How can I tell if my partner really has sleep apnea?

If you think your sleep partner has sleep apnea, look for symptoms such as disrupted sleep, feeling sleepy during the day, depression and cardiovascular problems.

Transcript

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So symptoms are probably the most important thing that you can go by-- symptoms being disrupted sleep, waking up tired, feeling sleepy during the day, depression.

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One of the things that we have demonstrated fairly reliably in sleep medicine is that bed partners are reliably

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unreliable. That being said, if a bed partner does note snoring, profoundly loud snoring,

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as well as episodes where you're stopping or struggling to breathe, that's usually a pretty good indication that sleep apnea is present.

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But oftentimes, that's not present and the individual, the bed partner, will actually have sleep apnea.

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So symptoms are probably the most important thing that you can go by-- symptoms being disrupted sleep, waking up tired, feeling sleepy during the day, depression,

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even other cardiovascular problems like high blood pressure or heart arrhythmias. That increases the likelihood that sleep apnea

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may be present. So all of those things are things that you really need to take into consideration to determine whether or not your bed partner might or might not have sleep apnea.