Tag: Elderly

Sleep Apnea: A Ticking Time Bomb In Your Sleep

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The public is very much aware of snoring but rarely do their associate it with sleep apnea. For many, it is just a nasty habit that has plagued millions (especially men) from then until now that we all just have to learn to live with. Even if you snore and have trouble sleeping each night, not many will seek professional treatment because it is expensive and time-consuming. These are just some of the reasons why a lot of sleep apnea cases remain undiagnosed. The majority do not see it is as a major threat to their health and life, so they just learn to accept this bothersome symptom and go on with their lives.

Patients who snore and have sleep apnea but haven’t gotten treatment yet often lack focus and feel overly sleepy during the day. It’s because they weren’t able to get a decent amount of sleep at night. But more than the chronic sleeplessness, sleep apnea in itself is a deadly condition. Think about yourself not breathing for several seconds multiple times throughout your slumber. That’s what happens when you have sleep apnea. These periods of breathing gaps are critical because your brain is trying to decipher whether it should focus on breathing or sleeping instead. It is even more alarming to find out that almost a billion people all over the world have sleep apnea, who are silently battling in their sleep every single day of their lives.

A new data analysis presented by ResMed last week at the ATS 2018 International Conference, indicates that sleep apnea affects more than 936 million people worldwide — nearly 10 times greater than previous estimates.

The study, “Global Prevalence of Obstructive Sleep Apnea,” was conducted by an international panel of leading researchers seeking to provide a clear scope of the impact of the chronic sleep-disordered breathing condition. The previous estimation of OSA prevalence (100 million) came from a 2007 World Health Organization study that used methods and data available at the time. By analyzing technology improvements in detecting OSA and under-reported statistics from other areas of the world, this latest study depicts an impacted population significantly larger than previously identified.

“The research and findings are a revelation in sleep apnea research and represent a vastly underreported major public health issue”.

(Via: http://www.hollandsentinel.com/entertainmentlife/20180529/nearly-1-billion-people-worldwide-have-sleep-apnea-sleep-experts-estimate)

These people fail to get themselves checked by a doctor or even report their symptoms. It does not help either that there is no cure for sleep apnea just yet. It is a life-threatening condition that also predisposes you to a list of other chronic conditions like Diabetes, Heart disease, stroke, and depression, among others. Moreover, you become prone to accidents because of sleep deprivation.

Sleep shouldn’t be underestimated anymore as it is an important recuperative process that allows us to do so much during the day and help keep us going in life. If you don’t get the sleep your body needs, everything else in your life will suffer.

There are also more user-friendly and convenient anti-snoring gadgets you can use to relieve you of the snoring and somehow address your sleep apnea in the form of mouthpieces like ZQuiet and VitalSleep that many of you can surely afford.

University of Michigan researchers found evidence that more than half (56 percent) of persons ages 65 and older have a high risk of OSA, a sleep disorder in which the throat collapses during sleep, causing the patient to repeatedly stop breathing for periods of 10 seconds or longer throughout the night.

But only 8 percent of these individuals have been tested for OSA, a disorder that is associated with significant health risks. An overnight sleep study is necessary to diagnose OSA.

“It appears most older adults who are at risk for obstructive sleep apnea may not be getting referred for overnight sleep studies, and we may be missing an important chance for treatment,” says co-first author Tiffany Braley, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of neurology at Michigan Medicine.

(Via: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-obstructive-apnea-older-adults-seldom.html)

A big chunk of those with undiagnosed sleep apnea belongs to vulnerable groups like the elderly. Often time people mistake snoring as part of the aging process but it is not. Hence, most older people refrain from getting checked for their snoring. They may think they get tired easily and feel sleepy most of the time because they are getting old but the truth is that it is because of sleep apnea. This chronic sleeplessness shortens their lifespan even more and contributes to them being more sickly too.

In essence, sleep apnea is like a ticking time bomb in your slumber. Those unfortunate enough may not even wake up at all. To lessen your risk, try using anti-snoring gadgets if you’re not comfy at all with CPAP or the thought of surgery scares you away. The important thing is you don’t put your life at constant risk every time you sleep for the night.

Lack Of Sleep Makes Older Adults More Forgetful

posted by under SnoreRX ,

Sleep is crucial to optimal health even if the majority of us seem to think otherwise especially when you are younger. Many young ones feel invincible as if no sickness or disease can even bring them down. They are not aware of their own mortality that they do really crazy things thinking nothing can get in their way of living life to the fullest. Unfortunately, the damage your body has endured adds up alongside the years in your life and you’ll feel its weight as you age. It’s common knowledge that the elderly belongs to the vulnerable group because of their bodies, which are past their prime, have a hard time in managing a lot of things and they are often riddled with a long list of maladies that do not always go away on its own or aren’t easily treatable.

Medical experts recommend an average of eight hours of sleep each night, not just during the day. There are more curative and rehabilitative processes that take place inside your body when nighttime falls yet many of us consciously make the decision of endangering our own health as we push our bedtimes further into the night. Technology is a major culprit nowadays and this can spell bad news for all the youngsters today because their bodies will surely seek revenge when they grow older. Recent studies found connections between sleep and memory problems among the elderly.

Older brains may forget more because they lose their rhythm at night.

During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team reports in the journal Neuron.

“It’s like a drummer that’s perhaps just one beat off the rhythm,” says Matt Walker, one of the paper’s authors and a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. “The aging brain just doesn’t seem to be able to synchronize its brain waves effectively.”

The finding appears to answer a long-standing question about how aging can affect memory even in people who do not have Alzheimer’s or some other brain disease.

(Via: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/18/571120472/older-adults-forgetfulness-tied-to-faulty-brain-rhythms-in-sleep)

This study dug deeper as to why older people are prone to having memory issues and it shows sleep has a lot to do with it or better yet the lack of real deep sleep that the elderly have trouble achieving each night. Moreover, certain body changes have an impact to sleep and we know that the aging body underwent innumerable changes both visible to the naked eyes and not, so it no longer comes as a surprise if their memory falters along with many other things.

Older adults who practice a simple meditation or listening a music programme may have significant improvement in memory function and objective cognitive performance – a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease – in three months, a study has found.

The findings showed that in older adults with subjective cognitive decline – a condition that may represent a preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease – practicing ‘Kirtan Kriya’ meditation and engaging in music listening programme showed improvements in attention, executive function, processing speed and subjective memory function – cognitive functioning that are most likely to be affected in preclinical and early stages of dementia.

(Via: http://www.newsx.com/lifestyle-and-fashion/53471-meditation-music-may-cut-early-memory-loss-in-elderly)

Knowing that there is a high possibility of you having memory issues in the twilight years of your life should be reason enough for you to better take care of your health and that begins with sleep. Both sleep quality and quantity matters. It’s hard dealing with sickness when it is already there. Your best recourse is to prevent it from happening. A person who is well-rested and enjoys a good night’s sleep every single time can take on whatever the world throws at him/her and it is not unlikely for them to age with grace and not appear like some crazy old lunatic because of conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s that has gotten the better of them.

Yet it is a different story if you are dealing with sleep disorders like sleep apnea. You can only manage it well through CPAP. If you aren’t a big fan of it, use a handy solution like an anti-snoring mouthpiece such as https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution or https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/snorerx so you can still sleep comfortable yet safely minus the scary breathing pauses that characterizes sleep apnea. Get yourself checked by a doctor if you suffer from this condition because it does not resolve on its own and it can have a negative impact to your overall health and seriously make aging such a bad thing for you.

Sleep Apnea Management Reduces Risk Of Alzheimer’s

posted by under SnoreRX , , ,

Most adults just want to hit the sack and get some well-deserved rest and sleep after a long day at work. The daily grind can take its toll on us and merely to survive is still a struggle for many. But some still remain sleepless no matter how fatigued they are. We are not just pointing fingers here and solely blaming technology for this misfortune. At times, it is your own body at fault. There are certain medical conditions that one person is at higher risk of having. You are predisposed perhaps because of your genes or something else in your genetic makeup or family history why you have that certain condition. Sleep apnea happens to be one of those things that many likes making fun of but is actually a very serious health condition. You would probably freak out once you discover that people diagnosed with this sleep disorder really stop breathing in their sleep. And we are not just talking about a random breathing gap but multiple times over the night.

Not only that, people who sleep with this person tend to suffer too as the snoring sound can be so loud and intolerable most of the times. Many couples have broken up because of this so it is really worth looking into aside from the fact that you don’t want to die in your sleep without a fight at all. What’s even more disconcerting is the fact that your body (and your health in general) deteriorates because of the lack of sleep or the poor quality of it. In return, it puts you at higher risk of other conditions that shouldn’t even be a threat to the normal person who gets their recommended of eight-hour nightly snooze. One thing we found out now is the correlation between sleep apnea and Alzheimer’s. If you want to save your memory and your sanity in the twilight of your life, getting yourself checked and treated for sleep apnea if you show signs of it can very well save you from developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) could expose older people to a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to an American study published in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

OSA can lead to cognitive decline and accelerate brain aging in healthy adults, according to a study from the New York University School of Medicine.

Researchers found that breathing problems during sleep favored the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain, associated with Alzheimer’s disease, thus exposing subjects to an increased risk.

(Via: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/278530/improving-sleep-apnea-diagnosis-delay-alzheimers-disease-says-study/)

Sleep issues are becoming far too common in the elderly. It is a common complaint of most seniors. But no matter what your age are, sleep apnea should be addressed right away and not just take your chances once you close your eyes to sleep for the night. And fortunately, the older community will have higher chances of saving as many as they can from succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease especially those who also suffer from sleep apnea. It has been discovered that there is a close relationship between the two. This discovery can help doctors and sleep specialists take a closer look to the occurrence of sleep apnea and Alzheimer’s disease in adults and help them lead normal and healthy lives in the last years of their lives.

“Sleep apnea is very common among the elderly, and many aren’t aware they have it,” said senior researcher Dr. Ricardo Osorio. He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine in New York City.

An estimated 30 percent to 80 percent of the elderly suffer from sleep apnea, depending on how it’s defined, the study authors noted.

Although none of the participants developed Alzheimer’s over the two years of the study, those with sleep apnea accumulated amyloid plaque, which could trigger Alzheimer’s in the future, Osorio said.

Sleep apnea occurs when you have one or more pauses in breathing or shallow breaths during sleep.

Those pauses can last from a few seconds to minutes, and they can occur 30 times or more an hour. Normal breathing usually starts again, sometimes with a loud snort or choking sound, according to the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

(Via: https://consumer.healthday.com/cognitive-health-information-26/alzheimer-s-news-20/sleep-apnea-may-boost-alzheimer-s-risk-728391.html)

What is the sense of living if you don’t have any idea what you are doing anymore? No recollection of your past and mindlessly going about your present. This is the dilemma faced by many senior people as a big majority of them not only suffers from poor sleep but have Alzheimer’s too. They can’t even manage to do most of their activities of daily living and solely rely on healthcare providers for assistance in everything they do in their day-to-day. But we can save them from a life like that if sleep problems like sleep apnea are diagnosed early on especially now that the experts have discovered the link between the two.

One convenient way of protecting yourself from sleep apnea is by wearing anti-snoring mouthpieces. They are not just convenient to use; they also correct the anatomical problem that gave you sleep apnea in the first place. You no longer have to be scared of not breathing in your sleep when wearing one. CPAP is also available, but difficult to use for most elder people: https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/why-a-cpap-machine-is-probably-not-for-you. These handy devices are more cost-effective too than other sleep apnea management, so there really is no more reason for anyone to suffer in silence because of this sleep disorder. https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/snorerx is good for starters. It will save your health and the ears of those people sleeping beside you without hurting your wallet at all and you can be assured of growing old without losing yourself and your mind to Alzheimer’s.