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Why we start breathing again


Posted by Aussie Keith on October 10, 2000 at 23:00:12:

In Reply to: Re: Can I choke to death from sleep apnia. Please help posted by jeanne in st. louis on October 10, 2000 at 21:53:43:

As I understand it:
(1) We go into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep -the deepest most refreshing sleep
(2) The muscles relax - including the muscles that hold open the airways (they're supposed to keep working, even when other muscles take a break)
(3) So we stop breathing - sometimes for as long as 90 seconds
(4) The brain, subconsciously, says "Hey, unless this turkey gets out of this, we're all done for" ...
(5) ... and pulls us our of REM sleep automatically...
(6) ... to another level of subconsciousness where we start breathing again (and sometimes to wakefulness, coughing and spluttering, if we're really bad)
(7) The good ol' brain saves us every time, never letting us down - even though this may happen 150 times a night
(8) But we never, never get a good night's sleep
(9) So if we're lucky we end up tired and crabby but mostly we end up with high BP, depression, suppressed immune responses, challenged cardiovascular systems, brain cells dying like there's no tomorrow and the health, family, social and economic problems that may follow
(10) So you need not worry, OSA is not known to kill directly. It does it with much more subtlety

And that's why we love our CPAP units!

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