Sleep Apnea Most people do not think of snoring as something to be overly concerned about. But frequent, loud snoring is one of the major signs of sleep apnea, a common and potentially serious sleeping disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts as you sleep. However, just because you snore does not mean you have sleep apnea. The biggest sign of sleep apnea is how you feel during the day, such as daytime sleepiness, slow reflexes, or poor concentration. Normal snoring usually does not interfere with the quality of your sleep. Although sleep apnea is treatable, it often goes unrecognized. There are three types of sleep apnea: obstructive, central, and complex; of the three, obstructive sleep apnea is the most common. Despite the difference of each type, in all three, people with untreated sleep apnea stop breathing during their sleep, sometimes hundreds of times during the night and often for a minute or longer. Obstructive sleep apnea is the most common type of sleep apnea and is caused by obstruction of the upper airway. People who have obstructive sleep apnea are usually unaware of having difficulty breathing, even upon waking up. Certain people have a higher risk for obstructive sleep apnea, such as overweight people, males, smokers, people over the age of 65, or if you are related to someone who suffers from it. There other risk factors for obstructive sleep apnea that include certain physical attributes, such as having a thick neck, deviated septum, receding chin, or enlarged tonsils or adenoids. Allergies and other medical conditions that cause nasal congestion and blockage can also contribute to sleep apnea; however, in these cases people experience episodes of obstructive sleep apnea for only a short period of time. For this reason, many individuals will experience these episodes at some point in their life. When you are awake, your throat muscles help keep your airway stiff and open so air can easily flow into your lungs; however, when you are asleep, these muscles are more relaxed. Normally, the relaxed throat muscles do not prevent your airway from staying open to allow air into your lungs, but in some cases these relaxed throat muscles can cause your airway to become blocked or narrowed during sleep. The reason this happens depends on the risk factor involved, such as being overweight, the shape of your head and neck, or your age. Overweight people may have extra soft tissue that can thicken the wall of the windpipe causing the inside opening to narrow, which makes it harder to keep open. The bony structure of your head and neck could result in a smaller airway size in the mouth and throat area. Smaller airways can also result from a medical condition that causes congestion in these areas. Age can also be a factor in causing the airway to block or narrow. This is because the aging process limits your brain signals’ ability to keep your throat muscles stiff during the sleep, which makes it more likely that the airway will narrow or collapse. The goals of treating obstructive sleep apnea are to restore regular breathing during sleep and to relieve symptoms, such as loud snoring and daytime sleepiness. Treatment may improve other medical problems that are linked to sleep apnea, such as high blood pressure. Treatment can also reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. This is why untreated sleep apnea can be dangerous and detrimental to your health. There are different ways of treating obstructive sleep apnea, such as lifestyle changes, mouthpieces, breathing devices, and surgery. All of these treatments may cure obstructive sleep apnea, but I believe there is an easier and more natural way to treat and prevent this sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea is caused when the throat muscles relax more than normal during sleep; therefore, an easy treatment would be to strengthen these muscles. By strengthening these muscles they become more reliable and less likely to collapse. There are several ways to exercise these muscles, such as singing, playing certain instruments, or even by chewing. Singing is a good exercise to perform because it forces you to open your mouth wider and to expand and contract your throat. Playing certain instruments that focus specifically on the upper airway muscles in the throat, such as the didgeridoo, can help strengthen the throat muscles. These are some of the fun and easy ways to exercise the throat muscles without even noticing you are doing it. There are other exercises, such as pressing the length of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and holding it there. Another exercise simply involves blowing a balloon up. For overweight people, physical exercise would be a good way to reduce some of the extra soft tissue that causes the airway to become narrow. The stringer your throat muscles are the less likely they are to collapse during sleep; therefore, a little bit of exercising can lead to a good night rest. Another type of sleep apnea is central sleep apnea where the airway is not blocked but the brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe. The risk factors for central sleep apnea are a lot like obstructive sleep apnea, except that it is often associated with serious illnesses, such as heart disease, stroke, neurological disease, or spinal or brainstem injury. Central sleep apnea is also more common children than obstructive sleep apnea. Central sleep apnea is the most common sleep apnea in babies because of the immaturity of their central nervous system. There are a variety of ways to treat central sleep apnea depending on if it is caused by a neurological problem or a serious illness. Oxygen, nasal CPAP, or a bilevel positive airway pressure may be used for some typed of central sleep apnea. If sleep apnea is due to a serious illness, such as heart failure, then the goal is to treat the heart failure itself. These are some of the ways central sleep apnea is treated. Although these treatments may work, I believe there is a more natural and easier way to treat this sleep apnea. If central sleep apnea results from the brain failing to signal the muscles to breathe, then an increase in carbon dioxide is needed to stimulate the rate and depth of breathing. Because iron is needed for transporting oxygen and carbon dioxide, and increase in your iron level is an easy way to treat central sleep apnea. There are plenty of foods that are rich in iron, such as red meats, dried fruits, soy beans, and liver. There are also iron supplements that you can take. Increasing your daily consumption of iron is an easy way to treat central sleep apnea because it increases it increases the transportation of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Complex or mixed sleep apnea, as the name implies, is a combination of obstructive and central sleep apnea. This type of sleep apnea should be treated with both exercising the throat muscles and increasing iron level. There is not a type of sleep apnea that should go untreated because of the serious complications it can cause. Although snoring is common in a lot of people, it is also a major sign of a serious sleeping disorder. Therefore, snoring should be something to be overly concerned about because it might not be just loud, disrupting snoring—it might be sleep apnea.