Insomnia Tips and Answers

Sleep Apnea Testing Centers Guide

A great many folks suffer from a disorder called sleep apnea which induces a painful suspension in breathing while you’re sleeping. There are various non dangerous types of sleep apnea but there are distinct conditions where there could be serious health outcomes and expose you to life threatening hazards. That is why it’s of the utmost necessity to get a sleep apnea examination if you have an inkling that you’re enduring this complaint.

Several methods are available for determining if you may be experiencing sleep apnea, and many people who suffer have a number of symptoms or may even have sleep apnea as a side effect. Some good examples of this are ,obesity, depression, and chronic fatigue syndrome all may be caused by sleep apnea, and they may even experience dryness in he mouth or may wake up experiencing a panic attack like episode, with choking and gasping.

You may experience insomnia along with your sleep disorder but the only true way to discern whether or not your symptoms are caused by sleep apnea is to go to your physician and take a sleep apnea test. This test is usually administered at a sleep center but can also be done at hospitals and clinics that have overnight facilities and diagnostic equipment.

The first step is a physical exam which consists of a physical check on your nose, throat and palate. There should also be an interview with questions showing how you feel about your quality of sleep. The doctors will want to have the patient stay overnight where a recording is done.

The most common recording test used during this process is the PSG or polysomnogram, which is administered in to various forms. The first type of test is the overnight sleep test and is comprised of monitoring several activities including breathing patterns, heart rate, blood oxygen level, eye movement and brain activity.

The second testing type involves a home monitoring version where a skilled technician attaches the proper electrodes and allows the patient to monitor their results at home through a polysomnograph. The result that is being looked for when deciding whether the results of the test are good or bad is something called the RDI or the respiratory disturbance index.

This expresses in numerical terms the number of times you experience a negative breathing pattern which occurred in breathing over the course of the test. Here is the list of values frequently used when diagnosing a patient with sleep apnea. If the number of abnormal events in an hour is over twenty in number then the patient is usually recommended for treatment.

There are some additional examinations which could be called for like a multiple sleep latency examination which figures out how poorly you are actually sleeping. A normal person requires, on average, around 10 minutes to begin to fall asleep so those who fall asleep in five minutes are considered good candidates for treatment. A strip test can also be administered in front of the sleep apnea exam in order to determine if one is needed.