Generally, there are two reasons why we get tired: either we do lots of exhausting stuff, or we don’t get enough quality rest. Everything is quite evident in the first case. Speaking about quality rest, the first thing you should focus on is sleep.
Can you get tired if you don’t get enough sleep?
Being a sleep disorder characterized by snoring and multiple breathing pauses during the night, sleep apnea decreases the quality of your sleep dramatically. In so doing it can increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, memory loss and premature death.
Still, people often tend to underestimate snoring as a health issue. It sounds bothering, but no one rushes to treat it. Yet, snoring can be the exact reason why people with sleep apnea are tired during the day.
How does sleep apnea cause tiredness?
So how exactly can sleep apnea make you tired? Generally, it’s all about breathing interruptions. Our body cannot work correctly without oxygen. It fuels all body cells and makes us active (and alive). If the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, it becomes less productive, which affects the function of other organs.
Once your breathing gets blocked for some reason, your brain strives for energy and gets focused on rest. This is a different kind of ‘tired’. Sleep apnea causes oxygen starvation which makes you tired. When you snore, there is something in the airways that creates an obstacle for normal breathing.
As a result, your body has to use additional energy to overcome them. It only exhausts the body which is in ‘rest mode’. In the case of multiple breathing pauses, another common symptom of sleep apnea, starvation is even worse.
These are how sleep apnea makes you tired. But how to figure it out? If you’ve been feeling unproductive and sleepy recently, try monitoring your sleep behaviour with snore recorder app Goodsomnia Lab.
It records the sounds you produce during sleep. If there is snore identified, the app analyzes it, provides you with recommendations on how to improve your sleep quality and can help your therapist to choose the appropriate treatment. Feel free to try it!
