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Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by intermittent breathing during sleep.
This comes up whenever the airway becomes blocked or partially blocked as you sleep.
How is sleep apnea currently diagnosed?
The traditional method for diagnosing sleep apnea involves an overnight sleep study.
This can be conducted at home, but will often take place in a sleep clinic or hospital.
Using nocturnal polysomnography, these sleep studies measure how many times breathing is interrupted during sleep.
The results are then analyzed against the apnea-hypopnea index, to determine a potential diagnosis.
Sleep studies are accurate, but often disruptive and sometimes hard to access.
However, while these techniques are more convenient than traditional diagnostic methods, they’re not currently readily available.
If you suspect you are experiencing sleep apnea, we recommend speaking to a health care professional.
Here are the key symptoms of sleep apnea to look out for:
1.
During an obstructive sleep apnea episode the muscles in throat collapse to block the airways.
This disrupts breathing and causes snoring.
A dry mouth and throat in the morning can indicate that you’ve been snoring throughout the night.
The resultingsleep deprivationcan leave you feeling tired during the day.
You might experience trouble concentrating, a low mood and even aweakened immune system from lack of sleep.
Tom’s Guide created this content as part of a paid partnership with Helix Sleep.
The contents of this article are independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of Tom’s Guide.
