Pascal is 57 years old and has always been a big snorer . But in recent months, a certain unusual tiredness has settled: " I was very tired, I fell asleep all the time , I was drowsy and I never managed to feel rested. "
After a visit to his doctor and some tests, the diagnosis falls: advanced sleep apnea .
Sleep apnea: what is it?
The Ortho professor, responsible for the sleep center at the Bichat hospital, explains this phenomenon to us: "When we sleep, the muscle tone relaxes and is even completely abolished in paradoxical sleep, hence the walls of the respiratory tract. will sag a little bit. If you have airways whose caliber is a little narrow, the fact that the walls sag will shrink so much that it will hinder the passage of air, vibrate the walls and cause snoring. If it is still a little narrower it will affect the amount of air entering the trachea, and give a diminished breathing, or completely blocked: so an apnea. "
A body that never rests
The consequences of these repeated apneas are multiple.
The most immediate is fatigue, sleep apnea usually causing waking-ups during the night. Then follow disorders of concentration and memory.
In the long term there can also be cardiovascular consequences , as our expert explains: "At the moment of an apnea, the rate of oxygen in the blood drops, the person is thus obliged to make great respiratory movements and all it tires the heart and the vessels. Throughout this period of sleep the body is supposed to rest, and there it continues to work. "
The treatment of sleep apnea adapted to the severity of the symptom
First, there are several factors that promote the development of sleep apnea. The Ortho professor draws attention to the fact that being overweight is an aggravating factor : weight loss can sometimes significantly reduce sleep apnea. In the same way, it is better to avoid some favoring factors such as alcohol and sleeping pills.
On small sleep apnea syndromes, it will only be necessary to monitor that the phenomenon does not worsen with time.
On the other hand, for the most severe cases, an apparatus is proposed : "In the majority of the cases one proposes machines to breathe the night. In second intention it proposes like a boxer's toothguard, which propels the lower jaw towards the front. When you pull the lower jaw forward you pull the lingual mass with, so you expand the space of the airways.
Pascal suffers from severe apnea with an apnea of 90 seconds. So he was offered the wearing of a mask: "You just had to be at the sound of the machine and try to forget the mask while sleeping, but it was fast enough for me! The benefits were too great for me to let my embarrassment prevail. "
An effective treatment for Pascal, who adds: "Right away it was amazing! To go to my country house at 4h drive it was a hell. I spent my time stopping, putting water on my face, I could not, I was falling asleep. Now no problem! I do not wake up at night, I hardly snore and I lost 8 kilos, it was time for me to do something! ".
