But unlike most of them, it wasn't because of stress or bad dreams. Coates is one of the 18 million Americans with sleep apnea and when he would wake up abruptly in the middle of the night, he was usually gasping for breath as he regains consciousness.
How It Works
Derived from the Greek word for “without breath,” sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by interruptions of breathing during sleep. In the case of obstructive sleep apnea, the windpipe is blocked by anything from the tongue to the tonsils to excess fatty tissue. The obstruction limits nasal breathing, resulting in exceptionally loud snoring or mouth-breathing, depending on what time it is. During the day, muscles in this part of the body are able to keep the breathing passage open to some degree. While you're asleep, however, the muscles relax and if they become relaxed enough, the airway collapses. Comparable to sticking your hand over the hose of a vacuum cleaner, this collapse makes it temporarily impossible for you to draw breath. After a period of about 10 to 30 seconds, you will suddenly awake and the cycle will continue throughout the night.
“Oxygen is not getting into the blood,” says Ed Grandi, executive director of the American Sleep Apnea Association, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about sleep apnea. “What happens is, each time you have an apnea, your blood oxygen goes down and at some point, the carbon dioxide in your blood reaches a danger level. That arousal, the shudder when you wake up, causes a spike in blood pressure.
The Stages of Slumber
“Those arousals disrupt your sleep architecture,” Grandi says. “When that happens, your blood pressure jumps up, keeping you from reaching a deeper level of sleep.” As a result, those with sleep apnea can wake up cranky, groggy and exhausted with dry mouths, pounding headaches and occasionally, wet sheets. Regardless of age, bedwetting is a fairly common symptom of sleep apnea because while the disorder has no effect on the bladder, you can’t always wake up to use the bathroom when you’re unconscious.
“The quality of sleep I was getting was not good. I would be tired all the time, dozing off in meetings,” says Coates, who lives in Seattle. His sleep apnea, which never included bedwetting, developed as a result of gradual weight gain. “If you don’t realize you’re gaining weight or don’t realize it’s really affecting you, you get worse and worse until it gets worse.”
When Coates’ sleep apnea was at its worst, he had a recurring dream about not being able to breathe. “I would dream I would be swimming and I couldn’t break surface,” he says. “My body would say, ‘Oh my gosh, you must be drowning because you can’t breathe’ and I’d get the image.” While he never wet the bed, he remembers suddenly waking up. “You fight for oxygen and adrenaline goes into your heart. Your body creates a natural amount of adrenaline and that (extra) creates a strain on your heart,” he says. “That shot of adrenaline puts your heart rate through the roof.”
What causes sleep apnea? And how can it be treated?
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