Hi there it's Matt again and today we're going to be talking about this.

That's right, snoring and in particular a sleep disorder called sleep apnea.

As you know by now I am not a medical doctor. So why do this episode?

Well, it's for two reasons. First, as with the past episodes on Insomnia, this episode is not medically prescriptive.

Instead, it is simply scientifically descriptive.

translation, this is not medical advice.

The second reason is based on prevalence.

It is highly likely that either you, your partner, someone in your family or even your child will have sleep apnea.

And therefore I want to try to add to the public awareness of what is a very serious condition.

Today we're going to cover five areas of explanation.

Number one, what is sleep apnea and how common is it?

Number two, why is it so deathly if left untreated? Number three, what will significantly increase your chances of suffering

from insomnia? Number four, diagnosis. How do you or your partner or your child and yes as I said it is common among

children how do you get tested and number five what are the treatments and how do they work?

Let's start with definitions and prevalence.

Obstructive sleep apnea or the acronym OSA, it's a breathing related sleep disorder.

There are two other less common versions called Central Sleep apnea and mixed sleep apnea but

obstructive sleep apnea is the most common and that's the one that we're going to

focus on today. I do love unpacking the etymology or the origin meaning of words.

So let's do that with the term apnea. In medicine we often place the letter A or sometimes

A B at the start of a term to designate the absence of that thing. A prime example would be the word abnormal,

with the A B preface letters defining the absence of normal, hence abnormal.

...