Sleep medicine

breath”. When you sleep and experience a complete collapse of the upper airway caused by relaxation of the muscles controlling the soft palate and tongue you have an apnea or a total cessation of air flow in the throat. When you sleep and experience a partial collapse of the upper airway you have a hypopnea causing upper airway tissue vibration also known as snoring. OSA is classified as being mild, moderate or severe based upon the number of apneas or hypopneas per hour of sleep. 5 to 14 per hour

In Sickness and in Health There is one undeniable fact of life; if you are human, you will get sick. This last week of college has been a trying time for me. After the first two weeks of college having gone with out a hitch, I should have guessed something bad was coming. I managed to get sick, in fact, I have never felt so terrible in my life. My throat was swollen, to the point I could not swallow, my stomach felt as if it were reenacting World War I, and I was over all physically drained. Yet

Imagine, during some much-needed sleep, that an anthropomorphic demon forms, peering from the opposite side of the room, aliens begin conducting strange experiments, hooded ghosts murmur incomprehensive secrets. All of this as a strange bout of full-body paralysis takes hold. How does one explain away an experience as strange as this? For some, it feels like waking up dead; being confined and unable to move. Literally paralyzed. This paralysis is only worsened by a growing sense of alarm. Is there

1992) Everyone needs sleep to perform tasks in their life like picking their nephew up from daycare, spending time with your family, or even going to school. Sleep is a critical part of living a healthy lifestyle, but what if this time in our life is robbed from us? What if this important factor of life is taken from us by a disorder? In the U.S., one in eight people have a sleep disorder of some kind.( U.S. Census Bureau, 2014)Then you might ask yourself, what is a sleep disorder and what are the

Best White Noise Machine: Buyer’s Guide Noise is something that most people would not associate with a good night’s sleep. First of all, we sleep to experience a state of peaceful tranquility that differs greatly from the chaos of our waking day. No one goes to bed thinking, “I wish I could still hear my boss shouting at me or I wish my partner could snore louder.” However, there is the kind of noise that can block of all the ugly noises that we hear on our head. The sound of the crashing waves

day, you drift off to sleep very easily. You feel physically and mentally exhausted and your body tells you that you need to rest. This is a normal reaction by the body to the lack of sleep. This however is something that people suffering from narcolepsy must deal with on a daily basis even when they have had a full nights sleep. One of the major symptoms they suffer from is overwhelming daytime sleepiness. Imagine you are in a boring lecture and you start to drift to sleep, usually you can manage

Sleeping problems is known to have countless psychological effects on women, but a new study links negative mood swings coming from bipolar disorder to a lack of sleep. Bipolar disorder is a chronic mood disorder in which symptoms range from depressive lows to manic highs. Problems with sleep like insomnia, is synonymous with individuals suffering from the mood disorder. Likewise, excessive sleeping is also a symptom, primarily seen during the depressive side of the illness. According to the study

denying them the amount of sleep necessary for them to have a good overall health. As a recent graduate from high school, I can personally testify that I did not get anywhere near the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep. Between numerous after school activities I participated in, such as sports teams and clubs, doing homework, practicing musical instruments and still having to go to zero-period classes; class that starts at 7:30, I would be lucky if I got 6 hours of sleep. Poor time-management skills

All my life I’ve fought tooth and nail with ADHD. Typically, I come out on top, but not always. For me, my ADHD manifests itself in a few different ways. The most notable is that I have almost no attention span. When I sit down to read or write every couple minutes I’ll think of something and I won’t be able to concentrate at all until whatever it is has been taken care of. I was the most energetic kid in my preschool class. It was impossible for me to sit still. This combined with not having a

after a good night of sleep we feel recharged and happier, and if having gone without sleep for a while we may end up cranky and most likely cannot function correctly. But why do we feel better after waking up from a deep slumber and feel worse without sleep? Why do our bodies need to shut down for such a long period of time? Unfortunately scientists are still trying to find this answer themselves. Although through a sufficient amount of research, scientists have found out how sleep greatly impacts our