Sleep apnea could have impacts to cognitive health

thank you Dr Co just called me beautiful this morning we are continuing our coverage on National sleep Awareness Week there is a new study showing that sleep apia could impact our cognitive Health like we've been saying all morning sleep is so important for everything in our life joining this this joining us this morning to talk about this study is our n news health expert Dr pile Coley clearly I'm not getting enough sleep true the time change that has totally done me in since then so talk about

what is sleep after cuz it doesn't necessarily mean you just you you have bad sleep it's something even more in fact exactly that you could be sleeping 7 to n hours a night and the quality of the sleep is really poor because you're not breathing apnea means lack of breathing during sleep and there's two types of sleep apnea so one is called obstructive meaning something is getting in the way of the air getting it usually it's your tongue but if you think about it when you lie down especially on

your back your neck muscles can relax a little bit too much especially as we get older and the tissue gets a little more stretchy or we gain a little bit of extra weight it can pinch off the airway almost like pinching off a straw so that the air is not getting in a lot of people that have that manifest with snoring but there's also something called Central sleep apnea where your brain forgets to breathe and this can happen if you use alcohol close to bedtime you take benad dril you take any of

these other types of substances that can change the way that your brain breeds that doesn't have any symptoms with it absolutely and there's a big reason we're talking about this I have sleep apne I'll disclose I have no problem with that um this is more than just it causes you to snore this can really cause some serious health problems if you don't address your sleep apnea it can and it's sometimes it it sneaks past you like someone like you is not somebody who is heavy or someone who would th

ink would have sleep apnea may or may not snore but it can be associated with heart attack Strokes diabetes liver dysfunction uh even problems like car accidents poor performance at work depression and mental health issues and our cognitive Health talk about this study and how it's linked to dementia as well this is really alarming because we used to think you have to have at least moderate or severe sleep apnea in order for it to affect your cognitive Health but this was a study just came out i

n jamama neurology almost 6,000 adults without dementia they kind of followed them over time and it's not what stage of sleep you're in that seems to determine your cognitive Health we used to say REM sleep non-rem sleep that all matters but it's more actually whether or not you have sleep apnea even if it's mild so these are people that wouldn't otherwise get treated wouldn't otherwise go to the doctor but those that had sleep apnea had worse cognitive health and a higher risk of dementia now w

e're learning a lot about how sleep and our brain Health Works because we know that our brain restores itself during sleep so we're talking about the inflammation created with sleep apnea we're talking about the lack of oxygen because people's oxygen levels can go down to 50 60% at night and how that can damage the brain but we're also talking about critical periods in our life so I'm talking about kids I'm talking about when our brain is developing I'm even talking about older adults and bad pe

riods of sleep and sleep apnea during those periods can lead to cognitive decline now this is an important question I want all our friends at home to pay attention to this one how would we know if we have sleep apnea so if you sleep alone it's a lot harder but if you sleep with somebody sometimes your partner will tell you you stop breathing you kind of wake up gasping for air you look like you're not breathing or you're snoring excessively and then you kind of catch yourself so when you catch y

ourself snoring it's not the Snore that wakes you up it's the lack of oxygen to your brain that's actually triggering alarm sensation that's waking you up but if you sleep alone sometimes you'll wake up with a dry mouth you'll wake up with morning headaches or sometimes people will say I kind of wake up short of breath gasping for air like almost like I choked on my spit or you know like I couldn't catch my air and really again what that is the lack of oxygen that's waking you up and I got to sa

y I always thought I was getting good sleep and then I got told I SN like a freight train and that's how we found out about it so even if you think you're getting good sleep you might have it yeah it's so important to get it checked out thank you so much for coming in really appreciate it and you can find all of Dr K's appearances on nw.com Dr Coy and