Sleep Apnea
Essay title: Sleep Apnea
SLEEP APNEA DISORDERS
General Purpose:
To inform
Specific Purpose:
I want my audience to understand the three types of sleep apnea disorders.
Thesis Statement:
Three very serious types of sleep disorders that can cause severe physical and psychological problems are obstructive, central, and complex sleep apnea.
Introduction
How many of you have been told that you snore? Do you wake up in the mornings still tired even after a full night’s sleep? Maybe you are always sleepy and can’t seem to stay awake during the day.
If so, you may suffer from a disorder known as sleep apnea.
This common sleep disorder is characterized by brief interruptions in breathing during sleep.
It affects millions of men, women, and children every night but many people don’t even know such a disorder exists; therefore, they are never diagnosed.
Today, I will share with you three types of sleep apnea disorders: obstructive, central, and complex.
(Transition: The first and most common form of sleep apnea is known as Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA.)
Obstructive Sleep Apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of the throat relax; therefore, restricting air flow during sleep.
This type of apnea should be easily recognized by a primary care physician; but unfortunately it is still largely under diagnosed for several reasons.
First, many people do not realize they are having breathing pauses during sleep.
Many times, if a patient does not have a partner to witness them snoring or gasping for breath during their sleep, they generally do not accurately described their symptoms to their physician.
Secondly, as Mark Tomlinson reported in an article in Nursing Standard, patients often deny that they snore due to social embarrassment.
And lastly, many patients do not even realize that these sleep interruptions are the reason for their excessive tiredness.
Due to overly active schedules, many people think that they are just tired from their busy lifestyles and do not see these signs of obstructive sleep apnea as the main reason for their fatigue.
Generally, patients report that they wake up with morning headaches, dry mouth, and just not having any energy.
In many cases, the patients have some type of accident or illness before they seek treatment for their excessive day time sleepiness.
Obstructive sleep apnea does not occur just in elderly, overweight patients as originally reported.
As Dr. Keith Holten reported in a recent article in the Journal of Family Practice, an estimated 12 million people in the US suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.
Approximately 2% of women and 4% of men ages 35 and younger are unknowingly affected by this disorder every night.
Further more, an estimated 3% of healthy children between the ages of two and six are also affected.
(Transition: Now that we have discussed the seriousness of OSA, let’s look at another and less common form of sleep apnea known as Central Sleep Apnea or CSA.)
Unlike OSA, in which the person stops breathing when their airway becomes blocked, central sleep apnea occurs when the brain fails to send the proper signals to the muscles that control breathing.
According to an article on the Mayo Clinic’s website, Mayoclinic.com, many people diagnosed with central sleep apnea are over the age of 65 and are often affected by heart disease, stroke, brain tumor, or neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s , Multiple Sclerosis and Muscular Dystrophy.
C. Brownlee reported in an article in Science News that Jack Feldman and his group of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, recently contributed the death of many elderly people who were reported as having died in their sleep from apparent heart attacks to actually being victims of undiagnosed central sleep apnea.
Central sleep apnea has also been reported as one major factor in the cause of death in premature infants and infants born full term but with congenital