There is evidence that sleep apnea causes difficulty with cognitive functions, like memory, reasoning, reacting and controlling emotions. Recent research has also shown that it may actually change the shape of the brain. The good news is that the negative health effects of sleep apnea can be reversed with treatment.
The cognitive symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of sleep apnea, are similar to some of the cognitive symptoms of dementia. Besides leaving you sleepy during the day, sleep apnea can cause forgetfulness, as well as trouble concentrating, organizing and planning.
A person with sleep apnea is likely to experience daytime sleepiness and brain fog. This is hardly surprising when you consider that the brain is not receiving enough oxygen during the night and the person is not getting enough quality sleep.
People with sleep apnea also often report problems with thinking such as poor concentration, difficulty with memory and decision-making, depression, and stress.
Time Take to Recover From Sleep Apnea
Averagely, the effects will start showing around three months, and full recovery can be up to a year. Sleep apnea should be dealt with as soon as possible.
These breathing pauses can prevent your body from supplying enough oxygen to the brain. In severe cases this lack of oxygen can lead to brain damage. Signs of this damage include memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and moodiness.
Brain damage caused by severe sleep apnea is reversible.
Sleep apnea also has an effect on mental health, and those with sleep apnea have a far higher risk of anxiety, panic disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, or even schizophrenia. It's not surprising that sleep apnea can cause anxiety.
EPAP therapy is newer and it is less commonly prescribed than the other PAP therapies. However, a review of EPAP studies found that people using EPAP experience a 53% reduction. View Source in OSA symptoms. Some researchers recommend using EPAP for people with mild to moderate OSA.
Using Your CPAP Device Consistently May Slow Memory Loss. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) refers to having problems with your memory and decision-making abilities. Usually, people with MCI experience few if any problems with performing their daily activities.
It is possible to treat brain fog. A study showed that 20 patients with severe OSA manifested brain fog. After undergoing CPAP therapy, their brain fatigue improved significantly. If a person lacks sleep, then he should get to the root of his sleeping disorder to explore possible treatment.
If you are using CPAP therapy but still feel tired, there could be several reasons why. It's possible that you haven't been doing the therapy for long enough, you are removing your mask during the night, your pressure needs to be adjusted, or your symptoms are mild.
Symptoms Include:
Lack of mental clarity and ability to organize thoughts. Short-term memory problems. Poor focus and concentration. Low mood.
Does sleep apnea go away? The answer is no, although it is a common question among people with a sleep apnea diagnosis. While there is no cure for this chronic condition, there are treatments and lifestyle changes that can reduce your sleep apnea symptoms.
Weight loss of just 10-15% can reduce the severity of OSA by 50% in moderately obese patients. Unfortunately, while weight loss can provide meaningful improvements in OSA, it usually does not lead to a complete cure, and many sleep apnea patients need additional therapies.
Central sleep apnea (CSA) is a disorder in which breathing stops and starts repeatedly during sleep. In some cases, breathing is very shallow. Central sleep apnea occurs because the brain doesn't send proper signals to the muscles that control breathing.
Dangerous complications of sleep apnea
Heart damage and heart failure. Sleep apnea causes an increase in pressure in the blood vessels around your heart and on some of the chambers of your heart itself. That pressure increase puts a strain on your heart, ultimately causing damage to the heart muscle itself.
Over time, sleep apnea affects your mental health and therefore makes visible changes to your personality. These changes affect others and therefore may have a major impact on your emotional and social life.
Among the brain areas affected by sleep-disordered breathing are sites within the insula, anterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortices, hippocampus, fornix, mammillary bodies, amygdala and cerebellum.
Sleep apnea without treatment does not directly shorten life expectancy. However, it does increase the likelihood that patients will develop life-threatening health conditions that result in shortened life expectancy.
If left untreated, OSA may cause significant neurological problems, including stroke, depression, headaches, peripheral neuropathy, and non-arteritic ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION). Moreover, OSA is often associated with impaired cognitive function, most likely due to the intermittent hypoxia.
October 17, 2022 -- Machine-learning algorithms can diagnose obstructive sleep apnea on brain MRI exams much faster than methods currently used to identify the sleep disorder, according to research published on October 12 in the Journal of Sleep Research.
Sleep apnea is considered a risk factor for dementia. People with sleep apnea have been shown not only to have impaired memory and executive function, but also biomarker changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease.