Insomnia Tips and Answers

Testing For Sleep Apnea

A frequent sleep complaint is called sleep apnea which induces a painful interruption in breathing while you’re asleep. While sleep apnea comes in many varieties, these in the main don’t cause death but there are particular situations where there might be serious health issues and place your life at risk. it is of great relevance to get a sleep apnea examination if you have an inkling that you’re suffering from this sleep condition.

There are several ways you can determine if you are suffering from sleep apnea, and many who have sleep apnea also have a number of other symptoms in which sleep apnea is a side effect. For example ,obesity, depression, and chronic fatigue syndrome all may be caused by sleep apnea, and they will also have cotton mouth or waking up often with a panic attack.

You may also experience insomnia but the only way to know if your symptoms are being caused by sleep apnea or are perhaps the cause of your sleep apnea is to take a sleep apnea test. A sleep apnea test is usually given at a sleep disorder center but can also be administered at a hospital or doctor’s office where overnight facilities are available.

You’ll need to take a physical exam which is comprised of an examination of the throat, the nose, the uvula and the palate. To better understand your problem there will be of a series of questions regarding your sleep quality, sleep patterns and feelings about how well you are sleeping. The very next step in the process is to have you sleep with them overnight where a recording is done.

The test they commonly use to check your sleep health is a polysomnogram or PSG, which can be given via two methods. The first type of test is carried out overnight and consists of monitoring several activities including breathing patterns, heart rate, blood oxygen level, eye movement and brain activity.

The second way this can be tested is at home where a skilled technician attaches the proper electrodes and allows the patient to monitor their results at home through a polysomnograph. What they will be trying to discern when deciding whether the results of the test are good or bad is something called the RDI or the respiratory disturbance index.

This method expresses in data form the number of abnormal events which disrupted your breathing over the entire test. Following is the common measures used when judging whether or not a person has sleep apnea. If the number of captured events over the period of an hour is more than twenty then the patient is diagnosed with some form of sleep apnea.

Occasionally, there are some added exams which may be requested such as a multiple sleep latency exam which determines how much your lack of sleep is effecting you. A normal person requires, on average, roughly 10 minutes to fall into a restful sleep so those who fall asleep in five minutes are considered good candidates for treatment. There is also a strip test that may be used in front of the sleep apnea exam in order to see of further testing is needed.