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Sleep Apnoea - The Way Serious Is It? Sleeping apnoea is classified as light, moderate or severe depending on the ordinary number of 'apnoeic incidents' which occur per hour while the patient is asleep. To classify as an apnoeic event, the individual must stop breathing for a minimum of 10 seconds. There's no 'maximum' period - and we regularly treat patients that stop breathing for 30 seconds to a minute each time. In especially severe cases, the patients quit breathing for as many as two minutes every moment. Consider holding your breath for that long. Now try doing it a dozen or more times per hour. Someone with 'mild' apnoea stops breathing between 5 and 15 times per hour. This means breathing stops every 4 to 12 minutes. Someone using 'moderate' apnoea stops breathing between 15 and 30 times each hour. That equates to your breathing stoppage every 2 to 4 minutes. Someone with 'intense' sleep apnoea stops breathing 30 or more times per hour. In extreme instances, we have seen and treated patients who stop breathing within 100 times per hour. That means they cease breathing over once every minute, for 10 or more seconds each time. More typical periods of stoppage have been 20 to 30 seconds. Serious apnoea sufferers may consequently not be breathing to get over half of every hour they are asleep. http://www.bewelldental.com.au/service/sleep-apnoea/ that their blood oxygen levels drop and blood pressure rises. And no wonder they wake feeling tired. Usually, every apnoeic occasion is followed by a 'micro arousal', in which the patients wakes briefly and resumes breathing. Micro arousals are so short, the individual has no conscious awareness of getting woken. Therefore, the next morning they believe that they've sleep for 8 hours straight and can't work out why they wake feeling so tired. The truth is they have NOT slept 8 hours straight. They've really had a hundred or even more brief naps. It is possible to imagine how you'd feel if you dozed away, then were woken, then dozed off, afterward were woken, then dozed off, afterward were woken... again and again, for months and years on end. The disruption to the quality of your sleep will obviously be enormous. Among the greatest challenges facing the therapy of apnoea is the fact that the patients simply don't know they are afflicted by the condition - because they are asleep when it occurs. That being the case, search for other indexes. Waking feeling tired is a significant sign. Feeling drowsy in the day is another. High blood pressure is a really significant indicator. Snoring is a leading 'red flag'. In actuality, should you snore and suffer from a minumum of one of another indexes just mentioned, it is quite likely you're suffering from some amount of apnoea. The good news is, treatment is available and thoroughly effective. The starting point is to get a diagnostic sleep study performed to determine just what is happening while you are asleep. In Australia, the majority of the cost of the study is covered by Medicare, and we could arrange to your own sleep study to be carried out in the comfort and privacy of your own house.