and more. Even if this phenomenon isn’t as widely discussed as other sleep conditions, such as narcolepsy or insomnia, many people suffer from it but don’t know its name. 

Experts say, “These events occur during the wake-sleep/sleep-wake transition period and generally last less than a second. Events are often accompanied by flashes of light and patient distress, but there is no significant associated pain.”

While it sounds painful, it’s good to understand that other than disturbing sleep and perhaps causing emotional distress, the jarring noises aren’t real and do not cause physical harm to the person experiencing them or anyone nearby. 

Thankfully, the prevalence of EHS is relatively low. About 10 percent of people may experience this at least once in their lifetime. However, some encounter the symptoms sporadically.

Symptoms of exploding head syndrome

While there aren’t many symptoms, the ones that occur can be frightening and confusing, especially when experiencing them for the first time. 

To become diagnosed with exploding head syndrome, someone must meet all of the following criteria, according to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders. 

  1. Complaints of loud noises or sensations that mimic the effects of an explosion in the head during transition periods between sleep and wakefulness.
  1. Feelings of intense arousal, and possibly fright, following these episodes.
  1. No significant physical pain during or following the episodes.

Others may encounter flashes of light and twitching muscles. Overall, the experience only lasts about one second, although people might feel like it was longer. Although there are hypothesized causes, there is no single known cause for this sleep disorder. 

Can exploding head syndrome occur while awake?

Simply put, no, exploding head syndrome does not occur while awake. Because these episodes happen during the transition between sleeping and waking, to many, it seems as if they experience EHS while awake. The symptoms of the sleep disorder are what rouse people to wake up, often startled and confused. 

Conclusion

If you’ve ever woken up to a loud noise that seems to be coming from inside your head, you may have experienced exploding head syndrome. Although it can be frightening, especially if you’ve never experienced it before, exploding head syndrome is not harmful. If you’re experiencing sleep problems or disorders, contact the caring team at Gwinnett Sleep to help. They will work with you to find a solution so you can get the restful night’s sleep you deserve.

How to Stop Exploding Head Syndrome ?

Do you experience loud explosions in your head just as you are fading off to sleep? Are these episodes accompanied by flashes of light and intense fear? If yes, then you may have exploding head syndrome (EHS). While researchers hypothesize why this strange sleep disorder occurs, there is no simple explanation as to why about 10% of the population experience it at one point in their lives. This unexplained phenomenon can be highly distressing for those affected. But the good news is that there are steps you can take to help stop EHS from occurring and get some much-needed restful sleep. 

How to know if you have exploding head syndrome

Exploding head syndrome is a type of sleep disorder that occurs suddenly, either when you are beginning to fall asleep or when you wake up in the middle of the night. This sleep disorder is characterized by hearing a loud noise or crashing sound in your head, which is not authentic or heard by anyone else. Along with the sound, EHS can also cause the patient to see flashes of light and experience muscle spasms. Unlike the name suggests, these episodes are not painful.

According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, the following criteria are symptoms someone must experience to be diagnosed with exploding head syndrome. 

  1. Complaints of loud noises or sensations that mimic the effects of an explosion in the head during transition periods between sleep and wakefulness.
  2. Feelings of intense arousal, and possibly fright, following these episodes.
  3. No significant physical pain during or following the episodes.

Fortunately, the entire episode only lasts one to two seconds, even though it can seem long to those who encounter them. 

If you think you may have exploding head syndrome, please seek a diagnosis with a licensed sleep specialist; do not simply assume this is what you are experiencing. Other medical conditions have these same symptoms. 

Available treatments for exploding head syndrome

As stated previously, a direct cause has not yet been connected to exploding head syndrome; however, there are a few theories researchers believe may be true, such as: 

  • A temporary increase in the activity of your brain’s sensory neurons
  • Damage or dysfunction in your inner ear structures
  • Abnormal attention processing in your brain during the sleep-wake transition
  • An aura that occurs before a migraine
  • Side effects from suddenly stopping selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors 

While the FDA has officially approved nothing, some sleep specialists prescribe a few different medications known to treat the symptoms of EHS. These are topiramate, nifedipine, amitriptyline, and clomipramine, which are all used to treat other conditions. 

ConclusionAs an alternative or in addition to medication, people with EHS can do some things at home to help stop the disorder. Practice de-stressing techniques such as yoga, meditation, baths, or reading before bed. Keeping good sleep habits may also help reduce or stop the symptoms.

Ultimately, speaking to a sleep specialist before attempting any at-home remedy is wise. Be 100% sure EHS is what is going on and not something else more dire.  

Conclusion

Exploding head syndrome may not have one specific cause, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any possible treatments to try to stop it from happening. If you regularly experience EHS or have only had it a few times and are worried, the best option is to consult a sleep specialist who can help you create a treatment plan. At Gwinnett Sleep, our specialists are dedicated to helping our patients get the rest they need and deserve. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you treat your sleep disorder.