My son's sleep specialist only does pediatric. His name is Dr. Timothy Hoban at University of Michigan, Mott's Children's Hospital. He is wonderful and I wouldn't trade his care for anything.  I know that U of M has excellent sleep docs for adults, too. You might check that out.

You are correct in that a hypopnea is most often caused by an obstruction, which can be the tongue, tonsils, adenoids, low muscle tone, and/or reflux reaching the top of the throat.

I'm glad you made some heads or tails of my explanation. Yes you understand correctly, that the brain will sometimes register obstructive apnea as a danger of aspiration in the throat and tell  the body not to breathe for a period of time.

I have had great doctors give me lots of great explanations. I have also done a TON of independent research in the last 3 years.

Adults are rarely monitored for sleep apnea in the home. Your doctor will most likely order a sleep study with a c-pap or bi-pap and send you home with one of those.

Hope this helps!! Tiffany

Tiffany:

Thanks so much for helping me out here... So I have a sleep study coming soon.  I just found this sleep doctor who seems to be good.  She explained all my previous sleep studies to me like no one had ever done before.

She thinks they`re inconclusive, so she wants me to take one again.  It`s coming up this week, and I`m worried about something.  I`ve had touble before staying alseep in my polisomnographies, specially during my titrations.

My doctor wants me to take both polisomnography and titration in one half and half night, 4 horurs each.  I`ve done that before and I`ve had trouble falling back asleep again in drowsiness, at the end of the night not knowing if I slept at all or not, or probably in light sleep.

I mentioned this concern to my sleep doctor and she told me it was up to me.  That if my sleep is that disrupted and fragmented now, which it is, it would be probably better to take the two tests in two different nights.  I had that done before also just once, and even then they asked me to sleep on my back (which I can`t) and change sleep positions and CPAP machines during the night.

What do you think?

Also, is it alright to take sleeping pills for this problem?  I`ve read at some sleep clinics`wesites that it`s alright to take whatever you take to sleep regularly, but some other doctors here think you shouldn`t cause that makes sleep apnea worse.  I regularly take a mild sleeping pill and I`m currently on a mild antidepressant.  What`s your opinion on this?

Thanks,

John Serrano.

TiffanyAcuff wrote:

Sleep apnea does NOT cause seizures. Seizures can be a cause of apnea, though. This is why when they do a sleep study, they monitor very specific areas of the brain for seizure activity. This is NOT a full EEG, but will give them information about whether the apnea and seizure activity correspond to one another.

TiffanyAcuff,

As a moderator of this site, would you care to re-evaluate your comment given the recent research?

It is pretty clear now that apnea lowers the seizure threshold, which is a medical way of say that apnea DOES cause seizures.

Mealmh