Sleep Tests And Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition that stops your breathing while you are sleeping. If you are suffering from sleep apnea, this means that you stop breathing when you are sleeping. One can notice that sleep apnea is taking place, as the chest will sink in when the person sleeping is not breathing. Loud snoring and other snore like noises are heard at this time as well. Sleep apnea is something, a condition that your doctor can help you cope with or find the correct surgery to take place so you can sleep well, and so your body will get the rest that it needs.

The test, polysomnography, is going to allow the doctor to learn about you while you are sleeping. It is going to require that you go to sleep, relax, and it will record how your body functions while you are sleeping. Snoring, gasps, and shortness of breath will all be recorded so the doctor can then determine what else may be going on with your body.

This is a simple test, one that is not going to hurt. You will have sensors placed on your body, and on your head that are going to monitor; the body while you sleep. The monitoring is going to involve your brain electrical activity, the eye and jay movements of the muscles, leg muscle movements that may be happening, and the airflow of your body. The respiratory efforts of your chest and the abdominal muscles will be monitored, and the oxygen in your body is going to be monitored at the same time.

The gathering of information will take place over a few hours, sometimes in a lab setting where you are sleeping, sometimes in the hospital setting where the diagnostic tests can easily take place. The information that is gathered during this diagnostic sleep apnea test is going to then be fed into a computer and analyzed. The technicians and the doctor will the compare your information to others

Electrodes are placed on the body, there are six of them, and them one is placed on the head to measure brain activity at the same time. As you are sleeping, the monitoring systems are going to make remarks about what occurs, what happens, and how long the intervals are between the snoring, or the portions of sleep where you actually stop breathing. This is going to help determine the severity of your sleep apnea, and the obstructiveness of your nasal passage or in your throat.