Sleep Apnea Part 1 – What is it?

Here’s the transcript of today’s video:

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey everyone. This is Javier from Live Well mattress and furnishing centers and in today’s sleep coach, I want to cover a subject that we haven’t covered before. I mean, we’ve covered everything from, um, weight gain, from loss of sleep from caffeine and how it inhibits your sleep to the proper pillows, to how it supports you all the subjects on sleep loss and issues with sleep. But we’ve always skirted around a really important issue because there’s a lot of science behind it. And there is a lot of research that needed to be done with it in order for it to be covered correctly. So I personally am dealing with this right now, and I wanted to share the entire experience with you. So this will not be the only episode on this issue. There will be a series of episodes on this, as I progress through taking care of this.

Speaker 1: (00:58)
I mean, mind you, I’m the same guy that did a whole video on what sleep loss does to your memory and how it messes up your focus. I’m also going to be sharing this experience with you. So what is the sleep issue? The sleep issue I am talking about is called sleep apnea and it’s probably the most serious of all sleep issues because it can cause a lot of damage to your heart. It can cause damage to your memory and it can cause damage to your circulatory system. So sleep apnea is that serious. And in today’s sleep, coach we’ll be covering what it is, how to know if you have it and how I’m dealing with it.

Speaker 1: (01:51)
Javier would live while mattress and furnishing centers and in today’s sleep coach, I want to cover a topic that we’ve kind of skirted around this entire time. I mean, we’re on what episode 31 of sleep coach and I’ve skirted around it because it’s, it’s something that’s best covered by a doctor. It’s something that’s best covered by the medical field, but what I, since I’m actually dealing with it myself right now, I wanted to produce a couple of videos that show me going through the process of actually getting a sleep study done. I’m also going to be having appointments with doctors or whatnot. Uh, this first video, what I really want to do is just first touch on the subject of what sleep apnea is and we can go from there. So what exactly is sleep apnea? Sleep apnea is an obstruction of your airway while you sleep.

Speaker 1: (02:49)
Okay. It can start off as harmless snoring, but in the longterm, it can turn into you stopping your breathing while you’re asleep. You not being able to breathe while you’re asleep. And that can cause a lot of issues with your heart because it’s not getting enough oxygen. It can cause a lot of issues with your head because your brain’s not getting enough oxygen and it can actually mess up your circulatory system. So sleep apnea is that dangerous. It should be taken that seriously. So there’s three types of sleep apnea. There’s obstructive sleep apnea, which is the type that I was talking about, where you have a, um, your it’s like your tongue when it, this happens a lot with, uh, back sleepers. When your muscles relax while your sleep actually paralyzed while you’re sleeping. Yes, that’s true. So another, another video, another, so anyways, while you’re, while you’re laying down

Speaker 2: (03:51)
Your

Speaker 1: (03:52)
Tongue and your muscles in your tongue, your uvula, all of that is relaxed and it can actually obstruct your airway. Okay. This is starting off as snoring. And then it gets progressively louder. And then your partner eventually notices that you’re going and there might be a minute without any noise. And then when you really, really, really Gaspin or get, or pass out the air, it’s like, you know, you have that whole gasping while you’re trying to get air, trying to get, trying to get back going. So that’s obstructive sleep apnea. The second one is called central sleep apnea. And what happens here is your brain is not sending the proper signals to your muscles that are helping you with the breathing. So what happens is you’ve actually stopped breathing because your brain is not connecting right with those or sending the right information to your muscles.

Speaker 1: (04:51)
This one’s quite interesting to me. We’ll cover this one here in a little bit. The third one is called complex sleep apnea syndrome. So this one’s interesting. This is when you have obstructive sleep apnea and you also have central sleep apnea. So not only are you, are you having the obstruction of your throat of your, of your airway, but you’re also having a brain muscle connection issue that is not teaching. You are not keeping you breathing correctly. So that is complex sleep apnea syndrome. So let’s cover all three, a little bit more in depth. Okay. So obstructive, I already told you, it’s kind of where your, your muscles and your throat relax and it’s obstructing your airway and you can’t breathe. So at the graphic that I’m showing, we’ll show it. It’s basically you’re laying on your back and all of those muscles just block that entire airways.

Speaker 1: (05:51)
So that way you can’t get air in or out, uh, in my case, I’m having getting air out for some reason. And I think it has a lot to do with my sinuses. I haven’t had the sleep study done yet, but I’m pretty sure that’s what my issue is because I study myself a lot, but we’ll find out and yeah, we’re going to share that. So the less common form of sleep apnea is called central sleep apnea. So this is actually when your brain is not connecting with your breathing muscles. Okay. And what happens is you go with short period of time without actually making an effort to catch it with this type of sleep apnea. You might wake up with a shortness of breath with a lightness in your head because what’s happened is you’re just not breathing at all. It’s not obstructed, but your brain just isn’t connecting with your breathing muscles while you’re asleep.

Speaker 1: (06:44)
So with the two types of sleep apnea, what really puts you at risk of having well, number one, in both cases, being male gives you a higher risk. Also being older, getting older, that puts you at higher risk. You may, you have a family history of sleep apnea. Um, you may also, um, be genetically bound to having sleep apnea. Another factor is going to be use of alcohol use of additives and use of tranquilizers. Anything that overlap relaxes, you relaxes your throat while you’re sleeping. Muscles might relax more than they normally would. For me, this is important. The next one is nasal congestion. I have really bad nasal congestion for some reason ever since last, I believe last August. I can’t get rid of it. I’ve tried allergy pills. I’ve tried everything. I believe it’s affecting my sleep tremendously. Also smoking smoking is a huge factor in sleep apnea, mainly because it causes irritation in your neck muscles.

Speaker 1: (07:51)
I mean, in your throat muscles, uh, medical conditions can cause it, whether it be a hard issue, whether it be, um, weight gain, anything like that can cause the sleep apnea because it makes it harder for your chest to pump that Erin now the central sleep apnea is also getting older, being male, having a heart disorder, um, using narcotics anyway, a pain medication that causes a kind of a lapse between the, the messages getting from your brain to your breathing muscles, uh, people that have had strokes. Those are, Oh, that that’s a huge factor for central sleep apnea. So imagine the poor person that has the obstructive sleep apnea. And then on top of that has the central sleep apnea. That’s the perfect candidate for the C-PAP machine. So what are the symptoms? How do you know if you have sleep apnea? Well, number one, like I told you the, um, loud snoring it and snoring can be innocent, but snoring is also one of the main, main symptoms of sleep apnea.

Speaker 1: (09:03)
Uh, there’s also a feeling of lost, lost breath. There’s a feeling of lightheadedness. Let’s say when you wake up all of a sudden at night and you’re feeling like you’re, you’re gasping for air, that’s definitely a symptom that, that you have an issue with sleep apnea. Uh, lately for me, uh, this is a major one awakening with the dry mouth. Uh, this becomes an issue if you’re a heavy snorer mouth, mouth breather, um, it, it’s basically your, your, the moisture in your mouth has gone a big one. This one’s the major one. That was the main factor for me. And knowing that I have I’d have an issue is waking up with a headache. There, there were weeks where I was waking up with a headache and I would keep that headache until about eight o’clock. The other thing is, uh, having difficulty staying awake during the day, um, excessive daytime sleepiness, uh it’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s insane.

Speaker 1: (10:02)
You, you you’re, you’re sitting there and you’re working away and all of a sudden you’re just extremely tired. How about difficulty focusing you? That’s a huge factor because remember you haven’t slept through the night. You, you you’re constantly waking up and, and, and being woken up because you can’t breathe, uh, becoming very irritable, uh, you know, loss of sleep. We’ve covered this before. Loss of sleep makes you irritable and makes your memory bad. So that makes you irritable. So that is another symptom of you having sleep apnea. Another one for me. Um, and this really wasn’t in the researcher in the notes, but for me, I had a really hard time waking up at my regular wake-up time. I normally wake up about four 45. So that way I can go for a run, but I haven’t been able to wake up that early in, in months.

Speaker 1: (10:56)
And what’s happened is now my, my wake-up time has shifted almost an hour to an hour and a half later because I’m noticing that I’m more tired. So all of these factors lead someone to the fact that, Hey, I might have sleep apnea. So what do you do at that point? So, so you’ve diagnosed yourself. You self-diagnosed yourself that, Hey, I think I might need to go to the doctor. I think I might need to have a sleep study done. What’s next? So to answer to what’s next part, I’m going to tell you about my personal experience. I kind of already did. I was having an issue waking up early. Like I normally do. I love to go running. I was having an issue getting up early, and then when I would force myself to get up early, I noticed that breathing was an issue.

Speaker 1: (11:44)
Now, mind you, this is COVID time. So imagine waking up and thinking that you’re having an issue breathing. So I was like, Oh gosh, I always thought was positive, but yeah, no, I might be positive. I might be positive. And then all of a sudden I felt better and I was like, maybe I’m asymptomatic. So this whole paranoia thing was going on for a while. But what I started doing is I started looking into different things that could be because I was waking up with a headache. I wasn’t feeling rested. I was, um, I was finding that I was, I was drifting off easier. I was having a hard time focusing all symptoms of sleep apnea. So when you type that in online, it actually look, you know, web MD will tell you, Hey, these are what it could be. So I finally went and I went to a, uh, a doctor and the doctor went through the symptoms with me and I, I spoke with her about what I thought it could be.

Speaker 1: (12:41)
And she suggested the sleep study, which I was hoping that she would, because I needed to have her give me the okay to go have a sleep study. So that way my insurance would cover it. So I, uh, I then went to the sleep center here in Alma Gordo. We have a very nice sleep center. Um, it’s interesting because I thought I actually didn’t know what to think. I, I went in there and I spoke with the lady and she gave me about 15 pages of paperwork to fill. Now I have them here. Um, I would say two pages of the 15 pages are actually, um, just patient info. The rest of it is a bunch of, uh, it’s like sleep facts. Like what time you go to bed? What time do you wake up? What time do you go to bed? And weekend, what time do you wake up on the weekend?

Speaker 1: (13:32)
Um, do you have issues sleeping on this? W how often do you wake up at night? Just all these, all these little questions that are, are super important, so that way they can complete the whole profile on your sleep and how, how you take it as far as like the importance that you put on it and what your knowledge is as far as your sleep issues. Now, because I do these videos, I’m quite familiar with sleep, and I actually watched myself a lot and I researched myself a lot with my sleep. Um, recently I did, I did purchase a new smartwatch and the new smartwatch has, uh, a much better sleep monitor than my old one. And I will tell you that, um, this one actually has a blood, uh, blood oxygen meter. And it’s so cool because I’ve woken with the inability to breathe.

Speaker 1: (14:23)
And I’ve done my, my, my blood oxygen. And a couple of times I have hit the fifties, which if you research online, the fifties is actually really bad. And that was, I would explain my morning headaches it’s because I’m not getting enough oxygen inside my body in order for my heart to pump right. In order for my, my head to work. Right. So it was that, that led me to actually be brave to go get the sleep study. So why do I say brave enough? Well, why haven’t you gotten it, or why hasn’t your neighbor gotten it? It’s because everybody is intimidated by this picture of being in a bed and wired up and everything. I honestly don’t know what it’s going to be like. That’s the purpose for the continuing videos and the continuing coverage on this? I feel like it’s an opportunity, not only because I’ve done the sleep coach videos for so long, uh, but also it’s, it’s like almost a responsibility because I have done these videos.

Speaker 1: (15:25)
And because I have shared so much already that I’m hoping that I can share this experience with you and make it easier for you. So that way, if you’re having these issues yourself, you can see what the experience look like, and it won’t be as intimidating. So I’ll be doing more of these videos. I’ll be sharing more info and, um, on a weekly basis, I’ll share a couple of the questions that are asked in here. So that way you can see if you can answer them yourself. If you have any questions about what I’m going through or what I’ve seen, please feel free to ask them. In fact, uh, I don’t, I still don’t know when my appointment is because I barely dropped off the paperwork today. But, um, if there’s questions that you feel are important, I would love to, when I have the doctor’s appointment, I would love to be able to ask the doctor that. So until next time I’m Javier with live well mattress and furnishing centers, please, if this video has helped you, if you have a friend that you think would benefit from this series of videos, please like share comment. Uh, I appreciate the comments. Uh, those are great. Um, just follow us on Facebook, follow us on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram. We’ll have these up all over until next time. Have a wonderful day. Bye.