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Heart Disease And Stroke Prevention Resource
A Guide to Sleep Apnea and Heart Disease
The issue of sleep apnea and heart disease is one which is very important to take into consideration, especially considering the significant rise in both ailments which has taken place over the past few years. The connection between sleep apnea and heart disease is one which has truly only been recognized over the past decade or so, but is now actually considered as being one of the most monumental findings in health science of the century.
What is Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea occurs when a person actually stops breathing at points during their sleep, and it is a common disorder which can be incredibly serious.
The most common type of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea, and during sleep what happens is that not enough air flow can get to your lungs through your mouth and nose even though you try to breathe, and when that happens the amount of oxygen in your blood may drop, and normal breaths then start again, typically with a loud snort or choking sound.
The Connection Between Sleep Apnea and Heart Disease
The connection between sleep apnea and heart disease is that sleep apnea is now considered as being one of the most major underlying causes of heart disease. It is believed that there is a strong association between obstructive sleep apnea and hypertension, heart failure, stroke and ischemic heart disease. As well, recent research has shown that obstructive sleep apnea patients who have normal blood pressure run a risk of developing high blood pressure within four years.
Sleep apnea patients have been found to have much higher levels of sympathetic nervous system activity during both wake and sleep than a matched set of control patients without obstructive sleep apnea. These sleep apnea patients are also known to have much faster heart rates than non-apnea patients, but at the same time they tend to have less variability in their heart rates overall.
Basically how this works is that as sleep apnea patients stop breathing during their sleep, their oxygen levels end up decreasing and their carbon dioxide levels correspondingly increase. This results in activating the sympathetic nervous system, and so when the apnea patient breathes in, their cardiac output increases while their blood pressure spikes greatly. This is seriously problematic because it results in disrupting the normal nighttime regulation of blood pressure and the sympathetic nervous system.
The issue of sleep apnea and heart disease is being extensively worked on, in order to come to better and more detailed results, and this is really the only way that any positive solutions will be able to come out of this. There are so many causes of heart disease as it is, and so reducing this number is the best way to attack the problem of heart disease in general.
Although there is no surefire way to stop the cycle of hereditary heart disease, there are certain things that you can do to try. They are known for being one of the largest and most experienced medical centers in the country, and they offer state of the art facilities, leading-edge medical treatment, and access to appropriate clinical trials and new treatments for pulmonary valve defects. Too many people have a penchant for junk food, and junk food has a large amount of sugar in it. This medical treatment may include oxygen through a tube in the nose, oxygen through a face mask, nitroglycerin under the tongue, pain medicines, and aspirin. If you have heart disease then you will have to have some form of heart disease treatment in order to deal with your problem, and there are a variety of heart disease treatment options that are available. |
