By Jordan Wilson
Imagine someone holding a pillow over your face while you sleep. You struggle to breathe and gasp for air.
Now, envision this happening hundreds of times per night.
That’s how Edward Grandi describes sleep apnea. Grandi is the executive director of the American Sleep Apnea Association. Grandi said the most terrifying part of the aforementioned scenario is that it can happen without you even knowing it.
“Unless you’ve got someone who’s sleeping next to you, snoring like a freight train or freaking out, you don’t really realize what’s happening,” Grandi said.

Sleep apnea is basically a disturbance in breathing that lasts 10 seconds or longer. Then, you may suddenly wake up because of shortness of breath, but you may not realize it at all.
“They will wake up, but awakening is not all the way to the point where the brain is fully engaged so most people don’t even realize it because you never reach the full state of being awake and alert and forming a memory,” said Dr. Dimitry Fomin, a neurologist with Mercy Medical Specialties in Rogers.
There’s no sure-fire causes, although obesity and age contribute to your likeliness of suffering from sleep apnea. However, it isn’t regulated to obese and older people. Even healthy people can have sleep apnea. Children can suffer from it, too, although that is a little more rare.
Grandi described the process of how your body realizes it is suffering from sleep apnea.
“Eventually, enough carbon dioxide builds up in the bloodstream and the brain sends a signal to the body,” he said. “Eventually there will be a startle or jolt. Maybe they wake up and maybe they don’t wake up.”
Grandi said it’s hard to determine exactly how many people suffer from sleep apnea. It’s difficult to put a number on it, especially given how many people may not realize they are suffering from the sleep condition. However, Grandi estimates that about 5 percent of the adult population has sleep apnea.
So, how do you treat a problem you don’t know you have?
That can be the tricky part, said Dr. Jerrold Kram. Kram, a diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and the medical director of California Center of Sleep Disorders, said there are a few signs of the condition.
One major sign of sleep apnea is always being tired, regardless of how much sleep you got the night before.
“If you don’t wake up refreshed from a good night’s sleep and you’re still tired, that’s a hint you might have a sleep disorder,” Kram said.
Constant snoring is also a probable symptom of sleep apnea. However, many people don’t know if they snore at night, unless they have someone telling them. There are other signs to look for, including having a sore mouth and throat in the morning, a headache or constantly falling asleep.
Being able to fall asleep on a dime isn’t necessarily a good thing, Kram said. It could be a sign of sleep apnea.
“People brag about it as if it’s a point to be proud of,” he said. “But it’s absolutely not normal to fall asleep immediately. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have sleep apnea; it just means your sleep is not sufficient.”
If you have any such signs, doing an at-home sleep test or getting tested in a sleep lab is the only sure way to determine if you have sleep apnea. In a sleep lab, Fomin said physicians will monitor patients’ respiratory effort, the amount of oxygen in their blood and the electrical activity in the brain that defines whether someone is awake, asleep or dreaming.
Grandi said he believes everyone has at least a little bit of sleep apnea, although only the more severe forms call for treatment.
A person can be diagnosed with three varying forms of sleep apnea, Grandi said. Someone who has five to 15 sleep disturbances a night would be categorized as having mild sleep apnea. Someone with moderate sleep apnea would have 15 to 30 disturbances a night while someone with severe sleep apnea would have more than 30 sleep disturbances in a night.
Luckily, sleep apnea can be effectively treated. Fomin said nonsurgical treatments include training a person’s body to not sleep on its back (which causes the tongue to block your airway), wearing an oral appliance that pushes the jaw forward or through the use of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure.
The CPAP helps regulate breathing by controlling air flow in and out of the lungs. That way, a sleep apnea sufferer won’t experience any shortness of breath.
It’s almost 100 percent effective. However, being comfortable enough to wear it is the problem.
“It’s always 100 percent effective in patients willing to wear it every night,” Kram said. “But the challenge is making it comfortable enough and whether you’re using it every night or not.”
There are other ways to treat sleep apnea. One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways is to lose weight, Kram said.
Although skinnier people can also have sleep apnea, obese people are more likely to have it because the fat around their neck constricts the breathing passage around the throat. By losing weight, Kram said air can more easily flow with more breathing room.
The last, and most extreme, treatment is a surgical procedure. Kram said surgery can permanently cure the problem by moving the jawbone forward to create a bigger airway. Other surgeries can include removing the tonsils and a tracheostomy, Fomin said. The problem with a surgical procedure, Kram said, is it is not always effective and people can still suffer from sleep apnea afterward.
When approaching any type of sleep disorder, a person should first ask themselves if they are having trouble sleeping and if they are having trouble staying awake.
“If you answer yes to anyone of those you need to see a sleep specialist because sleep is a biological necessity,” Fomin said. “There’s absolutely no reason why sleep should be an effort.”

Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this report.