What are the symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea?

The most common symptoms of sleep apnea in adults include the following:

- Long breath pauses or struggling to breathe during sleep

- Significant daytime sleepiness and unexpected dozing off while sitting or driving or doing anything monotonous

- Sensation of poor quality sleep, or never getting enough rest

- Frequent awakening

Other symptoms include restlessness or movement during sleep, choking or gagging during sleep, heartburn, increased urination during the night, sweating, morning headaches, poor concentration, poor memory, irritability and depression Many patients with sleep apnea are overweight, however patients can be normal weight and still have significant apnea.

The major symptom of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is daytime sleepiness, and when that is a consequence of OSA the diagnosis is the Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome. When you have OSA you have repeated brief arousals from sleep so that you can breathe adequately, and this fragmentation of sleep can decrease your ability to stay alert in the daytime (or night time if you work nights). The fact that OSA can cause frequent episodes of low oxygen levels during sleep may also cause brain damage that contributes to the chronic sleepiness as well as difficulty with memory and impaired judgment. Inadequate sleep can cause irritability and mood changes such as depression. Morning headaches, morning confusion, frequent urination at night, and impotence have also been described as symptoms of OSA.

An observer of someone with OSA may notice two other cardinal features of the disorder. They are what appear to be gasping or choking during sleep, and habitual snoring, often very loud. A close observer may note that a bed-partner with severe OSA has brief periods of loud snoring interspersed with periods of silence when the chest and stomach are heaving, indicating the struggle to get air past an obstructed airway. The struggle ends with a loud gasp, a few loud breaths, and then another period of silence as sleep returns and the airway closes.

A person who is a loud snorer and has daytime sleepiness has the Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome until proven otherwise.

• waking feeling tired and unrefreshed
• excessive sleepiness during the day
• morning headaches
• difficulty with concentration, memory and focus
• moodiness
• chronic congestion
• someone observes your disrupted breathing