Across the United States, about 30 million women, men, and even some kids sleep poorly and inefficiently due to a sleep breathing disorder called sleep apnea. One of the most common signs that you have sleep apnea is snoring or gagging so loudly or severely that you wake yourself up.
However, you don’t have to snore to have sleep apnea. In fact, about six million sufferers don’t even realize they have this potentially life-threatening disorder.
The most common form of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which is the only type of sleep apnea associated with high blood pressure (HBP). If you have OSA, some portion of your anatomy – such as a fatty neck or a deviated nasal septum – obstructs your airway as you sleep, cutting you off from full breaths of oxygen. You may sore, gag, or gasp for breath.
Here at Laurelton Heart Specialists, our expert cardiologist, Dr. Ola Akinboboye, and our team want you to sleep deeply, without the ill effects that untreated apneas bring on, including HBP. That’s why we diagnose and treat OSA at our office in Rosedale, Queens, New York.
How does sleep apnea cause HBP? Below is a brief rendition of the cascade that may start with a snore.
An apnea is a pause. Sleep apnea doesn’t just pause your breath; it pauses your sleep, too. When you stop breathing, you wake up — if even for a microsecond.
All night long, instead of resting and breathing plenty of the rejuvenating oxygen that your body needs to repair damaged cells, you stop breathing. You can’t deeply rest. You wake up un-rejuvenated, sleepy, and often with a dry mouth and brain fog, too.
Worse, the chronic deprivation of nighttime oxygen and deep rest may lead to the development of serious disorders and diseases. High blood pressure (aka hypertension) is one of the many adverse effects of interrupted, poor-quality sleep that comes with untreated sleep apnea. In fact, about 50% of people with OSA also have HBP.
When you stop breathing during what’s supposed to be a relaxing and restorative sleep, your body goes into panic mode. The stress from your collapsed airway and lack of oxygen circulating in your bloodstream may cause changes in your metabolism, your immune system, and your nervous system.
Your immune system, for instance, may respond as if it’s been attacked. A next step can then be inflammation, which your body normally uses to fend off pathogens.
Instead, the inflammation causes changes in your blood vessels that may weaken them over time. That makes it harder for your heart to pump blood, leading to higher pressure.
When you sleep well, deeply, and without disturbance, your blood pressure naturally drops. Most healthy women and men experience drops of 10-20% in their BP as they sleep, which is sometimes called “blood-pressure dipping.”
However, the constant interruptions caused by your apneas, as well as the hormones your body releases during periods of stress, may hinder that pressure drop. Instead, your blood pressure stays more elevated throughout the night.
Your heart rate also should slow down during regular, restful sleep. Disturbed, interrupted sleep keeps your heart beating faster and more forcefully, raising your BP.
You may awaken with elevated blood pressure due to the lack of pressure-dipping and restful sleep. The severity of your OSA is correlated with the severity of daytime HBP. Treatment with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine not only keeps you breathing — and sleeping soundly — all night long, it leads to clinically significant drops in BP, too.
A CPAP machine uses moist, pressurized air to bypass the obstructions that lead to OSA. Instead of oxygen being cut off by overly large tonsils, a collapsed jaw, or other anatomical abnormalities, you breathe deeply and continuously, without interruption.
Your apneas are gone. You don’t snore. You don’t wake yourself up in a panic of gagging or gasping for air. Your body gets to relax and restore itself.
Your cardiovascular system can relax and perform more normally, too. Without your immune system being triggered by a lack of oxygen, inflammation calms down. Eventually, your blood pressure dips during the night as you sleep, rather than staying elevated, which translates to lower BP during the day, too.
Does your untreated sleep apnea put you at risk for HBP, or for worsening your already-elevated BP? Contact our expert team at 718-208-4816 or use our online outreach form for a sleep study, diagnosis, and treatment today.
