Snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
Symptoms of Sleep Apnoea
There are very few actual symptoms for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea, which makes the disease very difficult to treat as very few people know that they are suffering. The list below gives an idea of some of the symptoms that sleep apnoea patients may have.
- Waking up in the morning feeling unrefreshed and still tired.
- Not getting a good night’s sleep.
- Being tired during the day, and nodding off more easily.
- Feeling mentally tired, difficulty in concentrating, and needing extra effort to stay alert.
- Waking up at night gasping or choking.
- This is because obstructive sleep apnoea leads to episodes of stopping breathing whilst you sleep. Some of these can be so bad that you need to actually fully wake up to start breathing again.
- Waking up at night to urinate.
- This is because a hormone is released from your heart when you wake up. This makes you go to the toilet in the mornings, whilst stopping you from passing water during the night. If however you are constantly partially waking up every hour, the effect is that some sleep apnoea sufferers wake up at night to urinate. Many mistakenly believe that they have a weak bladder or something similar.
- Sweating at night.
- Waking up with a headache in the mornings.
- Waking up with a dry or sore throat.
- Snoring leads to a vibration or flapping around of tissue at the back of the throat. Repeated trauma to this tissue leads to discomfort which is normally felt in the morning.
- Heart Burn / indigestion.
- Symptoms such as acid burn reflux, feeling of a lump in your throat, clearing your throat all the time, noticing that your voice becomes hoarse if you talk for too long at a time or during singing, and occasional spasms of your throat during swallowing.
- Having a reduced sexual drive.
- Feeling depressed, anxious, or irritable.
432 million pounds a year is estimated to be lost in the NHS due to untreated sleep apnoea.
