This common yet often overlooked sleep disorder occurs when your breathing is repeatedly interrupted during sleep. These interruptions can last from a few seconds to minutes and may happen multiple times throughout the night. Because of this, your brain and body may not get the oxygen they need—causing you to wake up frequently without even realizing it. Over time, this lack of restorative sleep can lead to serious health issues, both physical and mental.
Sleep apnea doesn’t present the same way in everyone. The symptoms and severity vary depending on the type of sleep apnea you have—ranging from loud snoring, dry mouth, morning headaches, and excessive daytime sleepiness, to more serious risks like high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, or depression. In fact, many people live with sleep apnea for years without being diagnosed, simply because they are unaware of the signs or assume their symptoms are caused by other conditions.
The good news is that sleep apnea is treatable, and early diagnosis makes a significant difference in improving sleep quality, mental clarity, and long-term health. Understanding the different types—obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), central sleep apnea (CSA), and complex or mixed sleep apnea—can help you or your loved ones identify warning signs early and seek appropriate treatment.
In this article, we’ll break down the types of sleep apnea, common symptoms, causes, and when it’s time to seek medical support. If you or someone you know is struggling with poor sleep, don’t ignore it—your body is trying to tell you something.
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Types of sleep apnea
Typically sleep apnea has three main forms based on how and why it occurs. It includes:
- Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA):
The most common form of sleep apnea occurs when the throat muscles relax and block the airflow into the lungs while you’re asleep, causing an obstruction in breathing or it may even be impossible to breathe in some cases. This can lead to snoring when your throat muscles and the soft palate of your inner mouth rattle. It also makes the person wake up during sleep as they are not able to breathe properly which further makes them feel daytime fatigue. Other than that, you may get frequent headaches and struggle to concentrate on work.
With this disorder, your lungs function normally, but your body struggles to breathe because it’s not getting enough air. This type of sleep apnea disorder is more common with age and prevalent in males, people who are overweight, pregnant women, and people who sleep on their backs. If left untreated, it may increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and other health problems. So, if you notice its symptoms, seek medical attention to get treated.
- Central sleep apnea (CSA):
This is less common than OSA and occurs when your brain is not able to send proper signals to the muscles to manage breathing. This causes shallow breathing or pauses while you sleep. Many reasons can cause central sleep apnea, including:
- Stroke or heart failure.
- Low oxygen levels in the blood due to high altitude.
- Nervous system damages, especially to your brainstem (part of the brain that manages your breathing) or parts of your spinal cord.
- Getting treated with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for OSA (this gets better over time).
- Certain nervous system conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
As it doesn’t occur due to upper airway obstruction, the person doesn’t experience snoring. Instead, a person struggles with pauses/stops in breathing which can lead to insomnia, waking up with short breath, daytime sleepiness, or trouble concentrating.
Sometimes, the doctor is not able to identify its cause, or it may occur from a pattern called Cheyne-Stokes breathing, which is a type of breathing that occurs between hyperventilating or not breathing at all. This occurs with congestive heart failure. There’s no cure for this condition but treating the underlying cause and using CPAP devices can help you improve your sleep.
- Complex apnea syndrome:
This type of sleep apnea is a combination of both CSA and OSA. Some people with CSA may occur in people with OSA or CSA converts for OSA during treatment. A person may experience symptoms like:
- Sudden waking from sleep
- Daytime fatigue
- Confusion about getting up
- Headaches or dry mouth
- Insomnia or poor-quality sleep.
A 2006 retrospective review of 223 people with sleep apnea symptoms found that 15% of people had complex sleep apnea syndrome, 84% had OSA, and just 0.4% had central sleep apnea. However, more research is needed. Its treatment may involve a combination of interventions including treating the underlying cause and use of CPAP or other positive airway pressure modes.
How does apnea affect my body?
When sleep apnea occurs, it may drop your blood oxygen levels when you stop breathing. Your brain reacts to this and triggers a reflex by waking you up enough to breathe again. Once you resume your breathing, your brain automatically tries to resume your sleep cycle.
Depending on how severe your sleep apnea is, you experience interruptions accordingly. Determining the severity of sleep apnea is based on the average hourly number of apnea events when a person stops breathing. It includes:
- Mild sleep apnea: This level of sleep apnea occurs between 5 to 15 apnea events per hour. However, experts believe you may have symptoms at this level of severity. But if you don’t have symptoms, then you don’t require treatment.
- Moderate sleep apnea: People with this severity level have between 15 to 29 events per hour, which means a person who sleeps eight hours stops breathing or wakes up between 120 to 239 times.
- Severe sleep apnea: People with this severity level wake up 30 or more times in an hour, which means they stop breathing and wake up 240 times during a full 8 hours of sleep.
Obstructive events are generally short-lived and can occur in early stages of sleep, especially, stage 1, stage 2, or rapid eye movement (REM). That’s why most people don’t remember apnea events, which means they are not aware of their problem until symptoms are noticeable. Central events can occur mostly on stages 1 and 2 of sleep but can occur at any stage.
When to seek help?
If you experience loud snores or any other symptoms of sleep apnea, then you should seek medical help. You can talk with your healthcare provider if you have sleep apnea symptoms or any sleep problem that leaves you fatigued, sleepy, and irritable.
Sleep apnea is a common sleep condition that occurs when a person’s breathing is disrupted for several reasons during sleep. This makes a person wake up enough to breathe, which interrupts their sleep and keeps them awake from getting proper rest. Over time, it can lead to severe to deadly complications, so early diagnosis and treatment are necessary. You must notice your sleep apnea symptoms and seek medical help.
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