It’s estimated up to 20 million people in America suffer from sleep apnea. But help is available.
There's an old Steven Wright joke - someone asks if he slept well and he says no, I made a few mistakes.
But sleep apnea is no laughing matter.
It's closely related to hypertension.
"Probably next to pregnancy, the thing that takes people most often to the doctor's office and that's because hypertension leads into such significant medical problems, heart disease, strokes, things like that,” said Dr. Jamil Sulieman.
Sleep apnea causes a stoppage of breathing, up to 30 seconds per incident.
"Hypertension occurs in a vast majority of the people who have sleep apnea but more importantly, sleep apnea occurs in a lot of people who have hypertension,” said Dr. Jamil Sulieman.
Left untreated, hypertension can lead to serious coronary problems.
"What we're trying to do when we identify sleep apnea really is to give us another way to treat our hypertension, to improve that and by that lessening our risk for cardiac,” said Dr. Jamil Sulieman.
There are a variety of treatments, but Dr. Sulieman says the best way so far to help those suffering from sleep apnea is with one of these masks.
"And that is what we call positive airway pressure therapy. That is wearing a mask that splints the airway open, keeps the airway open through the night. That's how we treat patients with severe sleep apnea and many people moderate sleep apnea and it's effective in about 80 to 90 percent of people,” said Dr. Jamil Sulieman.
Dr. Sulieman says the remarks from many of his patients are personally rewarding. "Doc, that was the best night's sleep I've had in a long time and I went home and I had so much more energy than I've had in weeks, or months or years so they're an easy sell, those people when they've had that kind of experience."
