Symptoms – What to look out for

Common Symptoms

 

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea affects people in many different ways depending on the severity of the OSA and the age and build of the sufferer.

The following are familiar symptoms of OSA:

1. You wake in the morning with a severe headache and you feel you have not had a refreshing night’s sleep.

2. Your wife/husband/partner tells you that you stopped breathing several times during the night.

3. You have a problem with your weight and your Body Mass Index is over 30.*

4. You snore loudly, enough to raise concerns among your family.

5. You feel tired and want to sleep shortly after getting up in the morning.

6. At home with the family, sitting watching TV, you can never stay awake long enough to watch a programme all the way through.

7.  You resist taking any exercise, whether it’s playing footie with the kids or taking the dog for a walk.  Doing the walk around your truck before you set off in the morning is perhaps the farthest you walk.

8. At work, sitting around a table for a meeting, or talking with work-mates, you are inclined to fall asleep.

9.  Driving on a long and monotonous journey, you have difficulty staying awake. You turn up the radio and open the windows; you sing along with the music and scratch your head, anything to try and stay alert.

A combination of two or three of the above symptoms would indicate you have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. This can be confirmed by an overnight sleep-study which could be carried out at a hospital sleep-clinic, or in your own home.  The results of that would confirm the presence of OSA.

What’s my BMI?*

You can calculate your own Body Mass Index (BMI) by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared.

If your BMI is greater than 25 you are overweight. If your BMI is greater than 30 you are obese.

To convert your weight from imperial to metric, take your weight in pounds and divide by 2.2.  This gives your weight in kilograms.

e.g.  Your weight is 10 stone 7 pounds = 147 lbs. divide by 2.2 = 66.81 kgs.

To convert your height from imperial to metric, take your height in inches, multiply by 2.54 then divide by 100.  This gives you your height in metres; then multiply that figure by itself.

e.g.  Your height is 5’6” = 66 inches, multiply by 2.54 = 167.64, divide by 100 = 1.6764

For a person with a weight of 10 stone 7 pounds and a height of 5’6”, their BMI is:

66.81 divided by 2.81 = 23.77 BMI

Note:  A BMI calculation makes no distinction between body-fat and muscle-mass. A person who exercises regularly could have a BMI rating that puts them well into the ‘obese’ category on account of their build and size, but they are not unfit, whereas a person with the same BMI whose obesity is through the accumulation of excess body-fat would be unfit.

Snoring is not itself indicative of OSA, but when other symptoms appear it should be viewed as part of the same disorder.

Any worrying changes in your health that last for a month or cause you concern should be discussed with your GP.