Sleep apnea vs insomnia, what really is the difference. Let’s take a deep dive and clear everything up, once and for all.
Most people dream of sleeping soundly at night, but unfortunately, they rarely get their wish. Sleep is essential to your health because it gives your body and mind the chance to rest and replenish its energies. If you get less than seven to eight uninterrupted hours of sleep, your physical and mental abilities are diminished.
Sleep apnea and insomnia are two common sleep disorders that cause millions of people to toss, turn, and wake up feeling exhausted. Sleep disorders are often confused with one another, but knowing the differences between them can help you choose the right treatment options for you.
What Is Insomnia?
Insomnia is defined by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine as the difficulty of falling asleep, staying asleep, or the experience of having poor-quality sleep occurring nightly.
Sleep initiation, duration, and sleep consolidation are all compromised despite the best environment for sleep, and if left untreated, it can result in daytime impairment.
What Are the Signs of Insomnia?
Chronic insomnia is often characterized by difficulty falling asleep, frequent waking up during the night, and not being able to get back to sleep.
What Causes Insomnia?
Insomnia is a broader term that can fall under several smaller categories of sleep disorders, including primary insomnia (caused by physical factors), secondary insomnia (caused by mental factors), and parasomnias (caused by both physical and mental factors).
Hormonal imbalances, anxiety (including panic attacks), menopause, and general anxiety can cause insomnia, along with the overconsumption of caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. Chronic medical conditions, prescription medications, and other health issues may also be the cause.
What Is Sleep Apnea?
Insomnia is a condition that makes it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep. Sleep apnea is a sleep-related breathing problem characterized by repeated interruptions of airflow while someone is asleep.
What Are the Symptoms of Sleep Apnea?
This brief interruption causes the brain to wake up enough to resume breathing, but it doesn’t necessarily jolt the sleeper out of sleep in every case.
Instead, repeated suffocations with low oxygen, morning headache, dry mouth, including a sore throat when waking, and lots of trips going to the toilet in between your sleeping hours.
The recurring brain arousals cause the person to be tired in the mornings because of poor sleep quality.
What Causes Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea is a condition that is completely caused by physical factors. It has nothing to do with mental health or emotional issues. When you sleep, a part of the soft tissue in your throat collapses, blocking the airflow.
The narrow airway may be caused by excess tissue, enlarged tonsil, or a large uvula, which is often the cause of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Obesity is the primary cause of obstructive sleep disorder.
On the other hand, central sleep apnea occurs when the brain fails (or doesn’t) to control the muscles in the airway, which causes interrupted airflow.
Sleep Apnea vs Insomnia… Why Is Knowing the Difference Important?
Insomnia and sleep apnea are different enough, mainly because insomnia refers to difficulty sleeping whereas sleep apnea refers to interrupted breathing during sleep. A sleep apnea patient is usually characterized by loud snoring or choking or gasping tendencies during his/her sleep.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may cause sleep disturbances and recurrent awakenings due to repeated brain arousals and/or shallow sleep. Hence, OSA may also be a cause of sleep disorders.
Both sleep disorders can hurt your physical health by lowering your functionality, increasing your chances of depression, causing headaches, and promoting weight gain.
With a busy lifestyle and an age of high stress at work, getting a good night’s sleep is more of a need than people realize. If you want to learn more about the differences between insomnia and sleep apnea and get a proper diagnosis for both, then it’ll be best to visit a doctor as soon as either symptom starts showing up.
Treatment Options For Sleep Apnea
There are several treatment options available for people with sleep apnea, including lifestyle changes, medications, surgery, or some combination of these.
Lifestyle changes include losing weight, quitting smoking, avoiding alcohol, and getting more exercise.
Medications can help reduce snoring and improve breathing during sleep. Surgery may be considered if other treatments don’t work.
Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy An Option?
Cognitive-behavioral therapy for sleep problems may be a good treatment option if you have long-lasting sleep problems, you’re concerned about becoming dependent on sleep medication, or if medications aren’t effective or cause bothersome adverse effects.
This type of treatment also removes having to rely on clinical sleep medicine, which is always a good thing.
Source: (mayoclinic.org)
Should You Get A Sleep Study?
The short answer is yes. Finding a reputable sleep clinic near, you can only improve your sleep efficiency and sleep time.
A sleep clinic can also provide effective treatment and possibly even help explain some of the mental health disorders that are related to these issues.
Conclusion
The bottom line is, that we need our sleep for many reasons, including simple things like improving our mood.
Poor sleep habits can not only take a toll on our health but can really risk our mental health also, so no matter what way you decide to go, be it medications or some type of therapy, you owe it go yourself to at minimum get a professional assessment.
We at Aging The Healthy Way hope you found this post helpful. For more information on other topics, visit our blog page by clicking here.