Sleep apnea is a truly serious and bothersome condition that can have mild to extremely serious effects on your health. There are a number of dangers of sleep apnea. It is a condition where the patient stops breathing while they are asleep. Once the oxygen content in the body decreases, the brain sends signal for the patient to get up, and he / she starts to resume breath with a gasp or a loud snore.

Some of the dangers of sleep apnea

There are a number of adverse effects of sleep apnea. Let us look at some of the sleep apnea effects at a glance, after which, we can talk about each of the effects in detail.

• Sleepiness and a feeling of tiredness
• Irritability
• Mood swings
• Mild to severe depression
• Sexual dysfunction
• Hypertension
• Memory difficulties
• Risk of stroke
• Risk of heart attack and other heart ailments

The psychological issues like depression and mood swings are the side effects of sleep apnea and must be taken seriously. A depression is not something that should be taken lightly. It can have serious consequences and as such, it is important that treatment for the apnea be started as soon as it is diagnosed.

Effects of sleep apnea – Sleep deprivation and related ailments

When you are suffering from sleep apnea, you are sleep deprived and tired. It is as if you have been woken 20 – 30 times from your sleep. This can be very stressful and you may end up feeling tired at work. Your performance will take a dip and you may be uncommunicative and slow. You will tend to fall asleep while driving or talking over the phone – giving rise to potentially fatal situations.

You will also tend to be irritable, which is even worse for people around you. One of the major sleep apnea effects include memory problems that come with it. It affects your short term memory and makes it hard for you to remember things.

In all, sleep deprivation reduces the very quality of your life. In children, sleep apnea can affect the child’s performance in school.

Oxygen deprivation comes with the same territory of sleep deprivation. It reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood and brings on a number of health problems.

Heart and the related dangers of sleep apnea

Sleep apnea increases the chances of a number of heart ailments to take place in the patient. These include:

• Arrhythmia
• Heart failure
• Heart attack

In case of Arrhythmia, the heart tends to beat abnormally and this disorder is present in more than 90% of patients who are suffering from sleep apnea. There are long pauses between the beats; the beats are irregular, as well as other kind of heart abnormalities. This condition can be quite fatal. Stroke is yet another of the major dangers of sleep apnea.

Blood pressure and sleep apnea

Another sleep apnea effect is hypertension. Though there have been no cause and effect relation found between the two, blood pressure has been found to be affected in as many as 50% of the apnea affected patients.

The side effects of sleep apnea as well as the effects of sleep apnea can be quite serious, and as such, it is important to identify the condition and treat it at the earliest.