What is Sleep Apnoea?
Sleep Apnoea is a chronic sleeping disorder. It causes an interrupted and erratic breathing while an individual is asleep. Usually, people who suffer from sleep apnoea experiences pauses or complete halts in breathing throughout the period of their sleep. Mild sufferers may return to breathing normally right after the pauses, but in severe cases of untreated sleep apnoea, a loud snort or choke may wake the person.
What Causes It?
Sleep Apnoea is mainly caused due to brain’s malfunction while transmitting proper signals to the breathing mechanism. But the malfunction can be caused by different triggers, which is diagnosed by the type of sleep apnoea one suffers from.
• Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
This is happens when the back muscles of your throat relax – causing the airway to become narrower. It creates difficulty in breathing as there is not much room for the air to pass, eventually lowering the amount of oxygen in your blood. As your brain detects this difficulty in breathing, it jolts you up from the sleep. It may cause choking or snorting sounds. Since the individual wakes up for just a short interval, they don’t realize that they woke up at all. This makes it difficult for the sufferer to acknowledge the fact that they are suffering from a sleeping disorder.
• Central Sleep Apnoea
This is the least common kind of sleep apnoea. It’s the kind where brain constantly fails to transfer active signals to your breathing muscles and mechanism. Your breathing takes a total halt during your sleep – this means no amount of oxygen is making its way into your body for a limited amount of time while you sleep. If you’re suffering from this type of sleep apnoea, then chances are that you are well aware of it because the awakening isn’t that short lived – you will wake up gasping for air.
Symptoms for Sleep Apnoea
• Choking, snorting, or loud snoring during sleep.
• Unusual pauses between breaths.
• Feeling shortness of breath while you are awake.
• Feeling drowsy and sleepy throughout the day.
• Unusual and frequent awakenings during the night.
• Mood swings, depression, and irritability.
• Waking up with a headache, and restlessness.
• Unusual, but possible symptom could be impotency, as well.
How Does It Affect People
A general lack of sleep can become increasingly fatiguing and cause for irritation for anyone. But to be suffering from a classified sleeping disorder, which can usually be treated with medicine only, can become even more frustrating. Apart from the obvious effects sleep apnoea has on an individual’s health, it also has bigger and underlying effects, which includes:
• Heart Disease
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Weight Gain
• Chronic Depression
How Can Modafinil Help in Treating Sleep Apnoea?
Modafinil is typically used to treat obstructive Sleep Apnoea, but it can be exponentially beneficial in treating central sleep apnoea, too. This medicine is famous for its wakefulness-evoking property. It works by interfering with the way one’s brain creates neurotransmitters, resulting in more active and helpful chemicals being produced in your brain.
Sleeping disorders can cause one to miserably fail in everyday life, work and school, or at home. If you’re falling asleep at work, does that not affect your productivity and general reputation? Undoubtedly. The active agents in Modafinil reduce your chances of failure to perform due to sleep apnoea.