Why do I always feel short of breath at night?

Sleeping is the happiest thing in the day. You don’t have to use your brain or physical strength. Sleep quality is very important. After a busy day, when you return home and lie on the comfortable big bed, you hope to have a good sleep, but it is always not as you wish. You always feel suffocated when you sleep at night, and sometimes you even make a lot of noises or snore. So, why do you always feel suffocated at night? Let me explain it to you now.

Holding your breath while sleeping at night usually occurs in people who snore. The more obvious symptoms are medically called "sleep apnea syndrome." Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is more common among middle-aged and elderly people, but people have a misunderstanding that this is a sign of a deep sleep. Under normal circumstances, during sleep, the muscles that control the tongue and soft palate can keep the airway open. If these muscles relax, it can cause the airways to narrow, leading to snoring and difficulty breathing. If the muscles relax too much, it will cause complete obstruction of the airway and cause breathing to stop. This is called sleep apnea syndrome. Holding your breath during sleep for a long time will cause a decrease in blood oxygen content, i.e. hypoxia, which can lead to damage to important organs such as the heart, brain, and lungs, causing high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and even sudden death at night. Other accidents may also occur due to lack of sleep and lack of concentration.

Patients with sleep apnea syndrome experience daytime symptoms such as drowsiness, fatigue in the morning, memory loss, irritability, slow reaction, mental and psychological disorders, and are susceptible to hypertension and coronary heart disease; nighttime symptoms include snoring, waking up at night, apnea, nasal congestion and mouth breathing during sleep, night terrors, sleep hysteria, screaming fear, and enuresis. Therefore, if you suffer from obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, you must seek treatment as soon as possible. There are many causes of sleep apnea syndrome, such as deviated nasal septum, nasal polyps, enlarged tonsils, large tongue, thick root of tongue, obesity, and certain systemic diseases. Snoring aggravates these diseases, and the diseases aggravate snoring, forming a vicious cycle. 30%-50% of patients with hypertension snore. Clinically, sleep apnea syndrome is divided into three types: obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, which refers to the absence of nasal and oral airflow, but breathing movements still occur; central sleep apnea syndrome, which refers to the simultaneous cessation of nasal and oral airflow and breathing movements; mixed sleep apnea syndrome refers to a respiratory apnea process in which central apnea occurs at the beginning, followed by obstructive apnea.

At what level of breath holding during sleep is it diagnosed as obstructive sleep apnea syndrome? This requires a series of examinations, especially sleep monitoring, and a comprehensive analysis based on multiple examination indicators to confirm the disease. Generally, when a snoring patient goes to the hospital for treatment, the doctor will recommend a nocturnal polysomnography.

The main contents of polysomnography include: 1. Sleep analysis, to judge the quality of sleep. Some people sleep very little but are very energetic the next day, while some people sleep a lot but still feel tired. The key lies in the quality of sleep;

2. Sleep apnea, which mainly records the number and duration of apnea, is the main indicator of nocturnal polysomnography;

3. Monitoring of blood oxygen saturation is an important indicator for measuring hypoxia in the body. Others include snoring, electrocardiogram, etc.

In daily life, patients should try not to sleep on their backs, as this will cause the root of the tongue to fall back and block the respiratory tract. They should also quit smoking and drinking, as sleeping after drinking will inhibit breathing and worsen snoring, and alcohol will also irritate the respiratory tract. If the patient is obese, he needs to lose weight to prevent the respiratory tract from being compressed by the thickening of neck fat. Eat less foods high in fat.