Even if narcolepsy and sleep apnea are both chronic sleeping disorders, they still have differences in terms of causes and treatments. A person with narcolepsy will experience excessive sleepiness during daytime and will have disturbed sleeping time at night. On the other hand, sleep apnea is characterized by pauses in breathing or abnormal rhythm of breathing during sleep.
Most narcoleptic people are tend to suffer depression due to fatigue experienced during sleep while people with sleep apnea might end up with cardiovascular diseases. Both have some fatal effects to human being that is why these sleeping illnesses should never be taken for granted.
What are the causes and treatments of Narcolepsy?
There are medical evidences that narcolepsy can be acquired to genetic factors. Therefore, it can be transferred from one bloodline to the next generations. Some diagnoses of narcolepsy indicated that this sleeping disorder is caused by over fatigue. The muscles and nerves are disintegrated during sleep and cause disturbed sleeping time. Some are sure that narcolepsy has strong relation with depression. With intense feelings of failure, anger, and all, this may lead to narcolepsy.
For genetic causes, narcoleptic are helped but are not cured. The sickness is in their genes and this hardly to control and eliminate. Even the depression cause is hard control because these are feelings of individual and self-help plays important contribution. Oral medications are the resorts of people suffering from narcolepsy. Most of these medicines are taken in order to suppress the symptoms and rhythm of sleep could be treated back to almost normal. Change of lifestyle of a narcoleptic person is also necessary to achieve good results on his medications.
What are the causes and treatments of Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea is a chronic disease due to some contributing factors. One of these is the anatomic structures of patients. Small jaws with small airways might cause snoring and would eventually lead to sleep apnea. Some people especially children are prone to enlargement of thyroids due to bacterial and viral infections. These enlargements cause blockage on the airways and might end up with a sleeping disorder. However, there are other causes of sleep apnea, which include smoking, obesity, and some cardiovascular complications.
The shortness of breathing is fatal for patients. This might result to cardiovascular diseases and any other health problems. Occurrence of sleep apnea is hardly even noticed by people with this sleeping disorder. They are only aware of it when other people told them about the episodes of their sleep.
This can be treated through polysomnogram or sleep study. The patient would be observed during sleep and videos would be taken for more evidences. When a patient has clearer views on how he sleeps, he then suffers fear of sleep, which causes many complications. In order to treat such sleeping disorder, a change of lifestyle is necessary especially on quitting smoking activities, losing weight, and other medical prescriptions.
There are great differences on sleep apnea and narcolepsy although both should never be disregarded because these two sleeping disorders might lead to more complicated heath problems.
