it comes to the general population, 10 out of every 100
people tend to have sleep apnea, with about 40 to 50% going undiagnosed
most, if not all of their lives.
it comes to MS sleep apnea
even more of a problem, since Multiple Sclerosis can set us up for
sleep apnea to develop more
often than it would for the average person without Multiple Sclerosis.
do you know you have sleep apnea?
apnea is a medical condition that can affect many
people when they sleep at night, where they temporarily stop breathing
times to hundreds of time a night, while they are sleeping.
person with sleep apnea actually wakes themselves us
several times a night to start breathing again and this can happen
person even being aware that this is happening to them each time they
Symptoms of MS sleep apnea can include:
when you lie down to sleep at night
* Headaches when you wake up in the morning
* Feeling tired all of the time, like you never really feel rested
depressed and feeling down most of the time
* Feeling like you have no energy, no matter how long you actually lie
down to sleep at night
* Unexplained weight gain – prolonged sleep apnea can actually make you
gain weight quickly, without being able to lose the weight, even if you
are careful with eating healthy, and even if you exercise
sleep study can be done at a sleep clinic or sometimes
your doctor can arrange for you to be tested at home to see if you
having a problem with sleep apnea.
a screening is done to determine if sleep apnea is
present or not.
a diagnostic is done to determine what is going on with
your particular case of sleep apnea.
The diagnostic testing determines:
often you stop sleeping at night
* How much
oxygen are you getting when you breathe at night
you are going through the normal cycles of sleep
you enter the more restful stage of sleep when you sleep at night
* Whether you have other conditions, like restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy or other type of sleep problem besides sleep apnea.
the problems with sleep apnea can:
Help the brain to function better
Help you to feel rested
Help you go to sleep more easily
Prevent waking up several times a night and help you to sleep the whole
Help you lose weight, put on by the extreme insomnia and/or lack of
Help to get rid of morning headaches and depression
Help get rid of unexplained nauseousness
Sclerosis adds another element to sleep apnea, since MS is known for
attacking the central nervous system and causing problems with the
nerves not functioning as they should.
it comes to MS sleep apnea,
fatigue and insomnia can already be present because of the effects of
the Multiple Sclerosis, which can make it more difficult to decide if
the person may have sleep apnea, which can be also contributing to the
fatigue and insomnia problems.
sleep apnea also has a hereditary element that can often contribute to
sleep apnea appearing in those of diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis,
even if other members of our family are not diagnosed with MS, but do
have the presence of sleep apnea.
example of this would be in the case where your mother or father have
the signs of sleep apnea, but they do not have Multiple Sclerosis along
with the sleep apnea.
my case, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 13 years ago, but I
was only recently diagnosed with a mild case of sleep apnea.
didn't think that I had it, but both of my brothers, who do not have
Multiple Sclerosis, were diagnosed with sleep apnea a few years ago and
it appears that my mother may also have had sleep apnea for years and
has gone undiagnosed with it.
no one else in my family has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, it
appears that sleep apnea runs in my family.
used to be just 10 to 20 years ago that sleep apnea was not tested for
on a regular basis, but more and more people are being tested and
diagnosed with sleep apnea in larger numbers, since more sleep study
centers are popping up in more areas around the USA.
you have MS sleep apnea testing can be a very good idea, since this may
help your body to recover better from many of the effects of Multiple
Sclerosis on your body.
has been found by MS research that our nervous systems produce many
more natural stem cells when we rest while we sleep at night.
natural stem cells are the repair cells for our nervous systems.
we get adequate restful sleep at night, this is when our bodies do a
lot more of the repair work for our nervous system and other parts of
we go for prolonged periods of time without adequate sleep, this not
only weakens our immune systems, but this also prevents our bodies from
recovering and repairing themselves at night, which can also prevent
our bodies from recovering and repairing after each of the MS attacks
on our bodies.
we get adequate rest at night, this helps our bodies to do a better job
at recovering and repairing the damage to our bodies after each MS