What Is Sleep Apnea?

Obstructive sleep apnea. A person usually laying down and sleeping, maybe on their back and their tongue slides backwards, their airway collapses, maybe they choke. There's an apnea hypopnea index and the apnea means stopping breathing. Hypopnea means under breathing index means a score. You go to a sleep lab and you get a test done. And that's traditionally we have other ways to do it. Now the test will show that you have a sleep apnea or not. We defined it as number of times this occurs in an hour. So it's fine as having a 10 second period where you stop breathing or underbreathing. Your oxygen count drops 3 or 4% depending on which measurements being used for 10 seconds. And if it happens once an hour, that's considered normal. In fact, up to 4 an hour is normal, 5 to 15 is considered mild apnea, 15 to 30 is considered moderate apnea and 30 and more is considered sleepier apnea.