Skimping on sleep is a dangerous habit that can put you at risk of high blood pressure , heart disease, dementia and more. Adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. And even if you’re going to bed at a time that allows for enough sleep, it’s not necessarily easy to know whether your body is actually getting proper rest.
Doctors say one of the leading causes of poor-quality sleep is obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that affects about 25 million Americans . “Sleep apnea is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by difficulty breathing during sleep,” said Katie McCullar , a postdoctoral fellow in the neurology department at Massachusetts General Hospital. Sleep apnea can increase your risk of certain health conditions, and can even be life-threatening if left untreated.
Because of this, experts stress that two of the main signs of sleep apnea ― which occur during sleep ― are not something they would ignore. Here’s what they are: Snoring. A common nighttime symptom of sleep apnea is snoring, said Dr.
Robson Capasso , chief of sleep surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California. You may not realize you’re snoring, but it’s often something a partner brings up, he noted. This kind of snoring is generally noisy, and you may be woken up by the sound of a loud snort, according to the Mayo Clinic .
On the other hand, there are instances where people snore even though they don’t have sleep apnea. “They just have what we .
