Snoring and Sleep Apnea

Snoring in your sleep is very common. Almost everyone snores from time to time, although they may not admit it. Many people snore every night.

Scientists have discovered that snoring may not just be a threat to your relationship. When it is part of sleep apnea  it can prove to be fatal.

It is thought that almost one quarter of people in North America suffer from breathing disorders while they sleep; the problem is often magnified by obesity.

People with sleep apnea stop breathing many times  during their sleep. They can stop breathing for at least a minture more than a  hundreds of times in one night.  "Apnea" is a Greek word that means "without breath".

There are three kinds of sleep apnea: obstructive, central, and mixed, with obstructive being the most common. In obstructive sleep apnea, the throat closes repeatedly, preventing oxygen from getting to the lungs. People with central sleep apnea have brainstems that don't respond to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the bood quickly enough to cause breathng to occur at a healthy rate. Mixed sleep apnea is a mixture of obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea. Most people with sleep apnea suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea causes intermittent periods of oxygen deprivation, which, if they continue for years, can have severe consequences.

Of course, those who suffer from sleep apnea tend to feel exhausted from lack of sleep. However, they also suffer from high blood pressure and are at risk of suffering from a stroke or heart attack.

According to a study that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in March 2005, people with sleep apnea have triple the risk of dying from a heart attack in their sleep than the rest of the population.

It is possible that the devastating cardiovascular effects of sleep apnea can be prevented by taking supplements.

Case Western Reserve's Nanduri R. Prabhakar, a cell physiologist, wondered why people who develop oxygen deprivation from sleep apnea develop cardiovascular problems, when people who live in high-altitude environments with very low levels of oxygen, such as the Himalayas, do not suffer from cardiovascular stress.

Prabhakar performed experiments on rats in which he exposed one group to constant low levels of oxygen another group to normal levels of oxygen that were intermittently substituted with low levels of oxygen.

After a 10-day period, he found that those rats that were given intermittent low levels of oxygen suffered hypertension, while those rats that were continuously exposed to low levels of oxygen did not.

Prabhakar discovered that the two groups showed differences in their carotid bodies. The carotid body is a tissue in the main artery of the neck that detects oxygen levels. When the level of oxygen drops, the carotid body signals the nervous system to increase blood pressure and so increase the flow of oxygen through the bloodstream. When the level of oxygen drops and spikes repeatedly the system becomes stuck in the "on" position, constantly signaling the nervous system to raise the blood pressure.

Prabhakar believes that free radical scavengers may be able to overcome this effect of sleep apnea. He has found that giving his rats a free radical scavenger known as superoxide dismutase mimetic causes a reduction in hypertension

This might mean that a simple antioxidant supplement could have the same positive results in human beings. The only treatment at the moment for severe cases of sleep apnea a machine that forces a positive flow of air into the sufferer via a mask that must be worn throughout the night, so a pill would be very convenient by comparison.

A leading biochemist at the National University of Singapore, Barry Halliwell, does not believe antioxidants are the answer and says that the best way to tackle sleep apnea is to nip it in the bud by losing weight and lowering cholesterol levels.